Les fondements du bilinguisme parlementaire au Canada

Constitutional provisions protecting the use of French and English in Canadian parliamentary institutions emerged from an asymmetrical federal compromise. Focusing on section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, this article – building on the late Benoît Pelletier’s research – argues that the bilingualism guarantee has a ‘remedial’ function: it sought to prevent the repetition of past injustices against French in the pre-Confederation period. The analysis traces the uneven extension of constitutional language guarantees across the federation, including the adoption and subsequent rollback of similar protections in Manitoba, the long legacy of assimilationist practices in education, and the gradual policy re-openings from the 1960s onward. It also highlights the distinctive constitutional entrenchment of language equality in New Brunswick (1993). The article offers a historically grounded reinterpretation of section 133 as both preventive and reparative, clarifying enduring tensions between bilingual status in law and linguistic asymmetries in practice

Constitution · Cultural assimilation · Multilingualism · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Plural · Reinterpretation · Canadian Identity and History · Multilingual Education and Policy · Political Systems and Governance