Building bilingually

We noticed unilingual “Building Ontario” banners on some schools in an English-language school board in Toronto, an area designated under the FLSA.

We noticed unilingual “Building Ontario” banners on some schools in an English-language school board in Toronto, an area designated under the FLSA. These banners are intended to raise awareness of provincial government investments in school facilities.

As part of its prescribed measures for ensuring an active offer of service in French in designated areas, Regulation 544/22’s Measure 5 calls for written text about services to be “in both English and French in equal prominence.”

Result
We raised the issue with the Ministry of Education, which confirmed  that school boards doing work on buildings in designated areas are required to use bilingual signage. This expectation is set out in a communication protocol provided to school boards. Ministry officials re-shared this protocol with the board in question. The banners were replaced. The Ministry has revised the protocol distributed to all  school boards in the province, and added a hyperlink to the map of designated areas.