Kelly Burke, a seasoned Ontario bureaucrat, has just been named Canada’s new official languages commissioner. She has a big job ahead of her, and anyone familiar with the language file can only wish her well.
The Gazette —
March 4, 2026
Mulcair: The trouble with Canada’s new language-rights watchdog
For now, I see no evidence Kelly Burke has much of a grasp of the issues facing the English-speaking community of Quebec.
Burke is a lawyer by training and this will help her in administering the Official Languages Act. At the same time, career civil servants tend to have reflexes that are sometimes at odds with the need to push the government hard when rights are being denied or suppressed.