Why is Russian not French?

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.