Official Languages Committee on May 12th, 2015

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

My second question has to do with Air Canada.

I read and re-read the French version of your report and I thought I did not understand it. I then read in English, and I understood quite well. As part of your audit, you made 12 recommendations to Air Canada.

The company has implemented only one of them. Can you tell me a little about the remaining 11 recommendations and the specific reasons why they have not been implemented? Was that too much to ask of Air Canada?

[Graham Fraser]

Air Canada has implemented recommendation 4, which asks it to “develop a new directive or policy that takes into account its structure and its realities, and and that covers all of its responsibilities as set forth under Part IV of the Official Languages Act”, namely services to the public.

The following are the recommendations that have been partially implemented. I will read them out.

Recommendation 2

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada ensure it has the necessary human and financial resources to implement Part IV of the Official Languages Act.

Recommendation 3

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada establish a new action plan on the effective implementation of Part IV....

Recommendation 5

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada take concrete and effective measures to raise awareness among managers, service directors, flight attendants, lead agents, and customer sales and service agents....

Recommendation 7

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that, when negotiations begin, Air Canada fully examine all collective agreements for the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada....

Recommendation 9

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada develop a strategy to ensure that flight attendants and customer sales and service agents understand the importance of bilingual greetings and that they make an active offer of services in both official languages on board aircraft and in airports where Air Canada....

Recommendation 12

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada institute structured monitoring mechanisms in order to ensure the availability and quality of services in both official languages in all its areas of activity, as well as those of Jazz, both inflight on designated bilingual routes and in airports....

The following are the recommendations that have not been implemented:

Recommendation 1

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada develop and implement an accountability framework for official languages....

Recommendation 6

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada include a section on implementing Part IV of the Official Languages Act in its mechanisms for evaluating the performance of senior managers....

Recommendation 8

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada carry out an analysis of its bilingual service signage in all service areas in which passengers circulate, and subsequently establish consistent standards....

Recommendation 10

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada thoroughly examine:

a) the number of bilingual service directors, flight attendants, lead agents, customer sales and service agents, and managers required to ensure that services of equal quality are provided in English and French...

b) the planning for the provision of bilingual services for all its activities, as well as the assignment of bilingual agents to various service areas....

Recommendation 11

The Commissioner of Official Languages recommends that Air Canada consult official language minority communities in order to take their specific needs into account....

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser.

Mr. Leung, you have the floor.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Merci, monsieur le président .

Thank you, witnesses.

My questions are directed at Mr. Fraser. One of the tasks of parliamentarians or government is to ensure that we maintain our global competitiveness into the 21st century and that we also position Canada in the best possible position to be competitive in the 21st century. For most immigrants who come to Canada for that, we would look at things like whether Canada offers the best educational institutions, especially in light of the past where the Jesuit institutions were some of the best.

We also look at whether Canada offers that economic prosperity that, probably a generation ago, the province of Quebec supplied, from the mining industry, the forestry industry, and also from manufacturing. But in today's world, we're looking globally and we need to be competitive. Can you comment on how maintaining that fluent, bilingual environment in Canada allows us the opportunity to address our competitiveness, especially in light of the fact that we also need to be addressing languages in Asia—Chinese, Japanese, Korean—and in Latin America, Spanish, and perhaps in Africa, where there are more than a few official languages.

Perhaps you can share your comments and thoughts with us on that.

[Graham Fraser]

My answer is twofold.

I recently read two studies on the economic advantages for Canada and New Brunswick in terms of bilingual nature, in terms of increased trade with francophone countries, and for New Brunswick in terms of the degree to which its ability to offer services in both languages has resulted in major economic advances measured not in millions but in billions. Not only for those who are bilingual, but also for those who are unilingual, it has become a service centre for call centres. That is because they have a bilingual workforce in which they have a sufficient number of bilingual employees who can do service calls in French, but also they hire unilingual English employees who serve the English clientele.

In terms of knowledge of other languages, other than Canada's two official languages, one of the things that I have observed is that knowledge of the other official language is often a stepping stone to learning third languages. Speaking anecdotally, giving examples of the friends of my children and the children of my friends, I can literally name for you young people who have gone to China and learned Chinese, who have worked on water projects in Vietnam and learned Vietnamese, who've taught English in Japan and learned Japanese, who've worked on development projects in Central America and learned Spanish, and expatriate musicians who are living in Berlin and have learned German. They all learned the other official language first.

Learning French is not a barrier for anglophones. Learning English for francophones is not a barrier to the rest of the world. It is a bridge to the rest of the world. There is one amazing thing I've learned from all those young people I have met over the years who have, in many cases, gone through immersion, or in the case of francophone Quebeckers have learned English often outside the classroom. It's that learning a second language at a young age demystifies language learning. It becomes, for a young person, fairly natural that if you find yourself in an environment where people are speaking another language, you set to work to learn how to communicate with the people around you. In terms of multinational corporations that have jobs and offices around the world, I have read that one of the values that Canadians bring to those positions is often language skill, and with that, a greater cultural sensitivity than is often true for the unilingual person.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fraser and Mr. Leung.

