I'm always a little concerned when there is a major difference between the reality and what is presented to us.
If I understand correctly, the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA, says that it has always provided service of equal quality when travellers arrive at a bilingual port of entry, and that each traveller is greeted in the language of their choice. However, in 2015, the Commissioner of Official Languages published a report and made recommendations. Four years later, he looked into the matter again and concluded that the agency was not moving forward and that work remained to be done. He said that there are major systemic obstacles it comes to comes to providing service in French at the border and the nub of the problem is the inadequate bilingual capacity among border services officers.
Between 2015 and 2017, for example, no improvement was observed in the hiring of bilingual officers. It was even said that the number of bilingual superintendents had decreased, going from 80 to 76 in 2017. I would like to know exactly how many there are today.
Moreover, the Commissioner of Official Languages said that it is impossible to assess the bilingual services, because there is no oversight mechanism for officers and no monitoring of the traffic through the airports to allow bilingual service to be provided. In his report in 2020, he again noted the lack of bilingual services provided by the Canada Border Services Agency in COVID-19 matters, either in international airports or at land borders.
How do we explain this discrepancy between what we have been told and what seems to be the reality, according to the Commissioner of Official Languages?