Another meeting with a delegation from Sri Lanka

Last month, I had the pleasure of meeting, once again, with a delegation from Sri Lanka visiting Canada in connection with that country’s National Languages Project. The project was developed to improve relations between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities and to educate the general public as well as the public service regarding respect for language rights and linguistic diversity with the aim of enhancing social cohesion.

The goal is to provide citizens with access to information and public services in the national language of their choice and to ensure that Sinhala and Tamil enjoy equal recognition and respect as Sri Lanka’s official and national languages. Funded by the Canadian government, the project is led by the firm Agriteam Canada in association with the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute of the University of Ottawa and The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka.

The members of the delegation, most of whom are officials of Sri Lanka’s Ministry of National Languages and Social Integration, were eager to learn how the institutions serving the Francophone community operate, what challenges they face and what recourse they have in cases of non-compliance with the law. They also took the time to describe their own political situation, which is very different from ours in the area of official languages.

For example, did you know that Sri Lanka’s 1,200,000 public service employees are all supposed to be bilingual (in Sinhala and Tamil) after five years of service? In reality, of course, this is not the case, and this situation raises serious issues, as you can imagine.

Indeed, the members of the delegation discussed the challenges in implementing the Official Languages Policy, particularly due to the shortage of trilingual staff (Sinhala, Tamil and English), inconsistent access to services, and public misunderstanding of the policy. Nevertheless, they expressed optimism and determination to address the challenges by learning from the best practices followed in Canada as a whole and in Ontario in particular, especially with regard to translation and interpretation training and the protection of language rights. I wish them every success in this project!