Vancouver needs more French in its 2010 Olympic Games: Canadian official languages commissioner

L'horloge officielle du compte à rebours pour les Jeux Olympiques d'hiver de 2010.

Interesting to see a city as far away from Ottawa and Quebec as Vancouver getting enough national exposure that its amount of French is starting to be put under the microscope. Note that the commissioner doesn't say that the lack of French so far is intentional, and notes that overall they are doing quite a good job.

Some recommendations follow. Here's the obvious one:

Resources allocated to translation must be beefed up and increasing the numbers of bilingual volunteers and staff needs to be a priority for the Games organizing committee and all its partners, Graham Fraser, the official languages commissioner, said in the report released on Tuesday.

here's a really easy one to carry out:

Among them, organizers have made sure the route for the torch relay runs through many francophone locations.

One might be tempted to ask why a city on the west coast hosting the Olympics should have to focus that much on French. The following explains one reason why:

With the federal government contributing $20 million for the opening ceremonies alone, the federal department of Canadian Heritage must ensure adequate representation of both French and English communities, the report said.