Legislative Brief to House of Commons and Senate Standing Committee(s) on Official Languages : Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Official Languages Act, to Enact the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act and to Make Related Amendments to other Acts (short title: An Act for the Substantive Equality of Canada’s Official Languages)

The TFLP submits that Bill C-13, the proposed modernization of the Official Languages Act (“OLA”), redefines and restructures Canada’s federal Official Languages framework in fundamental and, likely, undesirable ways. It introduces an unprecedented asymmetrical approach to the protection and promotion of Official Languages in Canada and, perhaps even more problematically, to the defence of the linguistic rights and recourses afforded to French speakers and English speakers, both in the Province of Québec, and across the country.