It has to do with the culture. How do you change the culture? First of all, you change the culture by having those at the top lead by example. So we are first making an effort to conduct our meetings in a bilingual format, within our other committees, in other words, the executive council and the committees that I or an assistant deputy minister chairs.
That means that the meetings of the executive council or the policy committee that I chair, for instance, are conducted in both languages. Francophones speak French or English, and the same goes for anglophones. They are not reluctant, they use the language of their choice. Both languages are used. But that is not all. We use documents similar to decks. You are no doubt familiar with decks. They may be in English with a French translation, for example. In our department, we use a bilingual document, in other words, half English and half French. One page is in English, and the other is in French. We do that to try to promote the use of both languages.
But we realize that we cannot limit our efforts to the most senior levels of the department, even though it does send the right message. We also need to actively encourage employees at all levels to use the language of their choice.
How do we do that? We started down that path a few weeks ago, by asking our deputy ministers to spread the word that employees should communicate with us in the language of their choice, both orally and in writing.
The next step will be to ask our assistant deputy ministers to convey the exact same message to employees in their offices and to ask the director and director general to keep driving home the same message. We also need to find ways of measuring how effective that is.
What can we do to measure the effectiveness? A few things. Surveys are one way. No public service employee survey was conducted last year, but I think one will be done this year. It includes questions on the use of official languages. So that is one way.
The other way—and no decisions have been made yet, but it is under consideration—is the use of something called 360-degree feedback. It is an evaluation method where managers are assessed not only by their supervisors but also by their employees, so they, too, get a chance to give their feedback on the management style.
Obviously, with 360-degree feedback, protecting the anonymity of respondents and asking questions on the use of official languages will be key.