Timeline of official languages policy in Canada
Because the country contains two major language groups and numerous other linguistic minorities, in Canada official languages policy has always been an important and high-profile area of public policy. In an exhaustive 1971 study of Canadian language law prepared for the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Claude-Armand Sheppard offered this definition for the term “official language”: “[An] official language is a language in which all or some of the public affairs of a particular definition are, or can be, conducted, either by law or custom. We take public affairs to  comprise the parliamentary and legislative process, administrative regulations, the rendering of justice, all quasi-judicial activities, and the overall day-to-day administration.” This article lists key events in the evolution of language policy in Canada since 1710, when the French-speaking population of Acadia first came under British administration. The timeline covers the policies of the colonial predecessors to the current Canadian state, and the policies of Canada's provinces and territories. The policies listed include: These policy changes have been important to the extent that they affected the lives of individual Canadians. Therefore, in order to give some  idea of the relative importance of various policies over the centuries, population statistics for Canada's different language groups are included where such information is available. General themes in official languages policy. Official languages policies, in one form or another, have been in existence since the beginning of the European colonization of North America. In the early years, French was the sole language used in New France while English had been the sole language of British America. The First Nations continued to use their indigenous languages in their own affairs. There were a limited number of people who knew both  a European and a native North American language, often Christian missionaries the “black robes” and the children of natives they ministered to. These bilinguals were called on in diplomacy, but otherwise the linguistic worlds of the settlers and the natives were largely separate. Without being fluent, natives and settlers often learned very rudimentary forms of each other's languages called “pidgins”. Pidgins, such as the Algonquian–Basque pidgin, Labrador Inuit Pidgin French, American Indian Pidgin English, and Pidgin Delaware were initially important languages of trade and diplomacy, but none of them was ever prestigious enough to be used in any  other governmental context. The need for a considered language policy came with the absorption New France into the British Empire. This began with the British occupation of Acadia in 1710 followed by the conquest of Canada in 1759. Britain was then ruling over a large population of non-English speaking white settlers. In what is now the eastern half of the country, some sort of accommodation was made for French during the long period of British colonial rule that followed, but at no point did the language achieve full legal and practical equality with English. The public reaction to this  situation was one of the sources of the political instability that led to the adoption of a series of constitutions, culminating in the adoption of a federal structure in 1867 as a way of allowing the two languages to have different levels of official status in different provinces. Following Confederation in 1867, French and English were treated as being fully equal within Quebec, in all matters under provincial jurisdiction. In matters under federal jurisdiction, English occupied a "de facto" privileged position, and French was not fully equal, although it did enjoy some constitutionally protected privileges. In other provinces, French was  sometimes tolerated and sometimes actively suppressed. Other settler languages, such as Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and German were ignored in politics and increasingly suppressed with adoption of universal public education. Aboriginal languages, which earlier Christian missionaries had studied and helped to document, came under sustained attack by a system of state-sponsored church-run residential schools beginning in the 1840s in the east and later extending across the country. These schools were part of a deliberate policy to suppress or eliminate indigenous languages in favour of English. Over the course of the Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries, the two predominant  settler languages, English and French, have gradually achieved a greater level of equality in most of Canada's provinces, and full equality at the federal level. The trend has been very different in Quebec, however, where in the 1970s English was formally deprived of its status of full legal equality. Today, French is, both "de facto" and "de jure", the sole official language of Quebec. Also since the 1960s and the adoption of the policy of Official multiculturalism in Canada, teaching of other languages besides English and French, not only as a separate subject but as the medium of instruction , has expanded dramatically, beginning primarily with European languages, notably Ukrainian, the policy changes at the provincial level have seen a boom in schools catering to a variety of language groups. For example, in Edmonton, Alberta in 2015 the Catholic school board offered full immersion in French, "bilingual programs" (one third to one half time immersion) in Polish, Spanish, and Ukrainian, and part-time language and culture programs in Filipino, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Nehiyaw Pimatisiwin (Cree). Likewise, the public school board offered American Sign Language Bilingual, Arabic Bilingual, Chinese (Mandarin) Bilingual, French Immersion, Late French Immersion, German Bilingual, Hebrew  Bilingual, International Spanish Academy, Ukrainian International Bilingual, and Awasis (Cree) programs. Official languages policy and legislation relating to the provinces and territories. Alberta. "For events prior to the creation of the province 1905, see Northwest Territories" New Brunswick. "For events prior to the creation of the colony in 1784, see Nova Scotia" Ontario. "For events prior to the creation of the Province of Upper Canada in 1791, see Quebec" Saskatchewan. "For events prior to the creation of the province 1905, see Northwest Territories" Yukon. "For events prior to the creation of the territory in 1898, see Northwest Territories" Timeline of