Official Languages Committee on May 2nd, 2016

[Graham Fraser]

No, that would be with your permission.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Fraser, before asking my question, I would like us to talk about the Official Languages Act of 1969. It changed the Canadian landscape. It was a memorable turning point. I know, as a Nova Scotia Acadian from a small Cape Breton community, that the French language was dying at that point. At home, both my parents spoke French, but I went to an English school, since there were no French schools. Today, 50 years after the adoption of the Official Languages Act, the situation has changed a great deal. But the act will no doubt have to be refined and revised to meet current needs.

I would like to hear your comments about Bill S-209, introduced by Madam Senator Chaput. In your opinion, what could the positive impacts of that bill be?

[Graham Fraser]

What impresses me the most about that bill is the idea of putting an end to using statistics to determine if a region will continue to obtain federal services in both official languages.

I have always thought that using percentages of the population to determine services and the rights of the minority meant that those services and those rights depended on the rate of growth of the majority rather than on the vitality of the minority. In that way, if the majority grows faster than the minority, the minority will eventually lose its services. Conversely, if in some maritime province communities, the majority leaves faster than the minority, obligations that were not there previously will appear, not because there has been a growth in demand, but because the majority left. I find it unbelievable that we apply such a system.

I think the bill suggests that we assess certain aspects of the vitality of the community. Are there schools, community centres, other minority institutions that would allow one to say that there is truly a community? In that way, we will not be able to say to minority communities that it is just too bad for them that their existing services will be abolished if they represent less than 5% of the community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you.

Mr. Nater, you have the floor for four minutes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I have two questions which I am going to ask one after the other.

Firstly, as you know, the Speaker of the Senate is not bilingual. Do you have an opinion, or concerns about that?

Secontly, the mandate letter of the Minister of Heritage Canada mentions that she has the responsibility to create or study an online tool to help Canadians learn the other official language or to improve their second language.

Since there are websites and online programs that allow people to improve their French or their English, do you think that is an appropriate use of resources?

[Graham Fraser]

I will start with the second question.

The federal government has often offered technological tools to the public. I am thinking for instance of Termium, a sort of dictionary which was developed by the federal government. For a long time, its access was limited to federal government users. But at the beginning of my mandate, eight or nine years ago, the government decided to give the population access to this tool. It felt that it would not cost any more to do that and that it did not contain any confidential data. And so an ordinary citizen, a student or a private sector translator can now have access to all of the terms it contains.

There have been other examples, rather unfortunate in my opinion, where the government has insisted that some of its tools remain within government. For instance, when Edmonton Public Schools wanted to assess immersion students, there was a pilot project that used the federal assessment system. After a change of speaker, Edmonton Public Schools were told that they could no longer use it, as its use was limited to public servants. And so Edmonton Public Schools now uses a system from France. I think that was a missed opportunity.

I know a series of teaching tools were developed by the Canada School of Public Service in the context of their learning plans. It is entirely reasonable to consider making those tools accessible to other Canadians. Is it a good use of resources to limit their access to public servants? Since Canadians paid for their creation, should they not have access to those tools?

As for the unilingual speaker, the Official Languages Act does not apply to parliamentarians. So I have no jurisdiction in this regard. However, I must say that I have always thought that bilingualism was an essential asset for leadership in public life. That is all I am going to say about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Commissioner.

We have very little time left. Mr. Choquette, could you make it a two-minute intervention?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Fraser, I am going to ask my questions and you can try to answer them as best you can.

My first question is about your audit of the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Earlier we spoke about vacant positions that were advertised and the fact that bilingualism was no longer mentioned. As the FCFA pointed out, among other things, there is no central authority to ensure that the Official Languages Act is correctly applied. For instance, your audit of the Treasury Board Secretariat revealed that there was no enforcement of the Official Languages Act. The FCFA suggests that there be a central authority.

The title of the minister no longer even mentions official languages. She said that she also had to take indigenous languages into consideration. They could have added “indigenous languages” rather than removing “official languages”.

Should there not be a central authority that monitors compliance with the Official Languages Act within all departments and organizations?

I will conclude by speaking about the Translation Bureau, about which you said a few words. In reply to a question on the Order Paper, Q-53, Ms. Judy Foote said to me that people had worked on this dossier, “including the Commissioner of Official Languages with whom the Translation Bureau worked to develop the tool”.

Could you rapidly respond to those two points?

