Official Languages Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages. We are in our meeting 32.

I first want to apologize for being late. It's a great place; it's our first time here at One Wellington.

This morning, of course, we have our witness, Madame Maria Barrados, president of the Public Service Commission of Canada. She is accompanied by Mr. Donald Lemaire, senior vice-president and champion of official languages.

This morning as we begin our session we have a special guest from the Ukraine, Mr. Motrenko, the head of the main department for the civil service of Ukraine.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Motrenko, and welcome to your delegation.

They are here to learn more about our political process and the work in committees

Please feel free to attend and assist our meeting.

Without further ado, I would ask Ms. Barrados to make her opening statement.

Then we'll go on to committee business. There have been two substantial meetings of the steering committee which we will tell you about and extremely interesting proposals for future business, including this morning's, but also regarding certain procedures.

Without further ado, I'll ask you, the President of the Public Service Commission, to make your opening statement, and then we'll continue on with committee members.

[Maria Barrados, President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to appear before your committee.

I am here to discuss the work of the Public Service Commission under the Official Languages Act.

I am accompanied this morning by Donald Lemaire, Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, who also serves as the official languages champion at the PSC.

The PSC is an independent agency reporting to Parliament, mandated to safeguard the integrity of the public service staffing system and non-partisanship of the public service.

The PSC has been in existence for over 100 years, and is proud of its contribution to building a merit-based, non-partisan federal public service that is able to serve Canadians in both official languages.

We report annually to Parliament on our activities and results. Our 2009-2010 Annual Report was tabled on October 5. We appreciate the interest of parliamentarians in our work.

The PSC values the important work of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and we welcome his report, in particular his observations with regard to promoting official languages in our work and workplace.

Over the course of my public service career, I do not think that I have been associated with an organization as bilingual as the PSC. This is reflected in our high rating on participation as well as in our language of work.

I am also pleased that the commissioner has recognized the collaboration between the PSC and Université Sainte-Anne in a pilot project to develop a second-language training program. Their success led the Canada School of Public Service to implement a three-year pilot project on language training involving 10 universities across the country.

The commissioner has, however, pointed to shortcomings in some of our practices, such as improving our active offer of bilingual services and encouraging employees to write in the language of their choice.

I assured the commissioner of the PSC's commitment to fully comply with the Official Languages Act, and I have also informed him that we are developing a new action plan that will be implemented beginning in early 2011. This plan will complement the significant work that the PSC is doing to support the linguistic duality of the federal public service.

As defined in the Public Service Employment Act, merit establishes official language proficiency as an essential qualification for public service jobs. Our audits examining whether merit is met always include official languages as an essential element of the merit test.

PSC is responsible for developing instruments to test individuals' proficiency in their second official language. These skills are evaluated by English or French versions of the three second language evaluation tests.

The PSC has been renewing its suite of second language evaluation instruments. We introduced the new written expression test and the new oral proficiency test in 2008, and we released the new test of reading comprehension during the summer of 2010. These three modernized SLE instruments reflect the latest best practices in the field and will help to ensure that second language requirements for bilingual positions are assessed fairly, objectively, and consistently across all federal organizations subject to the PSEA.

The public service's official languages exclusion approval order permits exclusions from language requirements under specific conditions. In 2009-10, a small proportion of appointments—0.9%, or 265 employees—did not meet the language requirements of their positions upon appointment. These excluded appointments are entitled to receive language training and must meet the language requirements of their positions at the end of their exclusion period.

Under the order and the related regulations, the exclusion may be extended for up to four years in specified circumstances. This standing committee, in its 2005 report, “Bilingualism in Public Service of Canada”, noted that organizations do not always ensure that exclusion periods are extended as required by the order and the regulations, and that this order be used only in exceptional cases.

Since March 31, 2005, there has been a steady decrease in the number of cases that do not comply with the order or its regulations. There were 55 such cases by March 31, 2010, as compared with 69 and 320 for the two previous years. This reduction is attributable to the PSC's monitoring and its constant efforts to raise the awareness of organizations, and to increased vigilance by deputy heads.

Mr. Chairman, the promotion of Canada's linguistic duality is an essential aspect of all our activities. We look forward to continuing to work with parliamentarians, as well as the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, to ensure a professional, non-partisan, and representative public service that is able to serve Canadians in the official language of their choice.

