Toronto waste calendar trashes French

Tamil and Tagalog speakers can get instructions in their mother tongue in Toronto, but this year, not francophones.

Thestar.com
Jan. 7, 2016
By Verity Stevenson

Toronto’s waste collection calendar reduced, but did not reuse or recycle its French.

The 2016 calendar, distributed to every household in the city of Toronto, is translated into seven languages, including English, but omitted Canada’s other official tongue.

“The City of Toronto regrets the error,” Nicole Dufort, a city spokesperson, said in an email to the Star.

The document indicates when, where and how to dispose of various kinds of waste. Each month’s page contains tips and information on waste management, from hazardous and electronic items to bin replacement. At the bottom of each page are six summaries in different languages.

In 2015, the calendar featured French, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish, according to Gilles Marchildon, a member of the city’s French Language Advisory Committee. This year, French and Polish appear to have been replaced by Tamil and Tagalog.

“This was a mistake,” Dufort conceded in the email, of the lack of French. “It began with the best of intentions to reach a wider audience with our messages. At the same time, there was confusion about the City’s translation policy.”

Dufort explained that, in translating the calendar, the city’s advertising policy - which requires translation into Toronto’s top six spoken languages - was followed. But its translation policy stipulates that whenever the city translates a document into another language, it must also be translated into French. That policy wasn’t followed.

French was added to the online version of the calendar and will be reinstated in 2017’s edition.

“It’s mind-boggling; I don’t understand how that could be forgotten,” Lianne Doucet, a French-speaking Leslieville resident said of the blunder. “It’s kind of funny.”

Thierry Lasserre, another Franco-Ontarian and the executive director of Alliance Française, a French school and cultural centre in the city, didn’t find the matter amusing.

“Is it really comical?” Lasserre said. “It sounds like they forgot that Canada - from a federal perspective - is a bilingual country.”

According to the city of Toronto’s website, only 1 per cent of the city’s population speaks French at home.

The Franco-Ontarian community may be small but it’s “intensely proud,” said Doucet, who is advocating for the establishment of a public French-speaking high school in the city. She recalled how the minority language had historically been taught clandestinely because of past rules against it.

On second thought, she said could picture how French could be forgotten in the city hall office that dealt with the calendar: “People who don’t speak French, we’re kind of invisible to them.”

Aside from its own policies, Toronto didn’t break any provincial laws in the mistake - it’s up to municipalities to decide whether to include French in its promotions. “But they certainly didn’t endear themselves,” to francophiles with it, Doucet said.

The French Language Advisory Committee, Marchildon said, addressed the mistake in one of its December meetings. It was told it was a mistake, but not how it happened, which he said “perplexed” him.

“It’s always a challenge to remind the city of the importance and belonging that French has,” Marchildon said. “It’s not like it’s the second most spoken language (as it is elsewhere in the province). It’s a question of visibility.”