Official Languages Committee on Oct. 20th, 2009

[Camille Therriault-Power]

That's what we intend to do. I think we will have 10 officers in Toronto.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

That's not enough.

[Camille Therriault-Power]

We already have bilingual staff on the ground.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

That's not enough.

If you have 43 officers in Vancouver, that's because you believe that many travellers will be arriving at that airport. But imagine what it will be like in Toronto. I'm not worried as far as Montreal is concerned. However, you only have 10 officers in Toronto for a service which will be offered 24 hours a day. It won't work.

[Camille Therriault-Power]

We already have several bilingual agents on the ground, and we are trying to add more staff.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

We need to know how many people will be on duty. I think we will need more than 43, even in Toronto. We will need more than in Vancouver because Lester B. Pearson International Airport is huge.

[Camille Therriault-Power]

In Vancouver, we will continue to provide on-site training to our officers, because, as you know, there are also quiet periods when no flights are coming in. When it's quiet, our on-site language training officers provide training to our Vancouver personnel. Further, we will add another 43 officers.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Very well, but there are other airports involved as well, Ms. Therriault-Power, and that's very worrisome. I'm referring to Toronto. Montreal certainly is a hub as well, but I'm not worried about Montreal because it already provides a bilingual service. We are all francophones and we are learning English. I don't know of anyone who was not been served in his or her language in Montreal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Ms. Guay.

We will now move on with Madame O'Neill-Gordon.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And welcome. It certainly is great to have you with us today.

It is obvious that the CBSA provides a high level of expectation for their officers in serving the crossing public. Coming from New Brunswick, a bilingual province, I realize the importance of this when crossing borders.

My question is this. When you are hiring staff now, or officers, do you hire them if they have only one language, or do they have to be bilingual?

[Camille Therriault-Power]

It depends on the region. Normally, we make every effort to recruit people who have the language capacity on recruitment. Training people is an expensive undertaking, obviously, as you can imagine. We're an operational organization, so if you're getting language training, you're not on the job. So when we recruit, we do.... But if for some reason we're not able to recruit a sufficient number of bilingual people, then we will look at recruiting on a non-imperative basis—that's what we like to call it in public service language—and train them. We offer language training.

Because we're such an operational organization and so geographically dispersed, we use a lot of online training. We also use models whereby trainers go to the work site and work with staff when there is not a lot of travelling public coming in. That appears to be the best approach.

We have two full-time language training officers at the Rigaud learning centre doing telephone tutoring for officers across the country as well.

So what we do is try to recruit meeting language requirements. If for some reason that's not a possibility due to the labour market, then we recruit unilingual people with a view to training in the bilingual regions.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

If a unilingual officer is on at the greeting spot, is there also a person available nearby who speaks another language?

[Camille Therriault-Power]

Yes. We work in a shift operation environment. It's the manager's objective to offer bilingual service on a 24-hour basis. When your bilingual officer or officers call in sick, what you need to do is make arrangements, either through another port of entry or by bringing in someone with bilingual capacity to work that shift, so that at all times there is a bilingual officer or officers available at the port of entry.

Some ports of entry are very small; they have a very small travelling public coming through. Others are huge, like Windsor and others or Lacolle at the end of a long weekend in Quebec. So we work very hard to have bilingual capacity available. Sometimes, as we've seen evidence of today, we fall down on the job. But it's our objective and we try very hard, through shift scheduling and managers knowing the language capability of staff, to ensure we have bilingual capacity on the shift at all times.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

As well, are French training and English training offered at the same time? If you go to university, sometimes you have a choice—the French course is offered in one semester and the English course is offered later. But in your case, are both courses offered around the same time or at the same time? This is in regard to the lady wanting to be served in French when she was in the English class.

[Camille Therriault-Power]

The answer is yes.

Like many government departments today, the agency faces a lot of financial pressures as well. And there's an enormous cost associated with quality language training. So what we try to do.... Taking a person away from a port of entry and into a formal classroom setting creates such a financial pressure for us that one could then excuse away our official language obligations, and that's not something we want to do. So we're trying to be very creative and use virtual and web approaches to learning and have a lot of online language training ability. We also bring language trainers to the site. And we do telephone tutoring as well as classroom training. Those are all the options we use.

I would say that in the province of Quebec the language profile of our positions is at the BBB level and has been for a long time. There's always, perhaps, more of a demand in Quebec for English language training, and we work very hard to meet that demand.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. O'Neill-Gordon.

We'll now move on to Monsieur Godin.

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

I will take two minutes of my time to speak about the point of order. With all due respect, Mr. Petit said that people would be served in only one language, that is, French. But that is not what the bill says. The bill says that francophones and anglophones will be able to address their employer in their mother tongue. There is no reference to customer service. There is a difference between those two things. I would like that to be clear, because Mr. Petit brought that up twice.

Mr. Petit, the bill refers to customer service in both official languages if that is what is requested. The bill also states that in the workplace, employees should be able to address their employers in the language of their choice. But these two situations must not be confused. I hope that this point will not be raised again at the next meeting.

You said earlier that in Toronto and British Columbia, you add staff. Are Toronto and Vancouver considered bilingual?

[Camille Therriault-Power]

I should have that information. I would prefer to check the facts before answering your question.

However, given the itineraries and our forecasts concerning the travel plans of people who will be coming to the Olympic Games, we know that there will be a great many visitors from francophone countries. We must thus be able to offer this service to travellers.

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

What concerns me is that the Olympic Games will eventually end. I didn't think that you had been invited here solely to talk about the Olympic Games. The important thing is to find out what happens, on a daily basis, in a country that is officially bilingual. It's a shame, but if I fly in from France, I can land at the Toronto or Montreal airport, but not at the Bathurst airport. We are a bilingual country, but in the case of people who land in Toronto from France, Africa or countries such as Sweden, what is our policy?

[Camille Therriault-Power]

For our travellers—

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

You're not telling me that you assign 46 people to Toronto just because an airplane is landing?

[Camille Therriault-Power]

We put up posters advertising bilingual service—

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

Yes, but a poster doesn't talk.

[Camille Therriault-Power]

No, but we have officers serving our customers who speak French. That is the case at each counter, in general.