Two occupational groups, for the most part exclusive to the Correctional Service of Canada, represent over half of all staff employed in the operational units across the country: the correctional officer group comprises 39% of staff, while another 16% of staff are in the welfare programs category, the group that includes parole and program officers who work in the institutions and in the community.
The remainder of the Correctional Service of Canada's workforce reflects the variety of other skills required to operate institutions and community parole offices, from health care professionals, to electricians, to food service staff, as well as staff providing corporate and administrative functions at the local, regional, and national levels.
All staff work together to ensure that the institutions operate in a secure and safe fashion and that offenders are properly supervised on release, with specialized initiatives and approaches for aboriginal offenders, women offenders, and offenders with mental health needs.
CSC also benefits from the contributions of over 9,000 volunteers active in our institutions and working with our community parole offices. Correctional Service of Canada volunteers are involved in activities ranging from one-time events to providing ongoing services to inmates and offenders in the community, including tutoring, social and cultural events, faith-based services, and substance abuse programming.
CSC also supports the involvement of volunteer citizen advisory committees at the local, regional, and national levels to provide citizen feedback on CSC policies and practices.
In relation to our official languages obligations, let me state from the outset that CSC is fully committed to having a public service that promotes Canada's linguistic duality, both nationally and at its nearly 200 points of service across the country. We take the 2009-10 results very seriously, and the decline in our overall rating, as well as most of the individual elements, was cause for great concern fore me as commissioner and for my entire executive committee, which is the leadership team for the organization.
Under my direction, we have already begun to look at ways we can improve our results and service to Canadians in a substantive way, as was intended by the legislation. For my part, this includes personally engaging Mr. Graham Fraser, the official languages commissioner, so we can work together to continuously move the yardsticks forward.
I'd like to note that this year in particular, CSC made significant efforts to improve the response of in-person active offers. Although our rating for part IV, “Service to the public”, regressed, the Commissioner of Official Languages did recognize our efforts in this regard in the 2009-10 report card. Since the release of the report card, we have undertaken a rigorous self-audit throughout the organization, as well as a daily verification through the staff in my office, to test our ability to actively offer services to the public in both official languages.
We are currently updating our action plan to fully integrate both official languages into our daily work practices to cover the period 2011-2014. The updated plan has a clear focus on enhanced communications, monitoring, regular reporting, and accountability. It will of course target key concerns identified by the official languages commissioner in the report card.
I'd like to provide you with some key examples of where we are placing our focus. The 2011-2014 action plan features two components. The first component addresses CSC's obligations under part IV, “Services to the Public”; part V, “Language of Work”; and part VI, “Participation of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians”, of the Official Languages Act.
The activities within this first component will be organized under the following three overarching themes: management and leadership, employee capacities, and service to the public. Of course, our main focus will be on increasing awareness of the Official Languages Act obligations for both managers and employees.
The second component addresses CSC's obligations under part VII of the act and will include action items to raise awareness, enhance consultation, communication, and coordination, and reinforce our accountabilities in light of the CALDECH decision. As you are aware, this is the Supreme Court decision that mandated that services to the public be of equal quality, and which all departments in the federal public service are required to implement. In short, Mr. Chair and committee members, I am not here today to dispute the findings of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Rather, I want to reiterate our commitment to continuous improvement. In fact, since the report card was released, we have been putting significant pressure on our weakest areas and we have realized some gains. Under my leadership, we will continue to do so.
CSC recognizes it has a long way to go before we can consider our performance as fully meeting the intent of the legislation. I welcome the findings of this report card so that CSC can better target its efforts and resources to making a significant difference in how we respect the linguistic duality of the country we live in and the people we serve.
Thank you again for the opportunity to discuss the report card's findings with you today, as well as highlighting some of our remedial actions. I would be happy to entertain any questions you may have for me at this time.
