OTTAWA -- Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O'Leary broke out his French Monday night at a debate in a Montreal suburb.
But it's questionable whether he showed much progress toward bilingualism.
Mawy Bouchard, a University of Ottawa French literature professor who specializes in rhetoric, was unimpressed, citing repeated errors in the minute of French O'Leary spoke in his opening remarks in the debate in Pointe-Claire.
O'Leary read off a prepared statement that seemed to contain a number of errors based on his reading, leading Bouchard to conclude whoever wrote it for him isn't much more proficient in French than O'Leary.
"Mes amis Quebecois," he began, to loud applause.
But he faltered on several words, including pronouncing "important" - which is spelled the same in French and in English - the English way, and stumbling when he said his son studies at McGill, getting the verb wrong. He also missed a syllable in another word and mispronounced the phrase where he promised to lower taxes. He closed by badly mis-pronouncing the word for support, as in, "I need your support."
He also used anglicized words for business and taxes, Bouchard said.
"Those are brutal. They are very easily translateable and the fact that he doesn't [translate them] just shows that there are no efforts whatsoever."
Improving day-to-day
A spokesman for O'Leary said the leadership candidate wrote his opening and closing statements with the help of his French tutor, and that the tutor is a Quebec Francophone who exclusively speaks French to O'Leary and his staff.
"I don't think it's a very fair criticism," Ari Laskin said in an interview with CTVNews.ca.
"He's been very active in terms of ensuring his French is improving on a day-to-day basis. By her going and saying his pronunciation was incorrect on this or he used the verb was wrong on this, [well] it's not his first language and it's something that he is learning."
"I think that's a pretty harsh statement [to call it brutal]."
Laskin, who doesn't speak French, says O'Leary fits in his French homework between meetings and always has his notebook with him so he can work on it.
O'Leary spoke French when he was growing up in Montreal, but his family moved when he was seven years old, Laskin said.
"This is the first time I've heard any criticism on his pronunciation or his verbage," he said.
Bouchard noted in particular that O'Leary mis-pronounced Canadien in a way that a French teacher would correct right away.
"It wouldn't be a mistake that a student of French would make repeatedly. [It's] something that would be corrected as soon as you're told that 'A' in French is Ah," she said.
'You have to be determined'
That said, poor pronunciation doesn't mean he isn't trying.
"Not everybody can pronounce well and it doesn't mean there are no efforts," Bouchard said.
Still, given O'Leary's past comments about French, she questions whether he is truly studying it every day.
O'Leary initially maintained he didn't need to speak French because he speaks the language of jobs and money. He eventually relented and started French lessons.
"I would be surprised to see that it is really true and it is really the case that he's studying every day," Bouchard said.
"Maybe he has the will eventually to do more about the language situation, but as a professor of French, I know that you really need perseverance, you have to be determined and you have to work hard to reach a good level of fluency, and the younger you start, the better it is. So there are many, many obstacles."
O'Leary isn't the only Conservative Party leadership candidate who is weak in their second language, but he has emerged as a front-runner so his skills are under increasing scrutiny.
All 14 candidates agree the next leader needs to be able to debate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in both official languages, citing in particular the 100 ridings with sizable French-speaking populations.
