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Canada and Ukraine probably differ more than they are alike: location, size, culture, politics, economy, history, society, language. Well, oddly enough, the countries appear rather similar than different when it comes to the last three aspects if viewed through the prism of the language issue. Having provided theoretical, historical background to the language issue in both countries and proven their comparability, this paper analyzes the official language policies in Canada and Ukraine since the Quiet Revolution in Québec and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, traces the development of de jure, as in the case of Canada, and de facto, as in the case of Ukraine, bilingualism. The paper goes on to study the state of the language rights the peoples of Canada and Ukraine enjoy in their daily lives, the level of satisfaction with their protection of the respective linguistic communities. Having no official statistics on origin and number of complaints against the alleged violations of language rights in Ukraine at its disposal, the paper resorts to the analysis of the relevant court decisions, ultimately answering the question why Ukrainian is not English or Russian is not French.

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Oleg Shemetov was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In 2011, he participated in the internship program for Ukrainian students at the Parliament of Canada. In 2012, he earned a bachelor´s degree in History from the University of Kharkiv. In 2015, he completed a joint Master´s program in Global Studies of the University of Wroclaw and University of Vienna.

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