Graham Fraser

Who is Graham Fraser?

Graham Fraser is Canada's sixth Commissioner of Official Languages, and a former Canadian journalist and writer. He is the author of several books, both in English and French, and served as the National Affairs Correspondent for the Toronto Star, for which he also wrote a weekly column. He was also an adjunct professor of journalism at Carleton University from 2003-2008.

Fraser is the son of Blair Fraser, a respected newspaper and magazine reporter of the mid-20th century. Blair Fraser drowned on a canoe trip in 1968. Graham Fraser attended Upper Canada College and, later, studied at the University of Toronto where he obtained a BA in 1968 and an MA in History in 1973. During his career as a journalist, Fraser wrote for Maclean's, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, The Toronto Star and Le Devoir.

Fraser's unusual abilities as a journalist writing in both of Canada's official languages gave him natural qualifications to be Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages. In early 2006 he published a book, Sorry, I Don't Speak French, which reviewed the successes and failures of Canada's policy of official bilingualism. It was largely on the basis of the book and of Fraser's bilingual work experience that Prime Minister Stephen Harper nominated Fraser to be Canada's next Commissioner of Official Languages in September 2006. The nomination was unanimously endorsed by the House of Commons on October 17.