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Can you rise to the upper reaches of Canada’s government short of being Prime Minister and remain monolingual?
Short of being Prime Minister... yes you definitely can.
Speaking only English for sure, and there also have been Ministers who speak little to no English. The current Minister of National Revenue Diane Lebouthillier does not speak much English at all. She doesn't speak to the media in English, for example.
There have been others in previous governments too.
There are no requirements for provincial Premiers (not even de facto, as there is for the Prime Minister of Canada).
The GG is generally bilingual, though we've had some that weren't. Always unilingual anglos though. I think the last was Ray Hnatyshyn. This would have been in the early 90s IIRC.
Of course even Hnatyshyn and the unilingual Ministers were/are occasionally given talking points in French that they can rattle off more or less comprehensibly.
There are no requirements for provincial Premiers (not even de facto, as there is for the Prime Minister of Canada).
The GG is generally bilingual, though we've had some that weren't. Always unilingual anglos though. I think the last was Ray Hnatyshyn. This would have been in the early 90s IIRC.
Of course even Hnatyshyn and the unilingual Ministers were/are occasionally given talking points in French that they can rattle off more or less comprehensibly.
And Ray was such a genuinely good person, you can't even give him trouble for it.
Ray funny moment. He was being introduced and as is common with press functions, you usually spell names so they get it right. He forgot, and when one of the members of the press asked how you spell Hnatyshyn (Na ti shin) his response was: "The usual way."
In the past, there were PMs who were monolingual such as Diefenbaker and Pearson, but pretty much these days it's pretty much expected for Prime Ministers to be bilingual, is that correct? Even Harper who opposed bilingualism earlier in his political career came around to it, even though his French was pretty stilted.
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