After what you just said, Ms. Forand, let me make a suggestion to Ms. Finley, the minister in charge of Service Canada and to whom you are accountable, and also to all my colleagues, the members of this committee.
For the federal election in 1993, I registered at an Elections Canada office in Saskatoon. Believe me, I went there and I registered in French. I was probably the only one to do that. I had just arrived in the province. No one who had greeted me spoke French. Then they sat me down at a desk with a telephone. The person in charge sat at another desk and called somewhere on her phone. Then my phone rang and I was able to register by telephone.
Just now, Mr. Gourde asked a question and Mr. Godin, Mr. Murphy and Ms. Boucher followed up on it. I know that you are not the one who drafted the policy that we are discussing, but I find it entirely unacceptable that someone could be received by Ms. Gaudreault, to use our previous example, and be told that she cannot possibly give him service in French even if she speaks French herself, and that he must go somewhere else, who knows how many kilometres away, simply because in her office things are done in English only.
An office being English or French is already a problem, because we are in Canada. The telephone service should be offered on site so that someone who has just arrived in the region could also fill out his form with help from an office employee. If the client cannot do this with a human being in front of him, he should be able to do it with the help of someone at the other end of a phone line who will do everything possible to make sure the client gets the service he is requesting. That can be an application for employment insurance, for a social insurance card or a passport, or any other service that Service Canada is supposed to provide. That is what we should do instead of telling the client to go back to his vehicle and to drive who knows how many kilometres to another office because the employees cannot serve him in his language on the spot. I hear people around me saying things like that.
Is it possible to offer this kind of service through a three-way telephone system? When I registered at the Elections Canada office, the supervisor, who was also on the telephone, did not understand French. I understand English but I wanted to be served in French. This is my right. If we do not use that right, we lose it; it's as simple as that. Assimilation being what it is, especially in predominantly anglophone regions like Saskatchewan—although it is also true in the Pontiac—if we do not use our French, we lose our rights. So the Service Canada employee translated my applications for the supervisor and vice versa. Everyone was happy. When the exercise was over, and it lasted for about 15 or 20 minutes, certainly less than an hour, I was registered with Elections Canada and I could vote in the 1993 elections.
Could you see developing that kind of mechanism instead of asking people to go to another office?
