The Conservative Party of Canada will choose its next leader this spring, and there's a chance it could end up with someone who can't speak French.
That the Official Opposition, the government in waiting, could be led by someone who is entirely unilingual, in the year Canada turns 150, will be taken as an affront by many francophones. Picking someone who can only speak English is bad for national unity – and worse for the Conservative Party's electoral chances.
Roughly 10 million Canadians either speak French at home or are able to sustain a conversation in the language. That includes more than a million mother-tongue francophones living outside Quebec. Official bilingualism exists for a reason.
Telling those Canadians that the ability to speak at least minimally passable French isn't a job requirement for PM is not on.
And yet it may be possible to win the Tory leadership without being able to speak French. Kevin O'Leary is suddenly the insta-favorite to claim the Tory crown, even though the celebrity political neophyte recently called Parliament Hill "Capitol Hill," spends most of his time outside of Canada and skipped the French-language debates because his French is non-existent. If he wins, the French portion of his acceptance speech will presumably have to be written out for him phonetically.
The late Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson used to refer to himself as Canada's last unilingual leader. Stephen Harper's French wasn't great, but it was serviceable, and he worked to improve it. He also won seats in Quebec.
Bilingualism isn't a baseline requirement for very many federal positions. But prime minister has to be on the short list. French-speaking Canadians should be able to listen to their prime minister speak to them in their official language.
The same goes for English-speaking Quebeckers. This week, the perfectly bilingual Justin Trudeau shocked and disrespected Quebec anglophones when, during town halls in that province, he repeatedly insisted on responding in French to questions put to him in English. He explained to one questioner, "Since we're in Quebec, I'll respond in French." Can you imagine Pierre Trudeau, father of official bilingualism, doing that? No, you can not.