My problem with all of this and promoting bilingualism is, the people that get these prime government jobs can speak other languages, then just cannot speak english.
It could be Mandarin, Japanese, Punjabi, or French, they just simply cannot speak English. Why not promote mastering the English language for the government workers instead of bilingualism. I agree it is nice to be able to communicate in different languages, but why not learn the language of the majority of Canadians???
Whenever you call any government office, you always have a language barrier if you are english, because the person on the other end of the line cannot speak it. It is very frustrating to bait people with government jobs, if they learn 2 languages, one of them not necessarily being english!!!