Official Languages Committee on Oct. 8th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Your time is up, Mr. Nadeau, but you will have the opportunity to come back.

Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank our guests. I am pleased to see you here today.

It is good to see that there was one complaint. I am going to carry on in the same vein as Mr. Nadeau. It is not that I want to pick on Air Canada—we all have the opportunity to do that here—but I must say that one single complaint compared to 130 against Air Canada, that is a huge difference. You do not have to respond to that, but you know what we think.

You say that the directors or the coordinators are bilingual.

[Paul Côté]

Yes.

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

The fact remains that these individuals are not everywhere in the train. Other employees serve the people, and we do not really know whether or not they are bilingual.

[Paul Côté]

All right, I will start over.

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

The train is quite long.

[Paul Côté]

I will start my explanation over.

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

In an emergency, the manager may not be in a good location in order to tell people to evacuate. That part is not clear.

[Paul Côté]

All right, I will try to clarify.

Up until 1985, the people hired to work for VIA Rail, namely to work on board trains, in stations or in telephone sales offices, did not have to speak both official languages. You could, for example, be hired to work in a train traveling between Montreal and Toronto as a unilingual English service attendant. If you knew somebody he could hire you; working for the railway was a great job.

That created all kinds of problems because we were never able to establish a minimum level of bilingual services and this was pointed out to us constantly by the Official Languages Commissioner. In 1985, we decided to implement a hiring policy requiring that, from now on, a bilingualism test would be administered and candidates had to have good knowledge of both official languages, English and French.

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

They hired people. I wonder if there are any people left who are not bilingual.

[Paul Côté]

Yes, there are. I could be an example. If I were unilingual English and had been hired in 1972, I could have come here and spoken to you in English only, unless I had taken language training and been successful. It is clear that there are people who began working in our organization, either at VIA Rail Canada or at CN, in 1972, in 1973 or in 1975, up until 1985, and who were hired under the former criteria.

As I said earlier, for reasons of equity, we could not fire these people because they were unilingual English. We developed, with the unions, training programs that would enable them to have access to higher-paying positions. However, they have to prove themselves. It is not enough to say, in French: "Bonjour, comment allez-vous". Some things must be said in a more sophisticated way, in a more detailed fashion.

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

I understand all of that, I can understand quickly. I was wondering if there were possibly still some people who are not bilingual.

[Paul Côté]

It is possible. What I said earlier is that, if a unilingual English person to whom you have spoken in French is serving you in a dinning room, the instructions are clear.

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

Personally, when it comes to a sandwich, that doesn't bother me. It's what happens in the case of an emergency. Someone may not be able to speak the other person's language.

[Paul Côté]

That may happen, but that is not what happened with this train.

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

That was not the case. This was an individual who was a little bit difficult. For example, at Air Canada, a man asks for a can of 7UP and is told: "I don't speak French". There are some people like that.

[Paul Côté]

It happens.

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

And when the individual arrives, the RCMP or the Ottawa Police is waiting for him. Remember Mr. Thibodeau's case. There are some people who are difficult.

In this particular case, you are telling us that the person was bilingual.

[Paul Côté]

We conducted interviews and we did a language check. The employee on board this train was bilingual, absolutely.

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

In a way it is sad that this occurred, because during an emergency—

[Paul Côté]

Are you referring to the problem?

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

I am saying that it is sad that the problem occurred and that the individual did not speak both languages.

[Paul Côté]

Yes, it is sad. Nevertheless, if a person whose first language is English finds him or herself in an emergency where there is clearly going to be stress, panic and agitation...

The locomotive was on fire. I don't know whether you saw the photos, but when it is nighttime—

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

So what has been done since then to try to rectify the situation? This could happen again.

[Paul Côté]

You know, Mr. Godin, this is all about human behaviour and conditioning, in the positive sense of the word. We have to remind people about their obligations. We have to strengthen the training programs and conduct crisis simulations, emergency simulations. We must always remind them that this is very important. We must always issue these reminders.

You know, human beings are what they are, and we are not machines. In a panicky situation, people sometimes behave in ways that are not foreseeable. Nevertheless, I can assure you that everybody was given a reminder. I said this in my opening statement. Press releases were issued and memos were sent to employees reminding them of their obligations in this area. I am here to tell you that we are absolutely sincere when we do this.