Official Languages Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2017

[Carl Trottier]

That is not our role.

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

Thank you. That makes things clearer.

I touched on another matter earlier. When you were asked for the list of problematic institutions, you said you do not have it. My first reflex was to ask you why. You explained it briefly, but I did not really understand.

If you, at Treasury Board, receive evaluations or self-evaluations from problematic institutions, why is it that you do not have a list?

[Carl Trottier]

I tried to explain it to you earlier. This is quite a vast matrix that includes several departments and many questions. It happens that a department succeeds very well in some areas, and not very well in others. In addition, the questions are different.

How can I know that if one question is more important than another? There is no criterion that tells me that. How may I know if the reality of one department is more difficult than that of another? There is nothing to show that. There is no framework that would allow me to draw up a list. Unfortunately, that brings me back to my first observation, which was that this is not the context in which we were asked to work.

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

I see.

You sent us several dossiers and documents. Here is a list we received.

[Carl Trottier]

We gave you everything we had received.

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

Nevertheless, in certain cases, we need a code to open them. It's impossible to access some of those documents. Since we would like to consult those documents to do our work, it would be important that we be able to access them.

[Carl Trottier]

Of course.

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

However, that is not the case currently. We asked you for documents and you gave us files which we cannot open, and I find that somewhat frustrating. This means we cannot verify the data from those files.

There was another issue that bothered me, like...

[Carl Trottier]

I would like to reassure you by saying that in future we will send you documents that you can open.

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

Thank you.

Earlier, Mr. John Nater spoke about the letter we received, which contained a series of “yeses” and “nos”. I too would have liked to have an explanation. Under Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, it says “yes”, but what does that mean? Does it mean that the department is bilingual, that an indigenous language is spoken there, or that there is a kitchen in the building? What does the “yes” mean?

[Carl Trottier]

I already have trouble...

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

There are no explanations, no examples.

[Carl Trottier]

There is a question at the beginning.

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

Yes. It asks whether mechanisms are in place to ensure a follow-up, and so on, and then there is a choice between “yes” and “no”. Could some explanations not be provided?

[Carl Trottier]

The departments have to answer whether, yes or no, they have been doing what is set out in the question.

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

For instance, under Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, it says “yes”, but there are no explanations, no examples. So that department has mechanisms, but what is their scope? Do you have that information?

[Carsten Quell]

You are referring to part of the Management Accountability Framework, the MAF. What you are seeing is a screen capture. This is what the institutions give us, but it does not mean that they do not also provide additional comments once they have checked “yes” or “no”.

Under the MAF, we ask the institutions to keep their supporting documentation. The instructions on how to answer the questions are clear, that is to say that we accept “yes” and “no” answers, but of course, this has to be based on back-up data.

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

In that case, may we have the justification that came with the “yes” or “no”? The answer is “yes” for the Public Health Agency of Canada, but in what proportion, and why?

[Carl Trottier]

As Mr. Quell said, in certain cases the institutions provide more written information, and in other cases, they simply check “yes” to indicate that they are doing what is spelled out in the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Mr. Trottier.

Thank you, Ms. Boucher.

Allow me to intervene briefly to mention that the Official Languages Act is a quasi-constitutional act. I am gobsmacked to see that we are talking about self-assessment here with regard to a quasi-constitutional act.

I would like to direct the attention of the members of the committee to part VIII of the act, entitled “Responsibilities and Duties of Treasury Board in Relation to the Official Languages of Canada”, which reads as follows:

(2) In carrying out its responsibilities under subsection (1) the Treasury Board may [...] (c) issue directives to give effect to parts IV, V and VI; (d) monitor and audit federal institutions in respect of which it has responsibility for their compliance with policies and [...]

So there are some firm obligations. However, in paragraph (g), it says you may “delegate any of its powers under this section to the deputy heads”. This gives the impression that despite paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d), paragraph (g) suggests that Treasury Board will delegate its powers to deputy heads. However, I think the members of the committee would like you to be more active, and they want you to be the guard dog of official languages.

I now yield the floor to Mr. Arseneault.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Trottier and Mr. Quell. I thank you for your presence and your patience.

I'm sure you have cleverly detected some surprise and quasi-frustration on the part of the committee regarding what I might call, with all due respect, a certain laxness in the evaluation of what is going on with official languages in the various departments.

As everyone has said including the chair, it seems that self-assessment is delegated to deputy heads. You said that 200 different organizations do their self-assessment to see whether they are compliant with parts IV and V of the Official Languages Act. Did I understand that correctly?

[Carl Trottier]

Yes, approximately 200.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

That are registered?

[Carl Trottier]

Yes.

[Carsten Quell]

As indicated, there are various sources of information. For example, for those who meet the linguistic requirements of their position, the data do not derive from a self-assessment, but from our human resources system. That is a fact and not an answer to a question. The Secretariat of the Treasury Board has the database.