Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable members of Parliament, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My name is Louise McEvoy and I am the General Manager of Languages and Diversity at Air Canada. I am joined today by my colleagues Joseph Galimberti, Director of Government Relations, and Louise-Hélène Sénécal, Assistant General Counsel.
On a personal note, let me tell you I am always pleased to speak about my company's initiatives and successes in matters of official languages. Today will be my last appearance before this committee and I will be retiring soon, after 30 years at Air Canada, most of which were dedicated to language matters.
We received an invitation to appear today on the topic of "Compliance with the Official Languages Act". We will address that vast agenda by looking at our service delivery, at our Olympic success, and at some challenges we are faced with. We will also address questions raised during the Commissioner of Official Languages' appearance before the committee on March 30.
As stated in our October 2009 appearance, offering our customers service in the official language of their choice is a fundamental priority for Air Canada.
An active offer of service is presented to employees on day one of training. We present them now with our new Hello Bonjour video, which some of you may have seen, as it was prepared last fall and sent to the committee at the beginning of this year. New front-line employees, whether or not they are qualified in the language, are also given, as part of their initial training, a French class on how to offer service in French. Year after year we continue to invest considerable financial and human resources and programs intended to enhance the bilingual capacity of our front-line staff, in spite of the challenges this represents.
Challenges start at recruiting. There are just not enough bilingual candidates interested in a career in air transportation in the Canadian market. Again, this past month we were faced with this difficulty when recruiting airport agents. For the month of March alone, when we recruited temporary summer staff in Toronto, our applicants database showed that 200 out of 800 candidates declared, on their application, being fluent in both official languages. Of those 200, only 17 successfully passed the test.
Many candidates have told us they attended French immersion for the duration of their elementary and secondary schooling but have not had any opportunity since then to use the language. Even if they have been away from school for only a couple of years, their language skills have started to decrease to the point of their being unable to hold a simple conversation.
Fortunately, when recruiting flight attendants for our Toronto base, where our needs are, we are still able to hire bilingual candidates from the province of Quebec. But the reality of airport agent positions, mostly part-time, does not allow for this type of relocation.
Air Canada is considered an attractive employer for anyone interested in a job in the aviation sector; this is why there is no need to advertise job openings other than on our corporate website to attract suitable candidates for most vacancies. By exception, however, we advertise in targeted media to attract bilingual candidates. An attachment describes the various media our recruitment agency targeted in our last campaign for airport agents' positions.
Another challenge is lack of practice. In the Canadian context, languages are very different from any other job skill—once you have hired a person with French as a second or foreign language, or have initially trained your staff to learn that language, you need to continually train them so that they can maintain that skill—which we do. The reality at Air Canada is that over 7,000 flight attendants and airport agents communicate with, on average, 1 French-speaking passenger out of 100. Hence the need to retest our staff on a regular (two-year) basis to ensure that they have managed to maintain their proficiency, and to offer maintenance of skill classes year-round.
As an illustration, our linguistic activities in 2009 included over 2,000 language tests. More than 1,000 employees attended language training from coast to coast to maintain their qualification in French. We are especially proud in 2009 to have held, on company time, 4 beginner classes of flight attendants and airport agents, improving the proficiency of 37 front-line employees.
All the non-bilingual airport agents from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto took the "Un moment s'il vous plaît" classes, in order to learn tips and vocabulary on properly dealing with a francophone customer.
Another important challenge we continue to face is very low bilingual capacity in some of our airports and in-flight bases. For the past 10 years, since the merger with Canadian Airlines, there has been only seasonal hiring at airports, leaving the proportion of bilingualism at exactly the same level as when bilingual seasonal staff has left.
At the end of March 2010, the following numbers reflect that challenge. At airports, 25% of the staff coast to coast is bilingual (with 668 bilingual employees for a staff of 2,667 total). Bilingual capacity is especially low out west. In our flight attendant group, 47% of the staff is bilingual (with 2,689 bilingual employees for a staff of 5,712 total). Despite that relatively low percentage, we are still able to ensure that each flight takes off with at least one bilingual flight attendant on board, regardless of whether there is significant demand or not.
We are aware that the solution resides in increasing the number of bilingual front-line employees, but our reality is that hiring permanent staff is currently (and for the last 10 years) being reduced to zero at airports.
Since our last appearance before this committee, an event important both for Canada and for Air Canada took place: the Winter Olympics and the Paralympics. Air Canada was the official airline and a proud partner in the event, supporting official languages as a sponsor of the Place de la Francophonie on Granville Island. Our performance on all fronts, including the availability of service in both official languages for all passengers attending the games, is a source of pride for Air Canada.
Air Canada allocated $1.5 million of its Olympic preparedness budget and a dedicated team of professionals to ensure that the increase in demand for French would be transparent to customers during the games. This involved 100 volunteers literally moving to Vancouver for two months. Their objective was to support their Vancouver colleagues in dealing with the increased demand for service. Red-jacketed volunteers with “Français” identification were located all over the airport and at off-site check-in locations.
Not only did we receive absolutely no complaints regarding language of service during the games, but we had many customers who praised the presence of this bilingual support staff, which enhanced the level of service. Mr. Abdou Diouf, Secretary-General of l'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, was one of many who told us they were delighted with the level of service in French at the airport.
Having spent much time at the Vancouver airport since the beginning of the year, I could not help noticing that the other tenants of the airport faced the same challenges we faced day after day. I noticed that every shop and restaurant had a little English/Français sticker well in place, and I decided to test their proficiency. I finally gave up asking for service in French after a few days. The challenge in Vancouver is such that they are just unable to comply.
When Mr. Graham Fraser appeared before this committee on March 30, clarification was sought on the relationship between Air Canada and its former subsidiaries. My colleague, counsellor Louise-Hélène Sénécal will update the committee members on the subject.
