Official Languages Committee on March 23rd, 2017

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

To follow up on what my New Brunswick colleague said, your subcontractors have a responsibility, just as you do. In fact, there are several issues I would like to raise.

I will read a letter to you that was sent to the employees of Jazz, of which I received a copy. First of all, the letter is in English, which is a problem for francophones.

Moreover, the French version of the message says this: “Air Canada advised the CFAU [the union] that as of March 1, 2017, it must restore the levels of bilingual services that were in effect in 2006”.

Someone is in fact admitting that service clearly had diminished, and that the service that was offered previously had to be restored.

The message continues as follows: “This is due to complaints received [...]” and “As a result, you will notice an increase in routes [...]” and then “The union is in discussions with the company on the effects [...]”.

The subcontractor is thus admitting that the services being offered are at a lower level than those in 2006, and that they will have to go back up to the 2006 levels. In my opinion, there was clearly a lapse, and the negotiations are intended to allow you to reach that objective.

[David Rheault]

To answer your question, I want to describe the context in which that letter was sent to the Jazz employees. Pursuant to the regulations, high-demand routes were reviewed. In the course of that exercise carried out in 2015, we noticed that certain routes no longer met the 5% level of users the law prescribes to require a carrier to provide service in French.

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

I see.

[David Rheault]

In November 2016, the government announced a moratorium. It asked that those routes be maintained. And so, when the evaluations were published, Jazz reviewed its assignment system, and when the government stated that the company could not continue in the same way, Jazz informed the employees that those routes would be maintained.

What this means currently is that we now offer bilingual service on routes that do not have the 5% of users required by the regulation. If your question is was there less bilingual service prior to this, the answer is no, the service was simply deployed differently. We have always had bilingual flight attendants. We continued to train more.

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

But, sir, just...

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

One moment, please.

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

The union told the employee that there was a negative aspect.

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

He spoke of a negative impact.

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

A negative impact; that is unacceptable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

I would perhaps like to hear Mr. Rheault's comments later, in reply to what you have just said.

For the moment, we are going to have to suspend the meeting, but I need the unanimous consent of the members first so that we can go and vote.

I believe the vote will take 20 minutes. It should end around 12:20 p.m. We can resume the hearing at 12:30 p.m., and we will hear the representatives of Air Canada again for half an hour. We will then give the floor to the union for a half hour, and we should end at 1:30 p.m.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

That's fine.

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

There is no problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

So, we are going to suspend the meeting to go and vote.

We invite the witnesses to stay here.

Thank you. The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

We will resume our meeting.

Mr. Arseneault, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to continue where my Acadian colleague Darrell Samson left off.

Before we went to vote, we were looking at a letter written by a Jazz union representative. The last sentence in the correspondence you have before you is extremely strong, I would even say humiliating, for a francophone, and I quote:

The Union is in discussions with the company on the effects this will have on the membership and the language training requirements needed to mitigate the negative impact.

That was said after a reference to the need to comply with the Official Languages Act and to the use of French by the company.

It's humiliating, there is no other way of looking at that. When a union representative sends a letter to the members to tell them that complying with a linguistic obligation creates a negative impact and that the union has to hold talks with Air Canada to see how to minimize that impact, there is good reason to find this somewhat bizarre.

First, were you aware of this correspondence? Secondly, what is the negative impact in question? Third, how did the negotiations go, and who took part in them on behalf of Air Canada?

[David Rheault]

Mr. Arseneault, I'm going to answer your question.

I am going to read the letter before you. It refers to the need “to mitigate the negative impact”; that is how the letter is drafted in French. You have to look at the entire letter. Of course I cannot interpret the intention of those who wrote it, since it came from the union. What I can say, however, is that from a union point of view, when you assign bilingual employees to certain routes, you bypass seniority. Some members can see that as being a negative effect. If they don't have the qualifications to be assigned to a bilingual route, they cannot be on that flight.

The letter says that people will be working together to mitigate the impact, that is to say by providing more training to people to bring them up to level and to allow them to work on those flights. We don't leave our employees and the union alone in this. We intend to work with them so that they can be given appropriate training.

The letter talks about mitigating the negative impact. For people who do not speak a second language, of course it is more difficult because they cannot fly certain routes. That is how people perceive this. We work with everyone to improve the provision of bilingual services. That was for your first question.

Secondly, you asked if we had taken part in the negotiations. When we make routes bilingual, it is to comply with the regulations and the law. We don't negotiate that.

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

Fine.

[David Rheault]

We tell the union that those routes must offer services in French because there is a demand for that service. It's not a negotiation, it is something we require.

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

I'd like to go back a bit, Mr. Rheault.

Were you aware that this letter had been sent to Jazz employees?

[David Rheault]

No.

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

Fine.

The English version is the original version. I would ask you to read the English version. The French translation is fairly mild, but if I were a francophone working for Jazz, the English version...

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Who prepared the French version?

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

We sent it to the Translation Bureau to have it translated into French.

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

Is there any way of knowing?

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

It's important.