Official Languages Committee on Oct. 27th, 2009

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Do they take you to court afterwards?

[Louise McEvoy]

We hope not, no.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

You've done it.

[Louise McEvoy]

We hope to settle that in another way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

We're going to start the third round with Mr. D'Amours.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. McEvoy, allow me to doubt one point you've just made, that you follow up with the employees.

I just want to take 15 seconds to remind you that, when I spoke to you about the sign earlier, I haven't repeated that story once or twice, but probably three or four times. I've repeated it every time there have been Air Canada people here, and nothing has changed. Perhaps it's because I didn't provide the flight number, and so on. Perhaps I should have done so. I don't know how many planes there are in the fleet, when it's a [Inaudible - Editor], there are even fewer, that's limited. This is just to tell you that, if there is follow-up... In my case—I'll give you my sheets later—every time I've mentioned that, there's been no follow-up, since it's still posted.

That was a comment on what you mentioned.

[Priscille Leblanc, Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Air Canada]

Mr. D'Amours, I'm going to call Mr. Randall, the President and CEO of Air Canada Jazz, this afternoon. I'll take note of the flight number. We're going to ensure that there is a campaign and we'll come back and tell you when it has been done.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you very much; that's appreciated. That's being proactive. I appreciate that.

[Priscille Leblanc]

We thought that was settled, but it's going to be settled; I give you my word on that.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you.

A little earlier, my colleague Ms. Zarac referred to VIA Rail. I know we can't draw any comparisons since they perhaps have fewer employees, but this is an observation we are forced to make. When the VIA representatives came to testify before the committee, a few weeks ago, their position was unequivocal: everyone hired and assigned to customer service was bilingual from the outset. I understand that they have 3,000 employees and you have 10,000, but, if they can do that, others must be able to do it as well. This definitely isn't an exception to the rule.

[Louise McEvoy]

I don't know the railway industry that well and I don't know whether it's gone through as many cycles as we have. Without looking for excuses, we're recruiting bilingual people as much as possible. We're managing to find more bilingual personnel among flight attendants and airport passenger agents. However, we haven't seen our figures stagnating because we're forced to lay people off very regularly in the airline industry. So we readjust our work force. There are temporary positions and that's why the ratio doesn't change. So we've decided to do training. Even though we've managed to put only six classes together per year, with 20 students per class, that means that 120 persons will be able to speak to customers in French with greater ease. We obviously won't drop the recruitment aspect.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Let's talk about the people who have been recruited. Mr. Godin, Ms. O'Neill-Gordon and I are members from northern New Brunswick. In those francophone regions, not everyone has access to high-speed Internet; that's a fact. They don't live in major centres and our region is very big.

Furthermore, not everyone has access to the Internet, even where there is access to high-speed Internet.

[Louise McEvoy]

I believe our advertising people are very much aware of that, much more than I am, and I believe I understood that the newspapers are used in certain regions, not the Internet. L'Acadie Nouvelle is still what is most widely read in Maritime provinces.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

That's New Brunswick's provincial newspaper. There is another one as well, L'Étoile, if you want options for communicating with people.

[Louise McEvoy]

That's true.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

It has to be done with the known information media.

[Louise McEvoy]

That's correct.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

The chances for success are greater. Otherwise, there's a better chance of failure.

[Louise McEvoy]

We do have to ensure we have every chance of success.

[Priscille Leblanc]

The recruitment question is an issue for you. I therefore suggest that we invite our person responsible for that to a future meeting. That person won't be here to serve up excuses because you don't want any and I understand you, but to answer your questions. I must say that we had no problem recruiting bilingual employees at our Saint John call centre. It's very easy to recruit bilingual employees across the province.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

You're emptying the Peninsula.

[Priscille Leblanc]

They're ready to work in Saint John; there's no problem about that. It's harder to recruit people from New Brunswick who are ready to move to Toronto or Vancouver to become flight attendants. The problem is a little more acute.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chairman?

[Priscille Leblanc]

I'm sure we can discuss the measures we're taking to encourage them to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. D'Amours. Your time is up.

We'll continue with Mr. Chong.