The province’s legislative committee heard from various stakeholders during the first three days of consultations in a year-long review of the Official Languages Act.
The last revision of the Act took place in 2021 under the Progressive Conservative government.
“The last revision wasn’t significant, so there were a lot of issues that needed to be modified and modernized,” said Université de Moncton sociologist, Michelle Landry.
“But under the (previous) Higgs government, this process was really put under the blanket and we didn’t see as many changes that we usually see with these reviews.”
The Act must be reviewed every 10 years. It’s being reviewed five years later because of a recommendation from report conducted during the 2021 review.
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Both the SANB (Acadian Society of NB) and the AFANB (Francophone Seniors Society of NB) spoke in favour of nursing homes being subject to the Official Languages Act.
“Whether I’m francophone or anglophone, I have to be able to receive services in my language, that I can be understood, that I understand my service provider,” Norma Dubé, the president of the AFANB told the committee in French on Thursday.
Landry said that doesn’t necessarily mean each nursing home would be obligated to provide bilingual service.
“I think this will be interesting for the government to think about and how can we integrate this idea in the act in a way that makes sense, that reaches the goal of permitting the minority language to maintain itself, but also in a practical way,” she said.
The legislative committee will be holding public consultations across the province in June. This will be the first time such consultations have been held since the 1980s, in part because they’ve turned nasty in the past.
“I think there should be a fine line that shouldn’t be tolerated in terms of hate speech or in that sort of area,” said Landry.
“I think it can be beneficial, but we really need a tight management of these public hearings.”
She said according to her research, the tensions between the linguistic communities are still as present as they were then and more education on what the act actually does is needed to keep conversations calm and civil.
The first consultation will be held on June 16th in Grand Falls.
— with a file from Rebecca Lau
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