Official Languages Committee on Dec. 7th, 2010

[Luc Portelance]

No, that's not it. The designation of the border crossings is based on four or five criteria.

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

That's funny: you have less trouble finding bilingual people to serve clients than to comply with the act.

[Luc Portelance]

We start with the designation of the position. Then we try to find people who meet the position profile. In Quebec—

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

Would you be embarrassed if there were only francophones at the Quebec border and if the Americans who came here understood nothing and we then took their horses away?

[Luc Portelance]

I don't understand the question, Mr. Chairman.

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

I'll try to ask it better. If there were only francophones who didn't understand English at the border crossings, that would be embarrassing for Canada, wouldn't it?

[Luc Portelance]

This is part of the way in which we designate the positions. Are they bilingual or not? It's the traffic, the kind of clientele and so on. There are criteria for each position; it's not Quebec as a whole if you ask—

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

I want to know whether there is really a willingness to comply with the act. I don't think there is.

[Luc Portelance]

For my part and for our part, yes, there is that willingness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Godin.

That completes our first hour with our witnesses.

I would like to thank you for coming to testify before the Standing Committee on Official Languages on linguistic duality and your agency's offer of bilingual service. As I mentioned, I would also like to thank you for your efforts to ensure Canadians' mobility. You know, I am a member for a border constituency. So that's very much appreciated by both workers and Quebeckers, in my case, who live on the other side. Thank you for the solutions you are putting in place for our fellow citizens.

Mrs. Zarac, go ahead, please.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Chairman, may we ask Mr. Portelance to send us his work plan once it is finished?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Is it possible to do that? Do you know when it will be ready?

[Luc Portelance]

As I told you, we're meeting with the executive committee on December 23. It should be ready in January. I would be pleased to send it to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much.

We'll suspend for a few minutes to prepare for the next witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

We will now resume the meeting.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(f), 2009-2010 Annual Report (Volume II) of the Commissioner of Official Languages referred to the committee on Tuesday, November 2, it is now our pleasure to hear from the representatives of the Department of Public Safety.

With us to day is Mr. William Victor Baker, Deputy Minister. Welcome, Mr. Baker.

He is accompanied by Mr. Denis Desharnais, Director General of Human Resources, and Mr. Daniel Sansfaçon, Director of the Policy Division.

Welcome to the committee.

Without further ado, I invite Mr. Baker to make his opening statement.

[William Victor Baker, Deputy Minister, Department of Public Safety]

Merci, monsieur le président.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to address you today on the findings of the annual report of the Commissioner of Official Languages for 2009-10.

Thank you for introducing my colleagues.

I understand that this is the first time Public Safety Canada has been assessed through the annual report exercise.

It is very useful for me to have this process and the report to essentially establish a base line in order to measure our future progress.

The report of the commissioner as well as the committee's comments will be useful and will be taken into account while implementing our action plan.

I welcome your interest and will be happy to take your questions.

I would like to take a brief moment to provide you with background information on Public Safety Canada and its mandate.

Our department was created seven years ago and has a clear mandate to help keep all Canadians safe and secure. To do so, the department provides strategic policy advice and support to the Minister of Public Safety on a range of issues, such as national security, emergency management, law enforcement, border management, corrections, and crime prevention.

Public Safety Canada also has a significant role in the delivery of programs. In fact, 65% of the department's budget is devoted to delivering grants and contributions related mostly to emergency preparedness and response through the disaster financial assistance arrangements program, with which I'm sure many of you are familiar. A smaller proportion goes to community safety.

To carry out our mandate, we have approximately 1,000 employees, of which 90% are located in the National Capital Region. Our regional employees are spread across the country in over 20 locations, with the majority of these offices designated bilingual for service to the public. Some offices have a staff that can vary from a couple of individuals to a dozen. However, the majority have less than five people; these are small offices.

The commissioner's report identifies four key conditions to make Public Safety and the public service as a whole a true bilingual workforce. The first is to ensure a clear understanding of the act on the part of the employees and the managers, and I think we still have a ways to go in this area. The second is strong leadership. The third is good planning. The fourth is adequate follow-up.

