The police force in Canada's largest province by population and economic size announced that its French-speaking officers are now wearing a pin on their chest featuring the flag of French-speaking Ontarians.

The head of the Ontario Police Department in the city of Hawkesbury, Anne-Christine Gauthier, says that the Francophone officers started wearing this pin about a week ago.

French is the mother tongue of about 90% of the population of Hawkesbury, near the border with Quebec, the only Canadian province with a Francophone majority, which borders Ontario to the east and northeast.

“We wanted to launch this initiative during this month, the month of Francophonie,” explains Gauthier. March of every year is the month of Francophonie in Canada, and the twentieth is the International Francophonie Day.

Gauthier adds that the idea of wearing the pin “came from our bilingual officers in the Ontario Provincial Police,” and the goal, among other things, is to “better serve our local communities.”

This visible symbol aligns with the regulatory list regarding the active offering of public services in French that came into effect in 2023.

This provision in the French Language Services Act in Ontario guarantees that every citizen in the province benefits from public services in French without needing to request it.

The head of the Ontario Police Department in Hawkesbury points out that 650 of the 9,000 Ontario Provincial Police officers are currently wearing this pin.

The officers who wear it do so voluntarily, and they are more numerous in areas of Ontario with a high Francophone population density, in the northeast and east of the province.