Saskatchewan minister charged with protecting French can't speak a word of it

In the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 2008:

REGINA - In the heart of Quebec, "the cradle of French civilization in North America," Saskatchewan cabinet minister Wayne Elhard is this week dealing with issues of importance to French Canadians.
One catch, though.
How's your French, minister?

"Not very good," he said with a laugh in a telephone interview Tuesday from the Quebec City airport.(...)
The veteran Cypress Hills MLA describes himself as "frankly, unilingual English," but takes some comfort from knowing he's not alone among his provincial counterparts in not speaking French.(...)
In Saskatchewan, the language needs all the protection it can get. There were 16,790 Saskatchewan residents reporting French as their mother tongue in the 2006 Census. Only 4,320 reported French as the language spoken most often in the home.
In recent memory, no bilingual MLA has actually held the oft-overlooked job of looking out the French language in Saskatchewan.

© Saskatoon StarPhoenix 2008