Official Languages Committee on March 22nd, 2011

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning everyone.

To my knowledge, after the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the Foreign Office ceased to be responsible for foreign affairs in Canada. Canada became a sovereign state and created the department of foreign affairs.

Prior to that, Canada was a colony, a dominion. Then it became a sovereign state. Since 1931, then, a very anglophone culture has developed at the department of foreign affairs.

I am listening to you, Mr. Rosenberg. You just said you have taken action and have begun to make changes to move towards a culture where French and English are both respected. You have been on the job since June. Is DFAIT only now starting to realize that Canada is no longer a colony or dominion but a sovereign state, and that you are bound by the Official Languages Act?

[Morris Rosenberg]

We received an E, so we know we have weaknesses. But the report did acknowledge that we have also done a few things well.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Rosenberg, like anything else, you don't get on your kids' case when they are doing well. You received an E rating for language of work. In designated bilingual areas, 57% of your employees did not feel comfortable writing in French, and 67% did not feel comfortable speaking to their supervisor in French.

What are you going to do about that? Do your senior executives scowl when an employee gives them a document written in French because it takes them longer to understand the content or because it has to be translated? Does the content suffer in the translation, delaying the decision-making process?

That is what I have heard. I represent the federal riding with the most public servants in Canada. Believe me, the government is the big factory in our riding. We have more than 6,000 people working for the federal government on a full-time basis. Obviously, many of them are French-speaking. The riding of Gatineau is 92% francophone, in fact. And a number of those employees say that when they cross the bridge to go to work in Ottawa or when they come to Gatineau to go work in Hull, at Terrasses de la Chaudière, they switch from French to English because they no longer feel comfortable speaking in French.

What are you going to do to prove to me that, when we see you again in a year, we will be talking about how much better your rating is?

[Morris Rosenberg]

The best I can do is reiterate what I have already said. First of all, we will see where we are at in a year. Clearly, the fact that the government is accountable to Parliament is a key mechanism. That is the whole purpose of this committee's very existence. We will be back here next year to report on where things stand and to see whether there was a real improvement or not.

All I can do is repeat what I told your colleague. We are putting flexible measures in place, such as making sure that the department's senior managers take the lead on an ongoing basis and carrying out verification procedures to determine whether things are changing or not. We need tools so that we can respond appropriately by providing help as needed and educating people on the importance of their official languages obligations.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Since this is DFAIT's first evaluation, is this the first time in your department's history that you are realizing how important it is that your francophone employees are not satisfied and do not feel free to work in French in your organization?

[Morris Rosenberg]

It is hard for me to answer that. As I told you, I have not been at the department long, less than a year. This report is a big concern for me. I am talking to employees for their suggestions on how to improve the situation.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

So you are saying that it is thanks to you, Morris Rosenberg, that the department is starting to open its eyes to the importance of the French fact. In other words, the corporate memory is not adequate enough for you to know what was done before to ensure that francophones felt comfortable in your department.

[Morris Rosenberg]

That is not really what I said. The commissioner's report does nevertheless include some positive comments about the department's performance. But this is the first time the commissioner has ever done this kind of evaluation of DFAIT. And since this is the first time, we are examining the commissioner's findings with good faith. And that means we are going to strive for improvement in those areas where we fell short.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Nadeau.

We will move on to Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome.

Since you are the official languages champion, Ms. Dubé, I would like to know how long you have been at the department.

[Roxanne Dubé]

Since 1998, but in the role of official languages champion since September 2008.

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

Did you see this coming? These Ds and Cs are not very flattering. On the inspection of the Canadian consulate general in Guangzhou between March 22 and 25, the report said that the standards were not met in terms of providing service to clients in both official languages. What is happening in your department?

[Roxanne Dubé]

That question is for me?

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

Yes, as the champion.

[Roxanne Dubé]

Quite frankly, we were not expecting the official languages commissioner to give us that kind of rating.

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

You thought everything was fine?

[Roxanne Dubé]

No, I would not go that far, but we have an excellent working relationship with the commissioner's office. As Mr. Rosenberg mentioned in his report, the most important thing was program management. They noted a number of really good practices, especially the fact that we had an action plan—the one we talked about earlier—and that it had been in place for two years at the time of the commissioner's investigation. They also noted the awareness sessions we ran for staff, the monitoring mechanisms we established for the appointment of bilingual positions, the high level of cooperation we provided to the commissioner's office with respect to complaint management, the action plan we developed to address part VII, and the meetings we planned to hold with representatives of official language minority communities.

Keep in mind that 88% of the positions in the department are bilingual. That is a huge number of positions that need to be managed both abroad and at headquarters. Corporate culture dictates that we provide bilingual service in all of our missions. The mere fact that you were able to know that the mission in question had some deficiencies can be attributed to the fact that Ms. Bogdan makes certain to include an official languages performance evaluation in every one of her inspection reports. And now we are responding to that evaluation.

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

So 80% of your staff is bilingual?

[Roxanne Dubé]

I said that 88% of positions were bilingual.

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

But a position is filled by a person. Are those people bilingual? I see a position as basically a desk. I would like an answer to my question; it shouldn't be that hard to answer.

[Morris Rosenberg]

Yes, I am going to give you an answer.

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

I would think that if you create a bilingual position, you put a bilingual person in that position. So are 88% of the people in the department bilingual? Is that the answer?

[Morris Rosenberg]

I am going to give you some figures from September 30, 2010, because that is the most recent data we have. There were 1,177 Canadian employees working abroad. Of those, 85% met the requirements of the linguistic profile for their pool of positions, and 14.9% did not. The 14.9% was made up of non-imperative appointments, non-rotational single assignments of departmental employees and employees from other departments.

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

You are saying that 88% of positions are bilingual. When I asked you whether the people in those positions were bilingual, you checked your little document and listed off some figures. When you say bilingual positions, do you mean the same kind of bilingualism you come across at Air Canada, where you ask for orange juice and they bring you water? They are supposed to be bilingual positions, but once the employee has passed the exam, they are no longer able to do anything in the other language.