My management team and I will focus our efforts on these conditions with a view to improving our performance and ensuring better compliance with the Official Languages Act. More specifically, we will work to improve our level of service to the Canadian public by reminding employees of their obligations under the act and providing them with training and tools for providing service to the public.

We will encourage the use of official languages in our workplaces by continuing something that I'm not sure you've heard of before, our candygram activities. I'll give a brief explanation. For 50¢, you get a card with a candy, and you send it to someone with a note in your other official language.

All the money goes directly to our Government of Canada workplace charitable campaign.

We encourage the use of official languages in our workplaces by continuing to implement the next phase of the DARE/OSEZ campaign that we launched last year, the objective of which is to encourage employees to use their second official language, and by having continuous communications with our employees.

We support the vitality of official languages minority communities through our participation in the

Forum on Vulnerable Young Francophones in Minority Communities

and through putting additional efforts into the identification of, and consultation with, those communities.

The department will hold training sessions and provide tools to its employees to ensure that individuals who contact offices with bilingual service delivery obligations receive an active offer of service—and I appreciate that it's a continuing challenge, but we have to do better—in both official languages, and that they are informed unequivocally that they have the right to use English or French.

Public Safety Canada will ensure its internal procedures for communications with the public are applied systematically so that we can improve the speed of our e-mail responses to individuals and ensure that both linguistic communities receive an equal quality of service in their official language.

With respect to Part V of the act, we will do more to create an environment in which employees feel comfortable using their official language of choice in meetings, in e-mails and particularly when communicating with their supervisors. To that end, online tools are available to employees, information sessions will be offered to bring some clarity around the requirements of Part V of the act.

Perhaps more importantly, we must ensure that our policies and programs take into consideration the perspectives and needs of minority language communities. Consequently, training will be offered to our managers and employees, and an official languages component will be integrated into the evaluation of programs.

We're already moving ahead with strategies to improve and strengthen the use of both official languages, internally and externally. I am pleased that Commissioner Fraser noted in his report that these efforts are under way.

As the commissioner was publishing volume II of his annual report, the department was putting the final touches on its comprehensive three-year action plan to strengthen and improve our linguistic duality. That action plan is before you now.

We've since revised the plan to account for the commissioner's comments, and a new version of the plan, which I've shared with you, will be communicated to our employees in the coming days. This will clarify that we as a department strive in the area of official languages, and at the same time will engage employees in the process.

The action plan sets measurable goals and performance indicators that address all areas for improvement indicated in the commissioner's report. This should allow us to track our progress and help ensure that we are meeting our objectives.

Of note, the action plan addresses part VII of the act. It includes a review of our existing policies and programs for compliance with part VII to help ensure that we can better integrate the views of minority communities. I appreciate that this is an area that needs some considerable attention.

As well, Public Safety Canada is moving ahead to ensure that, in regions designated as bilingual for language-of-work purposes, the language profiles of all EX minus 1 positions with supervisory responsibilities are designated bilingual CBC/CBC.

I received a letter from the commissioner just two weeks ago in which he mentions his satisfaction with our institution's new initiative with respect to the language designation of EX minus 1 positions. I agree with him that it is a step in the right direction to ensure better compliance with the act.

In order to make the department a vibrant and bilingual workplace, senior management and I are taking every opportunity to promote the linguistic duality and the use of both official languages throughout the department.

Incidentally, this afternoon, I'm going to hold a general meeting with all our Public Safety employees and, on the agenda, we have a session on official languages to discuss our new action plan. I am very pleased that we have this opportunity to do so.

I'm proud to say that we have a very active official languages committee chaired by two dedicated co-champions, including one here today, Monsieur Sansfaçon. The committee is highly involved and works on many projects, such as the regular offering of informal group discussions, and it encourages employees to maintain and improve their skills in their second official language.

We offer in-house language maintenance courses to our employees, as do most departments and agencies, and we make continuous efforts to communicate the importance of official languages to our employees. This is something that I often do myself.

In conclusion, the commissioner's report has brought to light several issues that our department must correct. The latest correspondence from the commissioner congratulated our official languages team for the efforts under way, and I'm very pleased that Mr. Fraser is providing support to our efforts to make Public Safety Canada an organization of choice with regard to official languages and bilingualism.

