Official Languages Committee on May 9th, 2013

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

You talk about the reluctance certain departments show. Does that happen often?

[Ghislaine Charlebois]

No. We usually have good cooperation from federal institutions. The 50% target was set because of the large number of backlogged files.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Can you tell us how many files are backlogged?

[Ghislaine Charlebois]

Currently, there are still about a hundred files that have not been processed after more than two years, and another hundred that go back from one to two years. The rest of the files go back less than one year.

Our objective is to have a reasonable inventory of files, one which would allow us to reach our service standards in 100% of cases, ideally. These standards are set at 175 business days for official investigations and 90 business days for facilitated resolution files.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

How many investigations are assigned to each investigator? Would having more investigators allow you to process files more quickly?

[Ghislaine Charlebois]

Earlier, we mentioned that we had done a review of A-base services a few years ago. One of the recommendations was precisely that we have additional temporary resources to help us to reduce the backlog. We are going to obtain these resources this year. We are going to hire people who—

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

How many?

[Ghislaine Charlebois]

We are going to add approximately five temporary resources. We hope that this will allow us to greatly reduce our backlog and reach our service targets next year. That way, rather than having a 50% target, we can set the bar somewhat higher.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I have a couple of questions, but first of all a couple of comments. Of course, France is Canada's fifth- or sixth-largest trading partner, I think. In fact France made one of the largest investments in Canada in Total, the oil and gas company that's located in my riding, I'm very proud to say. In my riding as well is the oldest francophone community in Alberta, Plamondon, which is full of francophones.

[Graham Fraser]

One of them is sitting one over from you, I think.

[An hon. member]

Not Plamondon.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Everybody wants to be my constituent. I'm not surprised.

One thing has been of interest to me. I've been trying to learn French for some time, and I've been here now almost nine years, nine years in June. I moved to Quebec, while I've been here, eight years ago. In fact, I like to say that I have the perfect life. I sleep in Quebec, work in Ontario, and pay taxes in Alberta. Conservative governments for generations have made sure I can do that and pay low taxes.

In fact, it's odd to believe, but I actually pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000 a year fewer taxes than some of my colleagues on both sides of the House here, just because I live in Alberta. I didn't want to depress anybody by saying that, but I do want to say that Alberta has a tax advantage there—

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

You're gloating, eh?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

—and some other provinces should consider it.

During my period of time in Quebec, I've been trying to learn French, and one thing I've noticed is that closed caption TV is something I utilize a lot. When I watch English programming I have closed captioning on, and when I watch French programming I have closed captioning on.

I've noticed that French closed captioning is not available when there's an English program on. So when somebody speaks on the news in English, for instance, I can catch 70% of the French words and I understand and I can put the story together if I get the pictures, but I notice that in fact the technology is there for two-closed-caption programming—I did some research on this. So if you have a program giving news in English, it could actually have closed captioning to have French and English, so you could follow in both languages.

I'm not sure if anything has ever been done in that area. I did a lot of research on it, and I discovered that it only costs programmers about $35 to have the extra closed caption programming on. So they could have dual closed captioning in English and French, and it could actually be required that programmers across Canada have that.

My question to you, because I couldn't find any empirical evidence proving my theory, is this. Have there been any studies to indicate whether or not, first of all, that would be a successful method by which people could learn the other language—which I think it would be? Secondly, could there be an advantage there for cultural exchange? Certainly, when I started to learn French, I understood more about my francophone colleagues. Frankly, I understood more about their position on the French language, on culture, on the different priorities they have compared to Albertans, and I wanted to do that before I could vote properly on anything here.

So Mr. Fraser, have you heard of something like this, and if so, what have the studies shown?

[Graham Fraser]

I'm intrigued by your comment and by the research you've done on this.

To the best of my knowledge, we have not done any research on this subject. The nearest thing I can think of, and it's not a direct comparison, is that Finland has the highest literacy rate in the OECD.

One explanation I have read for this is that in contrast with a lot of other European countries, they do not dub any of their English-language programs; they run subtitles. There is an incentive for young children who are watching their favourite programs to be able to understand the subtitles, and ultimately it helps them learn English as well. It's always amazing the degree of trilingualism among Scandinavians.

So I don't even have a formal reference for you, but that's one of the explanations I've seen for why Finland has the highest literacy rate in the OECD—their use of Finnish-language subtitles on English-language programming.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Has my conversation intrigued you enough to do additional research on this to find out whether or not the empirical data would substantiate my theory?

[Graham Fraser]

It's something that I will bring back and we will discuss, but I've learned not to make any spontaneous commitments involving our research resources before seeing what our commitments already are.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

You sound like you're more of a politician than a....

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Very good. Thank you.

Those are all my questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Madame Michaud.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to go back to the issue of the $120 million that was transferred to the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality. We in the NDP feel that the government's intentions in this regard are not always clear. I would like to be able to share your mild optimism, but unfortunately we see that there are 9% cuts to the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality, if one deducts the $120 million that was transferred.

I'm very anxious to see what use will be made of it, really. We are still waiting for Minister Kenney to appear before our committee. At that time we may be able to obtain clarifications on the situation, or at least we hope so.

To get back to your presentation, I wonder about the sum of $3.3 million that was added to pay for the cost of the move to Gatineau. According to the information we have, your budget had been increased, but you say that this is a loan.

Which item in the commissioner's budget will provide the reimbursement payments?

[Graham Fraser]

I think that they will come from the management services budget, but over a period of nine years.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Do you think this may hinder your investigation capacity or prevent you from doing your work?