In light of what I said earlier, none of 16 departments showed that public servants felt comfortable writing in French to their supervisors. Only three in 16 feel comfortable being supervised in French by their supervisors.
There is enormous pressure. I'm familiar with the case of a person very close to me who stopped writing documents in French because that was frowned upon in one department, the Department of Canadian Heritage—with all the affection I have for it. It is supposed to be the model for the defence of the French fact in the departments. And that person no longer writes in French because people look at that person askance.
How do you at the Public Service Commission go about telling these highly placed people, perhaps at your meetings with all the deputy ministers, that these kinds of situations are unacceptable?
Here's a final example. The new director of the St. Lawrence Seaway, a bilingual English Quebecker, arrived in Cornwall, Ontario, in November and addressed a group of Franco-Ontarians, and they answered him in English, only because they're used to responding in English and things go more quickly in that language. And yet they all have a right to speak French. That, for me, is the reality of the public service for all francophones, from the moment you move away from a location that has a critical mass of francophones.
What's being done? Where are we headed so that you can tell people, when they enter the public service, that they have a right, that they maintain their right, and to the top bosses, not to put undue pressure on people who want to maintain their right?