Understanding and Complying with the Official Languages Act: A Guide for Organizations

The Official Languages Act is a federal law that plays a crucial role in promoting bilingualism in Canada. The Act mandates that English and French are both recognized as the official languages of the country. This means that all organizations in Canada – including businesses, governmental organizations, and non-profits – are required to provide bilingual services as per the act.

Enacted in 1969, the Official Languages Act (OLA) aims to promote equality by protecting and preserving linguistic and cultural diversity. It establishes that all Canadians have the right to access government services in the official language of their choice, whether they are English or French speakers. This means, for example, that all federal courts and tribunals must operate in both official languages.

When offering bilingual services, organizations should ensure these are of equal quality, content, and availability even for people whose language of choice is different from French or English. Additionally, for the private sector, there are further voluntary measures that businesses can adopt, such as providing bilingual customer service. Any non-compliance can result in legal charges and tarnish an organization’s reputation.

Beyond the legally binding aspects, complying with the OLA represents a big opportunity to boost a company’s overall success, fostering cooperation and productivity, and maintaining a diverse customer base. It promotes creativity and innovation, improves employee morale, and leads to more effective problem-solving. From an HR point of view too, implementing language accessibility policies leads to employees and stakeholders feeling included and supported, with positive impacts on workforce engagement.

As a legal requirement for Canadian organizations to comply with the Official Language Act, any document (including press releases, manuals, websites, and printed material intended for the public) should always be available in both official languages. This ensures consistency and accessibility of information for all Canadians. Public meetings, regardless of them being on-site or virtual, should also be conducted in both French and English. This means organizations must provide live translation services to accommodate different needs.

Different from the above mandatory measures, providing bilingual customer service falls under the voluntary initiatives that private companies may adopt – but it has proven to be highly impactful to drive business expansion, growth, and client retention, particularly for organizations in the tourism and service industries. Here are some examples of actions to implement:

Organizations are not left alone in their path to compliance. The Canadian government provides several online resources, such as policy guidelines and language training courses for federal employees. One example is the Translation Bureau, which offers language services to public authorities. Another useful resource is Canadian Heritage, which administers various official-language-support programs such as language & culture exchanges, resource development funds, and language evaluation services. Non-profit organizations can also access training resources to improve their official language communication skills.

Beyond the resources provided by the government, organizations can also use language translation technologies and simultaneous interpretation services (both human and AI-powered). The advantage of choosing human interpretation lies in the interpreter’s full control over terminology, register, and context of your event. On the other hand, an AI Speech Translator offers a lower price tag, while also enabling organizations to handle unexpected requests in non-dominant languages – we’ll see more on that in the next paragraphs.

Best practices and recommendations when chairing bilingual meetings

As we have seen, complying with the Official Languages Act requires all public meetings and events to be held in both French and English – may they be in-person, hybrid, or fully remote. And while the production of written material can be managed with relatively low difficulties, handling bilingual meetings can easily become a daunting task.

Here are some best practices you can follow to ensure a fluent and engaged bilingual meeting:

If you are thinking this is a lot – you are right. But the benefits of multilingual events go well beyond the challenges. Conducting a meeting in two or more languages adds enormously to common understanding, and optimizes participation of all guests and employees, who are more engaged and productive in the language of their choice.  And if the event’s schedule is a concern, remember that adding simultaneous interpretations services (human and AI) to your meeting can substantially shorten the timings, while also making sure to avoid any miscommunication and appropriately catch each language’s special nuances. 

How to handle requests from non-official language speakers

French and English are not the sole languages spoken in Canada. In 2021, around 25% of Canadians (roughly one in four) reported to have a different mother-tongue, with Mandarin being the most popular non-dominant language (spoken by 1.8% of Canadian population). And this trend is on the rise.

For organizations, this means they may increasingly receive requests from non-official languages speakers. In this circumstance, it is essential to ensure these customers are not discriminated against and are provided with equal service as the official language speakers would be. This implies that organizations must make fair and reasonable efforts to provide even minimal access to documents or services to non-official language speakers.

Creating a dynamic response plan for managing these requests not only shows your commitment to inclusivity, but also creates a unique opportunity to better understand the needs and preferences of your customers. Offering people printed material in their native language is of course the easiest and most immediate solution that can be implemented. Additionally, to really facilitate communication and foster inclusion, organizations can once again decide to provide translation and interpretation services – for example, in the form of interpretation booths, telephone interpretation services, or language apps (like KUDO AI Speech Translator).

An AI translator can really act as a differentiator here, as a single app guarantees you access to multiple languages, allowing companies to better handle request in languages where live translation was unplanned.

Conclusion

Adhering to the Official Languages Act doesn’t come without difficulties, but it’s doable by investing the time and resources required – and the benefits associated with compliance far outnumber the challenges. Handling bilingual meetings may be particularly complicated, but the right translation service can shorten time and avoid miscommunication.

If meeting the OLA requirements during your events feels overwhelming, get in touch with our experts to see how we can support you!