Thank you. I would be happy now to respond to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Ms. Barrados.

Mr. Bélanger, go ahead, please.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Ms. Barrados and Mr. Lemaire.

I would like to ask you a few questions. I don't want to give you the impression I'm merely criticizing. You did get quite good marks, A, in some cases, and not quite as good in others. I congratulate you on the good marks you did get, and I will ask some questions on the not so good ones. I'm not just criticizing. This will also be helpful for other witnesses who will be appearing and whose marks were poor all down the line.

I'm going to read some passages from the evaluation by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages concerning development of the official language minority communities and promotion of linguistic duality, that is to say Part VII of the Official Languages Act. I'm citing the following two sentences from the evaluation:

However, it does not have a list of official language communities, nor is it clear that the PSC consults with these communities on a regular basis or understands their needs. While the PSC has undertaken initiatives that support Part VII of the Act, the initiatives do not appear to be coordinated or systemic.

That seems to suggest that you haven't had an action plan since 2007. Why is that the case?

[Maria Barrados]

There are two things. First of all, we have a deficiency, the fact that we don't have an updated plan. We are in the process of renewing the plan, and I now have a draft of it.

However, I have questions on Part VII of the Official Languages Act. I had a conversation with Mr. Fraser. It's not clear to me what the PSC can do. We operate in a special environment where powers are delegated. The PSC has the power to appoint someone, but that power is delegated to the deputy ministers who make the decision to appoint people. We clearly have obligations under the act, but it is not clear to me exactly what we can and must do. As I told Mr. Fraser, I'm ready to do it; that's not a problem for me. As we are a network that no longer operates directly within the public service, we have delegated that power. What we can do isn't clear.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Are you aware of the amendments that Parliament made to Part VII of the Official Languages Act in 2005?

[Maria Barrados]

Yes, I am. However, in view of the kind of obligations we have when we do most of our work within the public service but promote minority community events, it's not so clear in my mind.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I understand that the Public Service Commission has made arrangements with the Université Sainte-Anne, in Nova Scotia, for a program to encourage training for people who could eventually become public service employees and managers. I would dare believe that this kind of initiative, which could be considered a positive measure, would be highly consistent with a plan designed to act on Part VII of the Official Languages Act.

[Maria Barrados]

If that's consistent with our obligations, so much the better, because we are still in the process of doing that. In the case of the Université Sainte-Anne, Mr. Lemaire was responsible for that. We established that there were not enough qualified, bilingual people. We established the program at the Université Sainte-Anne. We are also working with the Canada School of Public Service; we support it in its efforts to ensure more instruction is provided in the universities. We do the language exams part to give people feedback on their language levels.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

My next question is for Mr. Lemaire. Don't you think that, if there were regular consultations with the official language communities, we would come up with ideas to adopt positive measures?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Lemaire, I'm going to ask you to hold on to your answer because we now have to go over to Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Lemaire, do you want to answer Mr. Bélanger's question, please? I'm making a pass right onto your stick, but I know you're a good goaltender.

[Donald Lemaire, Senior Vice-President and Champion of Official Languages, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you for your question.

First of all, I believe the commissioner's observation is very relevant. Our action has to take a slightly more proactive and targeted approach. When I worked on the agreement with Université Sainte-Anne—we also did it with Glendon College—that was also consistent with the approach of the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality. We also had funds to make the minority communities aware of employment opportunities with the federal government and of the importance and added value of being bilingual. We were much more active at that point.

Without wanting to find false administrative or other excuses, I believe the purpose of the discussions I'm currently having with Canadian Heritage, among others, is to determine what a more proactive approach to consulting the communities would be. It would enable us to see how we can respond to it, within our mandate, of course. We don't want to create expectations, in the sense that there are things that we can't intervene in. For example, we don't hire. Sometimes people ask us why we don't hire them. We have to be clear when we send our message and take action. One of my personal responsibilities as Official Languages Champion is to work in this area.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Lemaire.

Ms. Barrados, we met each other this morning, you other colleagues in the region, from all parties, and I to discuss the Public Service Commission and the situation in the National Capital Region as a whole.

