Official Languages Committee on March 1st, 2007

[Graham Fraser]

It's difficult to say to the extent that one very clear recommendation was that it was essential for bilingual positions to be filled by bilingual individuals. We cannot assess the success of a plan in advance and we cannot ensure that everything has already been accomplished, but neither can we wait five years to ensure that this is being done.

Renald, do you have any additional comments?

[Renald Dussault, Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Assurance Branch, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages]

I would like to add that we have procedures in place to follow up on our recommendations, be they investigation reports or audit reports, and more recently, with our audit or the latest investigation reports submitted, the follow-ups remain to be done.

This fall, we will begin one of our follow-ups and, next year, we plan to follow up on our recommendations regarding the audit report. There is a rigorous follow-up. When we do this kind of follow-up, we go over each recommendation made with the institution involved, and we see with the institution the follow-up given to each of our recommendations. So this remains to be done.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

So, if I understand correctly, at this time, what the government is saying, in other words that it followed your recommendations, has not yet been corroborated. We will need to assess whether these recommendations have really been followed. In fact, you may be able to tell us in a year.

[Graham Fraser]

I hope so, in the sense that the minister is saying that things were working better and that they were very aware of the problems with the current system. In passing, the figures are very telling here. But we are not yet able to say whether the new system will fix these problems. We will verify what is happening on the ground. If we continue to have a system where unilingual officers fill bilingual positions, this new approach will be yet another failure. We cannot assess the success of a plan by looking at the plan. We have to see whether it works in reality.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I want to make a comment. Do you feel that this new policy is a kind of attempt to assimilate francophones in the armed forces?

[Graham Fraser]

For decades, we had proof that there was pressure to assimilate with the transfer of francophone families to bases where the support services for those families were almost non-existent. I don't know whether this new approach will change existing trends.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you, Mrs. Mourani.

We will now ask Mr. Godin to be the third questioner.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I want to thank the commissioner for coming.

The first time you appeared, I was not here, but I am pleased to meet you today, you and the members of your team. You are servants of Parliament and the guardians of the Official Languages Act.

I liked the way you talked about the official languages. I think that you take this seriously. In your book Sorry, I Don't Speak French, you wrote about this. It is very telling. The words “I don't speak French” make me think of the Canadian Forces.

You said that you found the universal approach to be interesting. It is somewhat like a vision. Based on that vision, we are losing ground. At least, that is how I see it. The functional approach is about respecting the act. If people aren't satisfied, they change the act. It is as simple as that.

I am not an expert, but I think I know that the highest-ranking officers at National Defence have to be bilingual whereas the lower ranks don't have to be. It's almost like telling young people that they don't need to worry, that they can go to school, that they won't have to learn both official languages. The implication is that bilingualism is not important, that now that they have enrolled in the Canadian Forces, that no one has the time to do anything for them anymore so they'll find them a little spot here or there.

Mr. Commissioner, it's unfortunate that the former Liberal government closed the Saint-Jean military base. We must not forget this. Sometimes, people don't speak bluntly. We use words like “formerly” for example. The fact remains that the Liberals didn't help us.

Now that I have stated where things stand, how they stood in the past and the fact that we haven't made any progress, I want to talk about the 12 recommendations made by the Office of the Commissioner, which I have here. This week, the minister testified before the committee and she said, if I understand correctly, that 10 recommendations had been followed. So which two were not? Were they the most important ones?

[Graham Fraser]

I am not able to answer that. Renald or Gérard might be able to.

[Renald Dussault]

As we said at the end of the speech, what is important to us is to evaluate the results. We will conduct a detailed follow-up to our audit report. Based on that report, we will be able to...

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

You talk about results, but does the plan for these people include the 10 recommendations made by the office? That's what they are saying, right? Moreover, they claim that they consulted, as if the two parties sat down together and came to an agreement. That remains to be determined. Indeed, it did not happen like that. They read the recommendations and drafted their plan. When we asked the minister the question, she said that the exchanges had not taken place with Mr. Fraser but with Ms. Adam. If we need to have Ms. Adam appear on the matter, we will do so.

[Renald Dussault]

It's important to understand the process subsequent to an audit report. I will give you a general overview.

First of all, we do a preliminary report that is then submitted to the institution concerned. The institution prepares comments which are usually integrated as such into our audit report. The commissioner then issues a final audit report. Generally speaking, 18 months to 2 years later—and we are currently in this phase—we meet once again with the people from the institution and we look at the list of our recommendations and assess what type of follow-up has been done. As I said earlier, we have not yet completed this phase. It is very difficult to say—

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

But we have been told that 10 out of the 12 recommendations in this plan have been implemented.

[Renald Dussault]

As I said, we have not yet completed this part of our process.

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

I would like the commissioner to look into this issue and come back and tell us whether or not 10 out of the 12 recommendations have really been implemented. I would also like to know what two recommendations are not part of the plan.

[Renald Dussault]

As I said, this is exactly what the follow-up process to the audit report is all about: we examine one recommendation at a time.

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

Mr. Fraser, you said that five years was too long a time period. Personally, I find that 5 out of 400 years is not all that long. Let us say that our problem has been resolved within five years. I have been here for 10 years, and we have never stopped talking about it. I believe that the Department of National Defence has contravened the Official Languages Act more than any other department.

It has a mandate to defend our rights and to fight for rights and democracy in countries where it has got involved. And yet, it does not respect the Official Languages Act. These people are the defenders of our country, but they say that they are unable to respect the law.

I would like you to explain why a five-year period seems too long to you.

[Graham Fraser]

I am saying that it is too long and that I do not want to have to wait for five years until the program has been implemented before I can do an audit, a follow-up.

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

All right.

So it is not too long a time period with respect to the attainment of results; in your opinion, it's even too long with respect to the implementation of the program.

[Graham Fraser]

Let's talk about the recommendations. The commissioner recommended to the department that it communicate its vision, create an organizational culture based on the respect of language rights of all headquarters staff members, and require intermediate managers and supervisors at headquarters to take mandatory awareness sessions with respect to linguistic duality and language rights for staff members.

I don't want to have to wait five years before this is done. That is quite easy to determine.

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

I understand.

[Graham Fraser]

They either do it or they don't.

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

I understand that this is too long a time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Mr. Godin, I'm sorry, but your five minutes are up.