INTRODUCTION
Mark Carney's campaign has accumulated numerous indications of his lack of fluency and of his lack of interest in French.
Beyond the current election campaign, is this another sign (after those of the Governor General and of the President of Air Canada) of the end of the requirement to master French to become Prime Minister at the federal level?
SOME EXAMPLES
Here are some comments or incidents involving Mark Carney before or during (to date) the current election campaign regarding Quebecers and especially the language issue:
A web site weak in french
Un dicton veut qu’il y ait deux langues à Ottawa: l’anglais et la traduction de l’anglais. C’est particulièrement vrai dans le cas du candidat au leadership du PLC Mark Carney, dont la version française du site web semble être l’œuvre d’un service automatisé. Mark Carney Bilinguisme Truffé de formulations incorrectes, le site web en français de Mark Carney semble traduit par des robots 2025 Raphael Pirro Journal de Montréal
Personal French error
During the French Liberal leadership debate, Carney’s ability to speak
French came into question when he misspoke, saying all four Liberal
candidates were in agreement “with” Hamas — instead of in agreement “regarding” Hamas. Mark
Carney Bilinguisme Mark Carney on back foot after getting
Polytechnique school, massacre survivor names wrong 2025 Kelsey
Patterson CityNews
Personal French error-2
During a speech in Nova Scotia on Tuesday afternoon, Carney described Liberal candidate Nathalie Provost as a survivor of the Concordia University massacre rather than Polytechnique Montréal, where 14 women were shot dead in 1989.The Liberal leader also called Provost by the wrong name, adding a syllable to her family name — calling her “Pronovost” instead. Mark Carney Bilinguisme Mark Carney on back foot after getting Polytechnique school, massacre survivor names wrong 2025 Kelsey Patterson CityNews
Willingness to attack Quebec's language legislation
« Nous sommes le parti de la Charte [canadienne des droits et libertés] et nous allons intervenir à la Cour suprême dans les cas qui [pourraient] venir », a-t-il dit vendredi lorsque questionné, en point de presse à Montréal, sur ses intentions à ce sujet. La Loi sur la langue officielle et commune du Québec, le français-aussi connue comme la loi 96-ne fait, pour l’heure, pas l’objet d’une cause entendue par la Cour suprême du Canada....M. Carney est allé plus loin que son prédécesseur, Justin Trudeau, en exprimant ses intentions quant à la loi 96. L’ex-premier ministre et chef libéral s’était limité à exprimer des préoccupations au moment où l’Assemblée nationale s’apprêtait à adopter cette réforme de la Charte de la langue française. Mark Carney Bilinguisme PL-96 Clause dérogatoire Mark Carney croit qu’Ottawa devra intervenir si la loi 96 est examinée par la Cour suprême 2025 Émilie Bergeron La Presse. Voir aussi Mark Carney Bilinguisme PL-96 Clause dérogatoire Québec dénonce «l’affront direct» de Mark Carney contre sa loi sur le français 2025 Boris Proulx Le Devoir
Refusal to participate in a debate in French
He made an error of judgment by withdrawing from a French-language debate on TVA:
Back to my main point: The Bloc, the
Conservatives and the NDP agreed to the request. On Monday morning,
Liberal Leader Mark Carney got a question as to whether or not the
Liberals would take part and he said: “Pourquoi pas?” (Why not?). Carney
appeared to be on board. Later in the day,
the Liberals sent out notice that they were refusing to take part in the
“Face-à-Face” and as a result, TVA said the debate was cancelled. Now
I guess it’s fair to ask: why should there be two French debates and
only one English one? Even though that’s not the excuse the Liberals
used, it’s worth addressing. Coverage of the
campaign is so heavily skewed towards English, that the debates are
really the best opportunity to get deeper information on candidates and
platforms, for the eight million Canadians whose language is French. Let
me give you a single example: During Sunday’s campaign launch, there
