Statement made on 23 March 2011 by Senator Maria Chaput
Hon. Maria Chaput:
Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention today to a petition that has been circulating for the past few days. The signatories are denouncing Service Canada's decision to designate Atlantic Canada as a unilingual English administrative region. More than 5,800 people have signed the petition so far. A young Acadian woman from the village of Chiasson on the Acadian Peninsula of New Brunswick started this petition on March 15, 2011, with the goal of collecting 5,000 signatures. That goal was quickly reached and exceeded in just a few days. The Acadian and francophone youth in Atlantic Canada, concerned about the consequences of this new administrative designation of their region, quickly became interested in this matter. They are motivated by a desire to protect their language, French. The concern of the Acadians and francophones in Atlantic Canada quickly spread to the west where many francophones in minority situations are today expressing their solidarity with their eastern cousins.
It warms my heart to see Acadians and French-Canadians realizing that they share common interests with regard to language, and understanding that a loss for Acadia is a loss for French Canada.
These thousands of Acadians, francophones and francophiles are not alone in their concern. I want to point out that the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, which represents more than 19,000 employees in the federal public service, has declared the designation of Atlantic Canada as a unilingual English administrative region as, and I quote:
. . . a sad but all-too-predictable result of Service Canada's recent decision to amalgamate the region's four provincially-based administrative units into one entity;
. . . the decision effectively makes second class citizens of the half-million French-speaking citizens of Atlantic Canada.
Honourable senators, the Acadians, francophones and francophiles who signed the petition I referred to, and the Service Canada staff of the new Atlantic Canada administrative region, strongly support the right of francophones to receive public services in their language.