Official bilingualism survives on institutions, and the institutions are being squeezed. Cuts circling the CBC and francophone media ecosystems strike at the infrastructure of French-language public life outside Quebec, while language-training and minority-community programs compete for a shrinking envelope. The rhetoric of two solitudes continues; the budget tells a different story.
A language lives where it is used — in newsrooms, studios, and community organizations. When the federal government withdraws from that ecosystem, it does not remain neutral; it tilts the continent’s gravity a little further toward English, and the drift becomes policy by default.
Bilingualism is expensive precisely because it is real. A government that celebrates the identity in both languages while defunding the institutions that carry it is choosing the cheaper of the two commitments.
The Point: Official bilingualism is maintained by budgets, not speeches. On the budget side, the government is quietly choosing one language.