French farce abroad
Canada's official languages commissioner has gone overseas

In today's episode of "Canada: Nuts 'R' Us," we find the federal bureau of official language loonies travelling the world at taxpayers' expense.

The office of Canada's official languages commissioner recently concluded a global investigation into the use of French at Canadian embassies -- even in countries that wouldn't know bonjour from bad hair.

Apparently not content with the fortune wasted on bilingualism oondoggles in this country every year, Official Languages Commissioner Dyane Adam recently turned her sights abroad.

Last fall, a team of four of Adam's staffers and a hired consultant visited a dozen Canadian embassies. By pure coincidence, the embassies and consulates selected were all in dreadful corners of the world: Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Washington, Mexico City, Santiago, Washington, Chicago and New York. Nice make-work if you can get it.

Naturally, we assumed all the effort and expense of Adam's international embassy investigation must have been prompted by a flood of complaints from Canadians abroad, unable to get consular assistance in the official language of their choice.

Indeed, statistics obtained from Adam's office confirm language complaints about our embassies have been skyrocketing among the 3.5 million Canadians who travel abroad every month.

In 2002, there were 10. Last year, there were 12.

Virtually all complaints were about a lack of French, and almost half the gripes were over unilingual websites, a situation that clearly demanded Adam's language police get on the next plane to Europe.

Whatever the reason for the study, its 32 pages of findings are packed with powerful stuff. One of Adam's harshest criticisms was directed at a security guard at the Washington embassy who apparently told a francophone visitor to "talk in English."

"The language of security services at our diplomatic missions has been ignored at many locations," she complains. "The situation calls for a department-wide solution."

Like many of Adam's suggestions, the notion of finding bilingual or even trilingual candidates for low-wage security jobs at all 164 embassies and consulates around the world drew a polite "uh-huh" from Foreign Affairs.

The department noted that in most countries, it is hard enough to find low-wage locals with security clearance, and that safety "will often take precedence over languages competence."

That drew a further rebuff from Adam, saying she found the department's position "difficult to reconcile." No surprise there.

One of Adam's more stunning findings was that some embassy staff actually don't speak French. The main reason for this travesty is that about 60% of embassy staff are not even Canadians, but are hired locally in cities where missions are situated, saving taxpayers here a gazillion dollars a year.

In countries where the native tongue is neither French nor English, it's tough recruiting low-paid staff who speak either, much less both.

Okay then, says our lady of the two tongues: Foreign Affairs should immediately launch a "comprehensive program" to teach French at all of our foreign missions.

Alternatively, maybe we could fix health care.

And how about them Yankees?

Adam discovered the New York consulate, for some odd reason, decided not to blow its budget supporting "regional activities celebrating the 2004 international Francophonie celebrations." Shame on you, Pam Wallin.

Similarly, the language czar reports an international crisis in Washington where our embassy website includes English-only text of some speeches to American audiences. Say it ain't so.

In her latest annual report to Parliament, justifying her $21-million office budget, Adam stated: "Canadians expect the governments that serve them to be accountable and able to show results. This principle applies to official languages."

Truer words she may never have spoken, in either official language