I would like to know your opinion on one thing, and I don't know whether you have any influence on this. And that is unilingual English positions. I submitted a document to you this morning that states that there are 6,984 unilingual English positions on the Ontario side and 1,348 unilingual French positions on the Quebec side. That represents 80% in Ontario and 19% in Quebec. These are two societies that are roughly equivalent from a demographic standpoint, are they not, even though I acknowledge that there are more people in Ontario. The federal capital includes both banks of the Ottawa River. How can those percentages be explained?

[Maria Barrados]

As I said this morning, I'm going to check the details of those figures. The PSC's objective is for the public service to reflect the population of the country from the standpoint of the official languages and the representation of the designated employment equity groups. If those figures are representative of the situation, I'm concerned. I want the situation to be representative. I'm committing to provide the committee with more information in the coming weeks to explain to it exactly what those figures mean.

For example, it is possible that those figures include students and casual employees. In my mind, you have to draw a distinction between short-term work and permanent positions in the public service.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

I forgot to mention one important factor. And that is the National Defence figures. This is a very particular department. The fact nevertheless remains that it is a department and it is in the region.

Furthermore, when we talk about Ontario and Quebec, are we talking about the Gatineau and Ottawa region, or about Quebec as a whole and Ontario as a whole? We review the figures from time to time. I know that there are 138,000 public servants in the National Capital Region and 522,000 in Canada. I'm talking about unilingual positions. How is it that anglophones are allowed to be so unilingual and francophones are not entitled to be that unilingual?

[Maria Barrados]

I'm going to check the figures. We'll draw a distinction between the National Capital Region and other regions of Ontario and Quebec. We'll get back to you with more information on this matter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Nadeau. I give you one point for your pass.

Mr. Godin, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our committee. I would like you to give us more details when you say you are going to examine the situation in the capital and in the Ontario and Quebec regions.

Let's talk about Service Canada. People who work for the public service can very often be in Calgary and serve the citizens of New Brunswick. They can be in Winnipeg and serve the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Following this decentralization at Service Canada, do you know where people work and what type of service they provide? The people in my constituency say that, if they press 1 on the telephone number pad, they get English. I don't know whether that's because of the number of people who speak English, but it looks as though, if they press 1, they are always served more quickly than if they press 2. It's hard to assess the degree of bilingualism in the office where the telephone rings. People wait for a long time. Have you conducted any studies on this matter?

[Maria Barrados]

No. That's more a question for the Commissioner of Official Languages, and that's what you can find in his report.

For our part, our obligation is to staff positions, and it's the people in the departments who must determine the level of bilingualism required for a position. In the public service, in the context of the obligations involved in staffing those positions in the departments, as I said, language requirements are among the essential prerequisites for merit review, as to whether an individual meets the obligations associated with those positions.

With regard to services, that's not my responsibility. However, we have an obligation to see that position-related requirements are met. And we do audits in that area.

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

For example, if a department needs a number of employees, it must first go through your office?

[Maria Barrados]

It's a delegated system. We have staffing powers and we direct policies and regulations, but in the context of a delegated system, we also have a support service for the departments. We have a computer system and major programs. We also have a help service.

In that context, I believe it is very important for the regional offices to be able to function in both languages in order to assist people in the other departments.

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

For example, we conducted a study on postsecondary education in which we said that the government should make its size and staffing needs known to students in order to encourage them to learn both official languages.

Have you conducted a study on that subject? You've no doubt read our report.

[Maria Barrados]

We have a lot of experience in that field. I can ask Donald to explain a little more because he was previously responsible for that service at the Commission.

We provide our assistance to the departments at job fairs. I have a lot of meetings with people at the universities, to whom I always explain that, if people want to have a career or reach a top position in the public service, they have an obligation to become bilingual, since it is a bilingual public service.

With regard to entry-level positions, there are a number of them among those that are bilingual.

I'll hand the floor over to Donald.

[Donald Lemaire]

Further to the pilot project with Université Sainte-Anne, I would add that the School of Public Service has developed a second-language encouragement and training program in cooperation with 10 universities. At the end of that program, we offer a second-language evaluation service to enable people to see whether they meet the requirements of the federal government's three different bilingualism levels.