Official Languages Committee on Nov. 30th, 2010

[Daniel J. Caron]

We'll do that.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

In 2010-2011, you will have to reduce your ongoing expenditures by $4.6 million. Your business plan states that Library and Archives Canada may not be able to carry out its main activities and discharge its obligations for lack of resources or budget.

What is your plan to reconcile those cuts with your official language responsibilities?

[Daniel J. Caron]

I don't believe that will affect official languages. To absorb the shock, I believe we simply have to find innovative ways of describing things, for example, and make greater use of information technologies in order to absorb those cuts.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

How do you explain the fact that the Commissioner of Official Languages gave you an overall mark of D, when your 2008 assessment under the Treasury Board Secretariat's Management Accountability Framework states that you are fully performing your linguistic obligations?

[Daniel J. Caron]

That sort of goes back to the question that Mr. Bélanger asked. There is one point that I perhaps didn't mention earlier. We will have to resolve that by communicating with the commissioner more. We have regional offices, but they are in fact document warehouses for the federal government. They thought they were offices where we offered services to citizens, but that's not the case. There's no active offer of service across the country. I believe that was misunderstood. That should be clarified. That's our fault. We will have to work with the commissioner more so he understands that role. Those offices, those warehouses are located across the country: Halifax, Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and in the west. They aren't open to the public and are used solely to store federal government documents.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

The Library of Parliament tells us that you intend to consider official languages "once all of [your] policies have been renewed". That's a poor management practice. Why not seize the opportunity to consider official languages in developing your policies?

[Daniel J. Caron]

We consider official languages at all times in our policy development.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gravelle.

We'll now go to the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Caron and Mr. Melanson.

We have an interesting situation at Library and Archives Canada. There's good news, but there's also bad news.

Mr. Caron, I'm going to read to you a little. Mr. Joncas from Francopresse says:

Note that, with regard to personal service, Library and Archives Canada is the only institution that had employees available to offer services in both official languages at all times.

Bravo! That's the good news. Then he says:

However, that same institution actively offered bilingual services in person on only 56% of the visits by the commissioner's representatives. By telephone, four out of 16 institutions were able to offer bilingual service at all times.

That's clearly the bad news.

Can you tell us in a few minutes the reasons for that deficiency and what specific measures your institution intends to take to improve its performance, particularly of course with regard to the active offer of bilingual services in person?

[Daniel J. Caron]

Yes. Our objective is obviously to reach 100%, as mentioned earlier. To do that, we're going to put the necessary measures in place, that is to say we're going to have people in the reference department who can function completely in both official languages, from a to z, not simply in the introduction, but in the service as a whole. We're going to take the necessary measures by reviewing our reference department, and therefore reviewing staff assigned—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I believe that's already the case, first of all. There's a difference, I believe.

[Daniel J. Caron]

Yes, I believe that's the case. It's somewhat what I was explaining earlier. We have moved a lot. We merged two reference departments: one department for published material and another for unpublished material, which led us to make a lot of changes and as a result of which that somewhat got away from us.

What we have to do now is to correct the situation. We have this new reference department which is unique and we must ensure that it offers services in both languages, in fact 100% of the time.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Caron, as you know, the Council of the Network of Departmental Official Languages Champions is equipped with a formal structure and a permanent secretariat. I think, as an exiting chair of the Council of the Network of Departmental Official Languages Champions, you made a presentation entitled “The Evolution of Official Languages” during an armchair discussion at the Canada School of Public Service on February 19, 2009. It's an interesting read, and I just have a couple of questions for you in this regard.

During your presentation you said the following:

...we must forget the old concept of “mandatory bilingualism” and continue to develop what I would call a “positively necessary and voluntarily adopted bilingualism.”

Can you tell us what you mean by this? What does this mean from exactly the point of view of the impact of this discussion on Library and Archives Canada?

You can take a couple of minutes here.

[Daniel J. Caron]

Absolutely.

What I meant and what I continue to believe is that over and above the obligations we have, we must carry a spirit of bilingualism within the institutions and within all federal institutions.

I made that speech also to the heads of federal agencies that, yes, there are some rules we need to follow, but we need to do more than that to make it lively and to make it possible also.

So it's to create a real spirit of bilingualism within the institutions; that's what we are after. It's more than being able to get a “B” or whatever. This is not the spirit we're looking for. We need to have a true bilingual institution that can serve Canadians in the language of their choice.

This is coming to me from my readings from the 18th century, which tell us about our founding principles. This is grounded in those founding principles of this nation.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

[Daniel J. Caron]

It's to understand--not only to be able to speak, but to understand--where it's coming from.

I don't want to go into the major historical speeches, but if we recall the exchanges between General Murray and the Lords of Trade, at the time, they demanded this bilingualism which consisted not only in speaking the language, but also in understanding what it meant, on both sides.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you for clarifying that.

I think I have a minute or a minute and a half left, and I want to revisit a line of questioning that had started earlier.

With regard to positive measures, we had a little trouble getting.... Again, I'm always going to the specific. What specific mechanisms ensure your accountability under part VII of the act? Can you give us some really concrete examples?

You mentioned a few, and I'd like to give you a chance to finish that.

[Daniel J. Caron]

There are two things we're going to do. We're going to do our own audit process, so mystery shoppers—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Will you be using the same kind of methodology that the commissioner used?

[Daniel J. Caron]

Exactly.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

He changed that this year, as we saw with the changed methodology and a more rigorous analysis on results rather than process.

[Daniel J. Caron]

Yes. We're going to do that to have a better sense of what the situation is.

As well, we were one of the first to have professional trainers to train our people in both official languages. It's a partnership with the Canada School of Public Service. On site, we have two professors to support our employees to become bilingual, in fact, and it's working quite well. We will pursue that to ensure that we're also supporting the employees to reach the right level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rickford.

For the second round, we're going to begin with the committee vice-chair.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I'm going to speak briefly to Mr. Caron, since Ms. Zarac has been kind enough to lend me some of the time allotted to her.

Your agency is one of the 17 or 18 that belong to the Department of Canadian Heritage. Is that correct? The heads of those agencies meet regularly, or perhaps once or twice a year.