All employees are bilingual. We have not hired anyone who did not speak both official languages since 1986. I was there then. I have worked for this company for 38 years. I started with CN in 1972. I have seen the way that this company, which at first did not give any priority to French, has evolved over time. I can attest to that. In 1985, I participated, with VIA Rail's executive committee, in the decision to hire only bilingual personnel from then on. This applies right across the country.
Recently, in the West, VIA Rail employees took us to court because we did not want to allow unilingual anglophone employees to have access to better paying jobs in order to improve their retirement. The issue was a services manager position on board trains in northern Manitoba. The problem is that this territory has not been designated bilingual. The employees said that, given those circumstances, we were not obliged to provide bilingual service, and that therefore they were entitled to apply for these positions. We refused and told them that that would jeopardize the safety of passengers. If the people on board this train had not been bilingual, in fact, the consequences would have been exactly the same as if the staff were unilingual.