was only one single French question, the very last one to boot (although
Carney had gamely translated a few of his English answers). English
reporters got all of the questions, except one. A second French debate
isn’t favouritism, it’s a way to help redress that severe imbalance. To
try to justify their refusal to take part, the Liberals have offered up
a smorgasbord of pretexts that varied from the absence of Green Party
Leader Elizabeth May to high sounding principles about not paying
journalists. Mark
Carney Bilinguisme TVA Someone in Carney’s campaign made a bad call in
pulling out of the TVA French debate 2025 Tom Mulcair The Gazette
Mr. Carney has had years to improve his French
Est révélateur à cet égard le fait que ce dernier n’a pas jugé bon de prendre les mesures pour que son français soit fonctionnel alors que l’on parlait sérieusement de lui depuis plusieurs années comme possible chef du parti libéral fédéral et éventuel premier ministre du Canada.On doit en conclure qu’au-delà des paroles creuses, M. Carney attache peu d’importance à un Québec où sa popularité a pourtant explosé – atavisme de conquis oblige –, alors que le chef libéral ne dit rien de différent de Justin Trudeau en ce qui a trait aux enjeux cruciaux pour notre avenir, comme le déclin du français, la laïcité, le multiculturalisme et l’immigration sans limites. Mark Carney Bilinguisme Au-delà de l’image sécurisante de Mark Carney 2025 Christian Dufour Journal de Montréal
Contemptuous behavior toward a French-speaking journalist :
«CA SUFFIT LÀ!» Puis hier, un autre extrait de période de
questions des journalistes qui, lui est encore plus troublant. Dans ce
cas, je crois reconnaitre la voix de la journaliste Brigitte Bureau de
Radio-Canada qui, posément, interroge Mark Carney sur un appel à venir
entre lui et le président Trump. L’extrait vidéo ci-bas :Ici Mark Carney est non seulement agacé, sa réaction est tout
simplement méprisante. Manifestement, le chef libéral n’a pas le goût de
répondre à la question, mais il y a aussi cet autre carence
fondamentale, celle de la langue, son incapacité de répondre de manière
élaborée et spontanée aux question en français.J’ai déjà traité
ici d’autres réactions du genre de Mark Carney quand il s’agit de
répondre en français, ou quand ce dernier n’aime pas le sujet des
questions, notamment lors de son discours de lancement de campagne à
Ottawa où il avait réagit de la même façon.Ce qui m’étonne, c’est
que cette situation hautement problématique n’ait pas défrayé les
manchettes. Imaginons Pierre Poilievre qui répond aussi sèchement, plus
d’une fois, à des questions de journalistes… Permettez-moi de croire que
ça ferait les manchettes. . Mark Carney Politique Bilinguisme C'est quoi le problème de Mark Carney avec les journalistes 2025 Steve E Fortin
Contemptuous remarks from a close advisor to Carney
Mark Carney's advisor, Mark Wiseman, promoter of the Century Initiative intensive immigration project, controversial in Quebec, uses, when he speaks of Quebecers, a terminology that strangely resembles the words of John A. MacDonald in the time of Louis Riel:
100 million Canadians by 2100 may not be federal policy, but it should be- even if it makes Quebec howl . Mark Wiseman 2025 Twitter X . Voir aussi Mark Carney Mark Wiseman Immigration Politique Bilinguisme Century Initiative Carney adds Century Initiative co-founder to Canada-U.S. council 2025 Davis Legree iPolitics
CONCLUSION
Mark Carney's french is weak:
We watch Radio-Canada news in this household and I have to say that even
though I'm *extremely* generous to anglos who do their best to speak
French, Mark Carney's French is ... not good. Stephen Gordon Twitter 2 4 2025
It doesn't take much to understand why Mark Carney isn't fluent in French. Mark Carney was born into an English-speaking family in the Northwest Territories and was educated only in English in Alberta, the USA, and England. The message of a bilingual country matters little where he grew up. The majority of English speakers neither practice nor support official bilingualism; see Bilingualism in Canada, according to a Léger survey, a myth?