Ms. Day, go ahead.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would first like to welcome all of the witnesses.

Mr. Fraser, I know that you have been bombarded with some very interesting questions for the past few minutes. I will try not to be too abrupt or aggressive in asking my questions, but we do have a number of things to clarify.

If a person is an engineer and is going to go work in Germany, it's best if that person speaks German, even if he or she speaks a second language. The situation in Quebec is completely different from that in Canada. In Quebec, the anglophone minority represents between 13.5% and 14% of the population, while francophone minorities in Canada represent 6% of the population.

Moreover, 42% of francophones in Quebec speak English. The rate of bilingualism is close to 50%. Canada-wide, bilingualism is at just 6%. Some 87% of francophones outside Quebec are bilingual. I feel that we're comparing apples and oranges. The two situations are not on equal footing.

Is there a comparative study of the treatment of linguistic minorities outside Quebec and those in Quebec? Did you base the recommendations you made on a rigorous study?

[Graham Fraser]

I based my recommendations on a statistical study conducted and published by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It is a statistical profile of anglophone immigrants in Quebec. The numbers in that section of the report are from that statistical profile.

Personally, the number I found for bilingualism among Quebec francophones is actually 38%.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

That's from 2011.

[Graham Fraser]

Yes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

This is 2015.

[Graham Fraser]

Since there is no annual census, we have to use the numbers from the 2011 census.

It is clear that we live in a country with some asymmetry in terms of immigration from a linguistic and a resource perspective. Thanks to the Cullen-Couture agreement, which was negotiated with Quebec 35 years ago and has become the Canada-Quebec agreement relating to immigration and temporary admission of aliens, Quebec controls its immigration. I make no recommendations about the number of immigrants to Quebec. That is entirely up to the Government of Quebec.

My recommendation has to do with the federal department's responsibility. That's my mandate.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I would now like to talk about the express entry system.

When the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration appeared here on March 31, 2015, he said that there are 22,000 people in the express entry pool. Of those 22,000 people, just 200 are francophone, which amounts to 0.09% of the total. According to the preliminary data, do you believe that the express entry system is a good way to achieve the 4.4% target for francophone immigrants outside Quebec, which was established in 2013?

[Graham Fraser]

The numbers I've seen really concern me too. Programs that encouraged francophone immigration were terminated and replaced by express entry.

Given that express entry was implemented in January, it's too early to draw any final conclusions, but the numbers you mentioned are very troubling.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Minority francophone communities outside Quebec came up with recommendations to make it easier for francophone immigrants to join their communities, but those recommendations are not being acted upon.

For example, communities have recommended that Canada continue to participate in events in Tunis, Paris and Belgium to recruit francophones who could fill certain gaps and that the express entry questionnaire include a question about spoken language to find out if a person's first or second language spoken is French; that would be worth a few extra points. Francophone communities outside Quebec have made all kinds of recommendations.

What do you think is the best way to get Citizenship and Immigration to adopt those recommendations and set them up as goals?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Ms. Day.

Mr. Fraser, you have the floor.

[Graham Fraser]

I mentioned in the report that eliminating support for employers to participate in job fairs had a harmful effect on the recruitment of immigrants and employees to work for employers in anglophone communities. For one thing, the francophone significant benefit program was terminated. I can't talk about that because we have received complaints and are investigating.

I think there is a series of measures under consideration, and I do not doubt the minister's good faith when he says he is committed. He created a francophone immigration secretariat in his department, but what I'm interested in is results.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser. Thank you, Ms. Day. Thanks to everyone.

We will suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Order, please.

We are resuming the 42nd meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. In accordance with Standing Order 81, we will discuss and vote for or against the main estimates 2015-16, specifically vote 1 under "Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages", which was referred to the committee on February 24, 2015.

We're here with the Commissioner of Official Languages to discuss and to vote on the estimates for the amount of $18,556,100. The remaining $2,277,425 was previously approved by Parliament under statute.

We will begin by giving the Commissioner of Official Languages the floor for an opening statement.

[Graham Fraser]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable committee members.

Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to appear before you today to present the main estimates for the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

In addition to Madam Saikaley and Madam Donaghy, I am accompanied at this hearing by Mario Séguin, interim assistant commissioner in the corporate management branch, and Colette Lagacé, director of finance. I am expecting that they will answer all the hard questions.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Graham Fraser]

My office has a budget of $20.8 million to carry out its mandate during the 2015-16 fiscal year. This amount includes $13.556 million in salaries. Our workforce consists of 160 full-time equivalents.

In 2015-16, I will continue to encourage key decision makers to make linguistic duality an integral part of Canada's 150th anniversary celebrations in 2017. I will also take on a leadership role with other language ombudsmen to increase the promotion of linguistic duality in Canada.

For some time now, my office has recognized certain recurring issues of compliance with the Official Languages Act. ln 2015-16 my office will address this by investing in identifying solutions to these systemic problems. We will develop a strategy to address active offer and services of equal quality to the public in English and French. We will also prepare a report that will cover my office's accomplishments to improve compliance with the act, including our interventions before the courts, over the 10 years that I will have been Commissioner of Official Languages.