I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that our official languages team has my full support and that we will take the necessary actions to address the issues raised. We have already begun this process by reprioritizing the objectives included in our action plan.

We're looking for ways to enhance and fast-track our efforts, particularly as they relate to part VII of the act. We are working to ensure that our employees across the country are actively serving Canadians in English and French, and we're reaching out to minority-language communities across Canada to provide them with equal access to the information and services they need.

We are committed to providing an environment in which all employees in regions designated as bilingual for language-of-work purposes can feel comfortable working in the official language of their choice.

Ultimately, I fully agree with the commissioner's view that leadership is at the centre of achieving success. I assure you that my management team and I are making every effort to make Public Safety Canada a truly vibrant bilingual institution of government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Baker.

Without any further delay, I will invite Mr. Murphy to open up the first round.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, deputy minister, and thanks to all the witnesses.

I have two questions of concern to me. First, with regard to your obligations under Part VII of the act, I want to make sure you are familiar with them. Could you tell me when you started developing the action plan and when it was completed?

Also, on page 2 of the action plan, with regard to Part VII, the last two entries are: "Consult official languages minority communities," and "Continue to identify our official language minority communities." I wonder what that means. How do you continue consulting those communities?

As you know, you have an obligation as a department under the act. First, could you tell me when you began developing this action plan and, even more important, how you consult the official language minority communities and how you are continuing discussions with them?

[William Victor Baker]

We began our effort to build our action plan in early 2010 and we finalized it in June. We discussed it around our management table. We also began implementing certain actions under the plan. With regard to your second question, one of our champions, Mr. Daniel Sansfaçon, has priority responsibility for Part VII. So I would like to ask him to say how we're going to go about acting with the communities.

[Daniel Sansfaçon, Director, Policy, Research and Evaluation Division, National Crime Prevention Centre and Official Languages Co-champion, Department of Public Safety]

First, we're very much aware at Public Safety Canada of the importance, and even the obligation, first to get to know better, and second to consult the official language minority communities.

To date, for example, at the National Crime Prevention Centre, we held an initial forum in 2009 in the context of a network that we formed with Justice Canada. It is called the Justice and Security Network, and its objective is to share best practices for improving knowledge of the francophone communities' needs. The deputy minister referred to the forum in his introduction. It is a forum that aimed to bring together approximately 25 organizations that work in Canada with young francophones in minority communities to try to better understand the nature of the needs that may currently arise there.

Following that first forum, we intend to conduct a slightly more in-depth field survey, with our partners, in particular with Justice Canada, in early 2011, in an attempt to more clearly ascertain the nature of the needs of young francophones in minority communities with regard, quite obviously, to public safety. For example, what are the risk factors that may arise in these populations to which we could respond more effectively.

So this is one of the tools with which we are trying to get to know better and consult the francophone communities, in particular. In addition, more broadly, we are also trying through our regional offices, our directors general at the National Crime Prevention Centre, to maintain constant relations with francophone organizations outside Quebec and anglophone organizations in Quebec in order to have working relations that enable them to get to know our programs better, particularly our funding programs, and eventually to be able to apply for funding as necessary.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.

I believe I have a few minutes left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

You have two minutes left, if you wish to use them.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

The second part of my questions concerns emergency situations. I suppose your department must get involved in flood cases, for example.

I suppose bilingual personnel are necessary in order to communicate with people from other provinces, that is from northern New Brunswick or Quebec, in emergency situations. Are you sure that you have enough people on the front line to respond to victims of emergencies and that those people can communicate in the language of the victims during those incidents? We have to be sure of that. Can you reassure us on that point, please?

[William Victor Baker]

Mr. Chairman, I'm convinced we have sufficient capacity in that respect. However, with regard to the way we respond to emergencies, responsibility does not fall to Public Safety Canada alone; that's a role that the provinces, territories and even the municipalities and small towns across the country must bear. It's also up to them to ensure that we are able to respond adequately from a linguistic standpoint. To my knowledge, having spent 14 months at Public Safety Canada, I can say that there are no problems in that regard.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.