Posted: April 1, 2005

Olympics: Canada Announces Mandatory Bilingual Requirement for Olympic Team

Ottawa, ON (April 1, 2005): Bill Owen, the minister responsible for sport in Canada announced today that, starting with the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, all Canadian Olympic Team athletes must meet the federal government's highest standard for bilingualism in English and French.

This decision follows years of intensive lobbying by Dyane Adams, Canada's language Czar. She stated that "Part VII of the Official Languages Act commits the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of the English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and to foster the full recognition and use of both official languages in Canada. It is under this section that OCOL investigated complaints against Sport Canada and the Canadian Olympic Association."

When asked in Parliament to justify this decision, Prime Minster Paul Martin replied that "our athletes are more than just athletes, they are ambassadors, and while they might not need to be able to speak French during their competitions, we feel that it is important that they be able to deal with the public in both official languages." He further stated that this policy was a logical extension of the government's institutionalized bilingual policy enforced in the Public Service, RCMP, National Defense and he recalled that while our astronauts obviously did not need to speak French during a mission the Government had made bilingualism a rated requirement as far back as the initial astronaut selection phase at the beginning of our space program.

The Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, said outside the house that, in his opinion, a higher priority would be paying the expenses of our athletes when they go abroad to compete internationally rather than asking them to pay their own way.

The only comment from NDP leader, Jack Layton, was that Canada should spend more time on finding ways to increase the amount of tax the rich pay but that if supporting this policy would get him a few votes in Quebec he would support it.

A spokesman for the Bloc stated that Quebec was going to use the Notwithstanding clause to exempt Quebec athletes from this requirement. He said that while the Bloc agreed that the rest of Canada should be bilingual, Quebec had no intention of supporting any policy that promoted the use of English.

Several athletes contacted by the Runner's Web would only comment anonymously. They stated that they had heard from several sports governing bodies that obligatory pre-event "training camps" would be extended to two weeks to allow additional time for language training refresher courses (which the athletes would be responsible for paying for). While this would cut into the time previously spent playing cards and hanging out, :it would enhance the image of "Canada's cultural diversity" which was seen to be more important than performance in the actual competitions.

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) indicated that they would comply with the new policy and that, in the future, Canada's Olympic uniforms would be imprinted with "Equipe Canada Team" rather than the current "Canada". This prompted complaints from the Canadian Synchronized Swimming Association that the new logo would cause balance problems for swimmers since "Equipe" has 6 letters and "Team" just 4 and the athletes would tend to rotate towards the "Equipe" side of the uniform. The COC responded that this would be a small price to pay for being able to promote our linguistic diversity.

Source: Government of Canada April Fool's Department.