Official Languages Committee on April 16th, 2013

[Graham Fraser]

The difficulty is generally related to legal points. A bill includes specific terms that mean something. I believe that one of the reasons why it is important for judges to be able to understand bills and acts is that they are not translated. They are in fact written in both official languages and it is often important to have a legal opinion on the difference between the two.

However, it is not a matter of translation or interpretation. It is a matter of legal interpretation.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

All right.

Under clause 3, the Governor in Council may, by order, add offices to the list established in section 2.

Do you believe that many other offices could be added? We believe that it is legislators and the House who should determine those offices. If we add this clause, could there be 500 offices within 10 years?

[Graham Fraser]

I do not believe so. This is related to the importance of the preamble. The preamble very clearly expresses the purpose of this bill. If the government wanted to ensure that all Canadian ambassadors were bilingual, it would need another bill.

However, the importance of the preamble stems from the fact that it determines the scope of this bill. It concerns only agents of Parliament and other public office holders appointed by the House of Commons.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

You admit that this gives the Governor in Council a power and indirectly strips the House of Commons of the power to make those appointments.

[Graham Fraser]

No, appointments of agents of Parliament are adopted in the House of Commons, but they are ratified by order of the Governor in Council.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser.

Thank you, Mr. Gourde.

Mr. Dion, go ahead, please.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to Mr. Fraser and all his associates.

I would like to return to the issue of potential amendments.

I entirely agree with you that deleting the preamble would strip the bill of an explanation that could be useful in interpreting the act, if it ever had to be interpreted, particularly before the courts.

I would like to try something. It will probably not go very far, but I am going to try it all the same. Perhaps we could do the opposite of what Mr. Gourde suggested and amend clause 4 to read "the individuals occupying the positions referred to in this Act shall be able to communicate with parliamentarians."

Why should we be so timid if we believe in bilingualism. Why not leave the door open to reinforcing bilingualism and making it more difficult to weaken bilingualism? That would also make it possible to amend clause 3 by providing that the Governor in Council may add offices but that it must go before Parliament if it wants to remove any. I think that is one way to show that this committee believes in bilingualism.

It has been suggested before us that it would perhaps be a good idea, for example, for the president of CBC/Radio-Canada and the chair of the CRTC to be required to be bilingual. I do not believe the government would go so far as to appoint someone who is not bilingual to CBC/Radio-Canada or the CRTC, but you never know because it has previously informed us that it is capable of doing some surprising things.

If we amended the bill in that manner, we would have even greater commitment to bilingualism. What do you think, commissioner?

[Graham Fraser]

I am entirely in favour of expanding the scope of bilingualism to include other people who play an important role in Canadian society. If you are asking me to limit or restrict bilingualism, you are speaking to the wrong person.

However, I see that the bill concerns agents of Parliament and two other Governor in Council appointees. I am prepared to come back and discuss other offices, but I understood that this bill concerned the persons appointed with the approval by resolution of the Senate, the House of Commons or both Houses. It is in that context that I support the bill—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

I am in favour of making it mandatory—

[Graham Fraser]

—without limiting my support to bilingualism for the other positions that you named.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Deputy ministers should be bilingual, although I know some who are not. I do not see why we would not be more demanding, as deputy ministers are not appointed by Parliament.

Clause 4 reads as follows:

In the event of the absence or incapacity of the incumbent of any of the offices listed in section 2 or vacancy in any of these offices, the person appointed in the interim must meet the requirements set out in section 2.

Here we are talking about interim appointees. Do you support this clause or do you think we should be more flexible and agree to have unilingual agents of Parliament for months, for a limited period of time?

[Graham Fraser]

I believe the key question is whether we are talking about an essential skill. Let me give you an example.

Imagine the position of a chair of a tribunal where one of the hiring criteria is that that individual be a lawyer. I find it hard to see how one could appoint an interim chair who is not a lawyer. I find it hard to imagine how anyone could say this is not serious because that individual is only an interim chair. If it is essential for the chair to be a lawyer, then his or her replacement must be one as well. Similarly, if the role of agent of Parliament is such that it is essential that that person understand and communicate with parliamentarians and the public in both official languages, then that must apply to the person who replaces that individual. That was the case, for example, when Sheila Fraser left her position as Auditor General and was replaced.

