August 6, 2015
Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, Ms. Jocelyne Roy Vienneau;
On July 26, 2015, Citizen's Action Team sent a letter to Minister of Official Languages, Donald Arseneault, as well as to Premier Brian Gallant demanding the removal of Ms. Katherine d'Entremont from her position as Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick.
We cited the following reasons for this demand:
· Recent public allegations have been made that Ms. d'Entremont was personally involved in a complaint made to her own office that resulted in the attempted termination and ultimate transfer of a Fredericton Commissionaire for his failure to speak French despite his offer to immediately get a Bilingual individual to provide service in French.
· May we point out that according to 2011 Statistics Canada information, the demographics of Fredericton are:
• 75.6% English only
• 23.6% Bilingual (French and English)
• 0.5% French only
• 0.3% Other
· Loss of confidence and respect by the public. Its widely felt that Ms. d'Entremont does not act within the mandate of her role to protect and promote both official languages, but that she is heavily biased towards representing only the Francophone communities and it is felt that this bias has been publicly demonstrated numerous times.
· A publicly demonstrated lack of respect and outright scorn towards the Anglophone population. · An overly harsh and unreasonable approach towards applying the Official Languages Act that exceeds legal requirements and breeches Chartered Rights.
One day later, on July 27, 2015 - Minister Donald Arseneault publicly stated his refusal to consider her removal and did so without addressing the concerns brought forward.
At the very least - the allegations of misconduct require a thorough and public investigation. We have been given to understand in response from our elected officials that it is in fact yourself who would make these decisions, and therefore we lay the matter before you with the expectation that it will be addressed.
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