[Graham Fraser]

I will begin with your second question. No, the office of the Commissioner of Official Languages did not work on that tool. We answered that like other sectors of the public service, we would be willing to use that tool when it was implemented.

It is true that we were asked to assess the tool. We replied that it would be inappropriate for us to do such an evaluation, because the office of the commissioner must preserve its independence in case it were to receive complaints about the tool.

As for the central authority, two measures were taken even before my arrival at the office. First, the responsibility of the Privy Council regarding official languages was transferred to Canadian Heritage, following a decentralization. Second, the Committee of Deputy Ministers responsible for Official Languages was changed and became the Committee of Assistant Deputy Ministers responsible for Official Languages, and they were given the possibility of delegating a substitute, such as a director or assistant director. Previously, the deputy ministers who were members of the committee could not be replaced by a substitute. Because of that, the committee lost some of its moral authority.

My reaction to the transfer of the responsibility for coordinating official languages from the Privy Council Office to Canadian Heritage comes from the fact that people generally will follow up more quickly on advice that comes from the office of their superior, rather than from a colleague in the next office. We have to be realistic. I also think that a committee made up exclusively of deputy ministers confers more importance to official languages than a committee made up of assistant deputy ministers who can be replaced by an underling.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

And is your recommendation to go back to the way things were before?

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Your speaking time is already up. Thank you, Mr. Choquette.

We are going to resume after a few minutes' break, but before concluding this first part, I want to get the approval of the members to reimburse the expenses of the people who travelled here to testify before our committee. The clerk has submitted $4,800 to be approved for that purpose.

Are the members of the committee in agreement?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Carried.

We are going to break for a few minutes before going on to the second part.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Please be seated.

We will begin the second hour of our meeting, during which we will study the main estimates 2016-2017, under the heading of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), we will examine vote 1 of the main estimates 2016-2017 of the Office of the Commissioner, referred to the committee on Tuesday, February 23, 2016.

Mr. Commissioner, you have the floor.

[Graham Fraser]

I did not prepare a statement to initiate this part of the discussion.

I would simply like to point out that Ms. Lagacé, our director of Finance and Procurement, agreed to interrupt her sick leave in order to be here to reply to all of the difficult questions. I want to thank her. Her doctor does not think she should be here, but as a very dedicated person, she insisted on being here for this meeting.

I also want to thank Mario Séguin, the acting assistant commissioner.

I will probably ask them to answer for me, rather than putting them in the situation where they would have to correct what I say.

We are ready to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much.

I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Lagacé. Thank you for coming to meet with us, under the circumstances.

We will immediately begin our question and comments period, unless you have something to say, Ms. Lagacé?

[Colette Lagacé, Director, Finance and Procurement, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages]

Perhaps I could answer the previous question.

I would like to add something to the words of the commissioner. It is true that we expect some additional financial constraints. The collective agreements have not yet been negotiated, and we don't know what the results will be. That is an additional financial constraint.

In addition, we receive requests for funding from other services such as the Canada School of Public Service. The Treasury Board Secretariat has also asked us to review expenses relating to travel and professional services.

The reduction of travel expenditures, for instance, will be a challenge. To my knowledge, our commissioner is the only one who has over the years travelled exclusively in economy class. In that way we were able to reduce the commissioner's travel expenses considerably. It is going to be a challenge to reduce them further, since we do not know whether the next commissioner will agree to travel economy class.

That is what I wanted to add.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Lagacé.

We will begin.

Mrs. Boucher, you have the floor, or is Mr. Généreux going to speak first?

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

We are going to share the speaking time we have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

You are going to share your speaking time?

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

You have six minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On page 2 of the document we received, we see that the 2016-2017 main estimates of the Office of the Commissioner were increased; they were increased by close to $60,000, as compared to the previous year.

We know that this budget was adopted by the current Liberal government. For six months Conservatives have been accused of having reduced this expenditure and cut that service, but in reality, this is continuing.

Mr. Fraser, what do you think of the fact that the government did not increase the official languages budget by more than that?

[Graham Fraser]

We made the decision not to ask for additional funding in this budgetary cycle. However, for the next cycle, we are preparing a request for Treasury Board for additional funding, for specific purposes. We are also preparing a long-term financial strategy to assess our needs.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

From what I understand, you did not insist that the government grant you a budget increase for the current year, the one which began on April 1.