It's certainly a strange world that CASA lives in. The aero club where I work used to hire aeroplanes to an 'Air Safari' operator who organised trips round Australia, often for pilots from the USA.
These pilots all had the words "English Proficient" on their licences but CASA insisted that this was not sufficient to satisfy the English Proficiency Level 6 required for a Certificate of Validation, so I had to conduct an ELP6 interview with them and assess them at level 6 proficient before they could exercise the privileges of their CoV!