There are many Aboriginal communities where neither English or French or spoken. Look at Nunavut where Inuktitut is the most commonly spoken language and is one of the official languages. The Northwest Territories recognizes 11 official languages, 9 of which are Aboriginal. In Ontario, there are many communities where languages like Cree are used everyday yet it has no official status here.
I agree with you in that when we talk about 'founding' nations we should be including the aboriginal communities with the French and the English. The issue linguistically, however, is that very few of the aboriginal languages/cultures are written, and that they are so numerous that standardization...therefore effective and efficient communication....becomes problematic. You also have to wonder whether promoting the use of aboriginal languages, officially speaking at least, does more harm to those communities than good. The reality is that they do have to interact with the rest of the nation and the modern world in general. Culturally speaking of course there would be great interest in documenting and preserving a knowledge of those languages.
In 1890, Parliament debated whether or not to elevate Gaelic to an official language in addition to English and French. It was the third most spoken language, spoken by many MPs and Senators, and was the mother tongue of a plurality of Fathers of Confederation. Unfortunately the bill was defeated and the language is nearing extinction in Canada.
Unfortunately or fortunately? The issues surrounding the gaelic language group are in some ways very similar to those surrounding the aboriginal language group. These languages have very little real status because their usage makes very little practical sense even in the UK and Northwest France where they originate culturally.
The point I'm trying to make here is that to see that our country's heritage is exclusively in English and French is misleading. According to the 2006 census, over a quarter of a million people in Ontario had no knowledge of either English or French while 1.8 million used another language at home. To say that these people have no claim to a Canadian identity, or to deny them their place in our country's history, is narrow-minded and elitist.
Nobody's being 'elitist' about these things. Again, you have to make a distinction between what is used officially, the nation's
lingua franca and the reality of what is on the ground, so to speak. Most nations/communities function linguistically in this way so as to encourage unity and effective communication (remember the Tower of Babel?) Canada is fairly unique in actually encouraging and promoting two languages, never mind your suggestion we should be encouraging more, and we have to acknowledge that there are substantial divides in national unity that arise from this.
In many parts of our country, other non-Aboriginal languages were spoken long before either English or French. Whether it's Scottish Gaelic in Cape Breton, Irish in parts of Newfoundland, Ukrainian out West, etc., all have a claim to being Canadian languages.
No, in fact they don't. With languages as with cultures etc. it's sort of a bit like 'survival of the fittest', and this is not unique to Canada. In France for example there are many regional languages and cultures (catalan, provencal, breton, occitan to name just a few), but not of them are officially recognized or encouraged by the government. As De Gaulle once remarked it is nigh on impossible to effectively govern a nation that has more than '500' cheeses. Well it is probably even more difficult to do so with many different languages. 'Fench' was the regional language spoken around Paris and the
Ile de France which politically over time came to dominate the other regions and become the central language of the entire nation. In Canada the English language would likely have eventually killed off the French tongue if it weren't for the historical reality of the American Revolution that put into place some official protections for French at an early stage before English assimilation could set in. So, all in all, I think it is wrong to bring value judgements of 'elitism' or 'narrow-mindedness' to these things.
I grew up in a generation where a good chunk if not most of my friends where either first or second generation immigrants who could speak two or more languages fluently. I was always a little disappointed that my family never passed down our languages. Some people I know are raising their third or fourth generation Canadian children with a second language, while others plan to. I see this as a good thing that can only enhance our already rich culture, and something that should be reflected in street signs, etc.
Those are very good things indeed and we should always be encouraged to learn different languages and understand different cultures. I disagree with you, however, that all languages are equal and that we should be enshrining linguistic rights for all in our constitution (does anybody practise the 'clicking language' here?). That is not the role of our central federal or provincial governments and I just don't think that it serves anybody if we end up eroding the unity of a central Canadian identity/language base, risking the further balkanization of an already large and unwieldy federal confederation. Again, these are not value judgements. Canada is of course a diverse place, and this diversity is another core piece of our identity but this diversity should be encouraged more locally in our communities and families than at the level of our provincial and federal governments, imo.