And like most of his fellow English-speaking citizens, Mr. Carney is not bilingual AND he deemed it unnecessary to improve his French before the election. What lesson should we learn from this choice and the incidents before or during the election campaign?
He will never think in French—he will translate. But, over time, his French should improve. However, if he were to win the election with such poor French proficiency, it would send a bleak signal for the future of the language in federal politics. A journalist for a conservative publication quickly grasped the following message. He believes that a Carney victory could open the door wide for unilingual Anglophones and end the requirement to master French to become prime minister.
:
Canada’s last unilingual prime minister was Lester Pearson. Depending
on who you ask, Mark Carney may be the next one. His command of French
has been characterized as somewhere between mediocre and non-existent.
Yet conservatives should resist the temptation to kick up a fuss about
it. Rather than seeing it as an opportunity to exploit Carney’s weakness
in the moment, they should see it as a chance to make a bigger argument
about bilingualism itself.
If the Liberal Party puts up a basically
unilingual candidate for prime minister and Canadians ultimately vote in
his favour, it could be a major challenge to the 60-year political
convention that aspiring prime ministers ought to have a strong command
of both official languages. Official bilingualism’s stranglehold over
federal politics may implicitly be on the ballot...The broad acceptance
of Carney’s campaign, notwithstanding his linguistic limits, should
therefore be viewed as a notable step towards opening up the prospects
of politics to millions of Canadians who hitherto assumed that they
couldn’t aspire to a vocation of public life. Mark Carney Bilinguisme Premier ministre Politique Sean Speer 29 03 2025 X Twitter The Hub
The majority of francophones are in denial on the linguistic skills of Carney:
The poll shows that while 51 per cent of French-speaking respondents
think Carney’s French language skills are good enough to be prime
minister, 36 per cent say they’re too poor for the Liberal leader to
lead the country, with similar numbers in Quebec. Poll by Abacus Data shared exclusively with the Toronto Star. Mark Carney’s French skills not good enough for a prime minister, say a third of Francophone Canadians 2025 Mark Ramzy The Star
Unfortunately, this tolerant attitude is the best way of losing the tradition of mandatory bilingualism in Canada.
UPDATE: 14 4 2025
Je n’aurais jamais pensé voir de mon vivant un chef conservateur faire mieux qu’un chef liberal sur TLMEP. Mais on y est. Et honnêtement, même pas proche. Pierre était relaxe, souriant, humain. Carney était stressé, réponses longues, français difficile. Je pense que nous allons voir du mouvement dans les sondages au courant des prochains jours. X (twitter) @JeanPFournier Jean Philippe Fournier poll aggregator. https://x.com/JeanPFournier/status/1911583218236633284
UPDATE: 17 4 2025- no french debate
Carney wins the French debate, but is not really able to express himself beyond his learned phrases
Si
on analyse la performance, il n’y a aucun doute: Yves-François Blanchet
a été le plus performant lors de ce premier débat des chefs. Sa
maîtrise du français lui donnait un avantage certain. Sa capacité à
dépasser les slogans et à répondre aux questions le distinguait. Le chef
bloquiste a réussi à démontrer que la voix du Bloc était encore
pertinente lorsque des Canadiens débattent entre eux.
Mais ce débat
ne passera pas à l’Histoire. Pas de moment Mulroney comme en 1984. Pas
de mise en accusation contre les lois 96 et 21 comme en 2021. Pas de
moment qui marquera totalement les esprits. C’est là la victoire de Mark
Carney.
Même s’il a été le moins performant. Même s’il n’était pas
véritablement capable de s’exprimer au-delà de ses phrases apprises.
Le meilleur? Yves-François Blanchet.
Le gagnant? Mark Carney 2025 Philippe Léger Journal de Montréal
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2025/04/16/le-meilleur-yve...
Marc Ryan
Author