My office will continue its work to support the vitality of official language minority communities. Specifically, we will intervene with federal departments and other partners to follow up on the recommendations made in our report on francophone immigration and in my 2014-15 annual report.

We will monitor the implementation of the recommendations made in the study on the bilingual capacity of the superior court judiciary, and intervene as necessary. We will also work with key partners to develop an intervention strategy for early childhood development.

Finally, we will continue to manage change as we optimize our business processes while ensuring that employees in my office can continue to work productively in a safe and healthy environment. During the last year of my second mandate, my office will start preparing for a positive transition to my successor in 2016.

Our operations are divided into three program activities: protection of Canadians' language rights, promotion of linguistic duality, and internal services.

To protect the language rights of Canadians, my office investigates and resolves complaints, conducts audits, evaluates the performance of federal institutions and intervenes before the courts when appropriate. The expenditures planned for this activity in 2015-16 are $6.9 million.

We will focus on the following initiatives in response to our organizational priorities: continue to investigate all admissible complaints in the most efficient way possible with the resources that are available and reduce the number of complaints in our inventory. Internal restructuring will result in more efficient workload management and better follow-up of recommendations issued during investigations.

We will examine the provision of active offer and the delivery of services of equal quality to the public in English and French, and develop a strategy to address these issues in the long term.

I will report on my accomplishments as Commissioner of Official Languages and on the challenges and opportunities for the future. The report will include an assessment of 33 federal institutions that have received report cards over the past 10 years. The institutions' most recent report cards will be published in May 2016.

I will also appear before the Federal Court of Appeal in Canada (Commissioner of Official Languages) v. CBC/Radio-Canada to defend my concurrent jurisdiction in terms of applying part VII of the act to CBC/Radio-Canada's programming activities.

To promote Canadian linguistic duality, my office communicates regularly with parliamentarians, official language minority communities, federal institutions and the Canadian public. Expenditures linked to the promotion of linguistic duality account for $6.9 million.

My office will continue to focus on the following initiatives in response to our organizational priorities, while delivering on our expected results. We will work with key partners and decision makers to ensure that celebrations linked to the 150th anniversary of Confederation and the major sporting events that take place on our soil reflect Canada's linguistic duality.

Partners include Canadian Heritage, Sport Canada, the Toronto 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games Organizing Committee and the National Organizing Committee for the FIFA Women's World Cup.

We will continue to work with other language ombudsmen in Canada and host the second conference of the International Association of Language Commissioners in Ottawa.

We will also identify official languages issues related to early childhood development and intervene with federal departments and other partners to follow up on the recommendations in our report on francophone immigration, our 2014-15 annual report, our study on the bilingual capacity of the superior court judiciary, and our study on English-speaking seniors in Quebec.

We will deliver presentations at schools across the country to continue promoting linguistic duality as a Canadian value. We will also launch my office's new YouTube channel to raise awareness of Canadians' bilingualism and of their use of our two official languages.

Our third program activity allows my office to assemble resources that support the organization as a whole. Internal services include asset management, finance and human resources management. Essential to any organization, these services ensure that taxpayers' dollars are used efficiently and transparently. This activity has been allocated a budget of $6.9 million.

Internal services will focus on the following initiatives in 2015-16: explore opportunities to further streamline business processes, with possible areas of process review including staff arrival and departure, budget management, information management, and management and oversight; continue the transition from the Human Resource Information System to PeopleSoft; integrate government-approved case management software into our enterprise information management platform and introduce technology tools to help employees work more effectively as our needs evolve; and begin preparing briefing materials to support the transition to a new commissioner in 2016 and plan for the internal communications effort to inform staff of the upcoming change of leadership.

Like other federal organizations, we have been asked to streamline our operations while absorbing increasing costs. As our budget gets tighter and as our staff gets smaller through attrition, it will become even harder to continue meeting our performance standards and maintaining the public's confidence in our ability to fulfill our mandate.

Thank you for your attention. I would now like to take the remaining time to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser.

We will have 30 minutes for questions and comments.

We will being with Mr. Nicholls, then go to Mr. Gourde, and finish with Madame St-Denis.

Mr. Nicholls, go ahead.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Under subsection 78(3) of the Official Languages Act, you, the commissioner, have the authority to ask the court for “leave to intervene in any adjudicative proceedings relating to the status or use of English or French.” I would like to ask you a question specifically on the CBC/Radio-Canada Windsor case. How does your office fund its intervention in this case, and how does the CBC/Radio-Canada fund its appeal? Could you clarify this for the committee?

[Graham Fraser]

It's funded internally with our existing resources. We have a staff of lawyers who are excellent, who have developed a high degree of expertise in language law and a certain amount of hard-won experience intervening before the courts.

It is an honour and a pleasure to work with staff of such high quality and enormous commitment. It becomes simply a matter of how we manage the priorities within the legal affairs branch.