The people who work for agents of Parliament are generally public servants. They occupy positions in which bilingualism is essential. Consequently, it is highly unusual in real life to appoint on an interim basis a person who does not have that ability.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

You do not feel there is any basis for the fear that it might not be possible to find one right away, which therefore means it would be necessary to have a safety valve in the bill.

[Graham Fraser]

No.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

That is good to know, commissioner.

I have asked all my questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Dion.

Mr. Trottier now has the floor.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing once again, commissioner.

I wanted to continue by addressing a concern of the Canadian Association of the Deaf. As Mr. Gourde said, a letter from the association was circulated to the committee. I am going to cite a passage from it expressing the association's concern about the word "interpreter". It states:The use of the term "interpreter" in this context is a major concern for Canada's 3.5 million deaf and hard of hearing people. It is a term specific to our access to sign language interpreters (for deaf people) and oral interpreters (for hard of hearing people).

I will be brief, Mr. Chair. Traditionally, the federal government has used the term "translator" in referring to the rendering of English into French and vice versa, while the term "interpreter" refers to the rendering of spoken English or French into sign language (American Sign Language or Langue des signes québécoise) and vice versa.

Do you agree with the federal government's use of the term "translation" rather than the term "interpretation"?

[Graham Fraser]

With all due respect to the Canadian Association of the Deaf, the term the Translation Bureau uses for sign language is in fact "visual interpretation".

If you go to the Interpretation and Parliamentary Translation Services website, you will see that it uses the word "translation" for the translation of written documents and the word "interpretation" for simultaneous interpretation. For example, the people interpreting my remarks in the booths behind you are interpreters, not translators.

I believe the term "visual interpreter" is used for the people who visually interpret the remarks of members and witnesses before Parliament in American Sign Language. Incidentally, the visual interpreters do exemplary and outstanding work.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

All right.

Let us consider the definition of bilingualism. We on this committee agree that agents of Parliament and other officials must be bilingual.

Is it normal to use the expression "without an interpreter" throughout government? In your experience, Mr. Fraser, are there other ways to express or define a level of bilingualism?

[Graham Fraser]

First, that expression is in the Official Languages Act. It is useful to have a kind of consistency from one act to the next. In addition, what I consider useful in this definition is that it is very general. It does not go into detail.

The nature of bilingualism is such that, according to specialists who have studied the matter, some people have a dominant language in one field, but another dominant language in another field. In the situation of our agents of Parliament, we should not be concerned about the ease with which an individual talks about sports in his or her second language, but rather the ease with which that person discusses his or her mandate as an agent of Parliament.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Galipeau, do you have any questions? No.

Mr. Chisu. Go ahead.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question regarding the preamble. We heard a lot of discussion about the preamble in this legislation. In my opinion—and I am not a lawyer; I am an engineer—there are many motherhood statements that are already provided in other legislation. Why do we need to use the preamble to explain something that is evident? Why are we not going right away to the subject and concentrating on the things we hope to achieve, the things we would like to achieve?

I am asking this question because I see that the legislation can work without the preamble and I think it is already provided in other pieces of legislation that are very clear. Do we need more clarity? For what purpose?

[Graham Fraser]

I am not a lawyer either, so at one point I will ask Madame Tremblay to comment on the role that preambles play. But I am a former journalist, and when I was a journalist I found it very useful to have a preamble for a piece of legislation to explain in simple, direct sentences what the purpose of the legislation was.

Often you would have a piece of legislation.... In this case the clauses are fairly simple, but if there are amendments, there can be a whole list in the piece of legislation saying that section 41 of this legislation is amended in the following way, and section 68 of another piece of legislation is amended in the following way. In simply reading the legislation, it is very difficult to understand sometimes what the purpose is. This is not the case in this piece of legislation.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

This is what I am asking.