Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning to all the members of the committee. I am pleased to be here. I am the vice-president of Individual Learning at the Canada School of Public Service. I am here today with my colleague Mr. Sylvain Dufour, who is the Director General of the language training centre. I am also the school's official languages champion, which is a new position for me.
I will make a short, detailed presentation on our success with respect to the Official Languages Action Plan. On page 2, you will see that our objective today is to talk about our achievements, to give a summary of the number of people who have received training, and our budget.
On page 3, we set out the school's mandate. The school's mandate is to promote learning a second language. We are responsible for three key components: training offered to public servants only, language at work and services to the population, as well as statutory and non-statutory training.
We are also responsible for examinations and diagnostic testing, as well as for the designing and developing of language training products for the adults who come to the Canada School of Public Service.
In summary, the Canada School of Public Service administers language training based on policies set forth by our colleagues at the agency.
Page 4 shows the context, where you can see that there was a tremendous increase in requests for language training from the time the action plan was launched. In April 2004, the new directives had an impact on language training. The new deadlines for senior staff also resulted in an increase in demand for language training, as well as an increase in the hours of language training and the use of the CBC level.
On page 5, you can see that this has resulted in up to 100 new language training requests per month. In an effort to give you some context as well, language training requests were constantly increasing.
There was an additional requirement to improve overall products and services. At the time of the creation of the action plan for official languages, almost all of our materials were based on classroom materials that were very much paper products that were in binders--very much a very limited, formatted approach.
Turning now to the action plan itself, between 2003-04 and 2005-06 the school received $36.1 million under the action plan to meet the increasing needs we were seeing for language requirements, primarily to reduce the waiting lists. At that time we had an increased number of people who were waiting for language training based on the items that I had mentioned earlier--the change in terms of the executive training and the hours of training.
We also received money to streamline the tools to better serve our clients and to create new tools for language skills and maintenance. In 2006-07 we received an additional $12.4 million to deal with, again, the backlog and the potential demand.
In terms of the overall results, I'm pleased to say that after the four years, language training was provided to more than 2,179 public servants, close to 200 more than anticipated. Language training was also provided to 64 people with learning disabilities. As well, waiting lists for language training were reduced from close to 1,000 to less than 85.
Page 7 deals with the long-term benefits of investments in language training. I am very pleased to say that all of the paperwork and documents are now available in the form of very interactive products online. This gives us much more flexibility. It also gives us the opportunity of sharing our tools and skills across the country.
It allows us to customize our tools, and our reach, for people with learning requirements across the country.
The school used the funding to modernize its overall teaching methods. We've learned a lot, because of the action plan, in terms of how adults learn. We've put a great deal of emphasis on learning disabilities, on people who were not successful after trying many times in terms of learning the other official language. The funding allowed us to perfect some of these techniques as well.
We have 33 new tools online, and we've received excellent feedback from private sector and international organizations who are looking at language training techniques for adults.
In conclusion, more public servants have been trained than was planned, particularly public servants with learning disabilities.
The Action Plan for Official Languages funding allowed for more access to language training products.
As I mentioned, we have automated and digitized, and have many interactive tools that are now easily shareable across the country.
I do want to point out here that I was very pleased to learn, when I joined the School of Public Service, that our emphasis has changed from one-time, in-classroom learning French to actually providing people with the tools, the mechanisms, the networks, and the support so that when they come back into their offices and their places of work, they are able to maintain their language training. In the long run, this means that people have a culture--internally in their organization and in their private lives--where official languages play a key role. It's not a one-time classroom experience.
I also have to say that some of the success of our tools has also come to the attention of a number of universities, who are requesting the ability for us to partner and share some of these tools to ensure that the young people who are graduating from universities are coming out with certain language skills that allow them to be competitive.
I'd be very pleased to answer any of your questions.
I would be very pleased to answer your questions. Thank you.