The higher you go in the federal hierarchy, the more designated bilingual positions there are, precisely because the person has to be able to convey messages in both languages and supervise a bigger team. However, in this case, the teams are smaller, are lower down in the hierarchy, and consist of employees whose positions are designated in the same language: French, for example. These employees have agreed to work in a unilingual French position.
Should the supervisor of a group of employees who hold unilingual positions be bilingual? We think the answer is no, because the supervisor is supervising only employees who hold unilingual positions.
Proposed amendment CPC-18 would require that the supervisor be bilingual in the event that an employee who held a unilingual French position chose to be supervised in English. That is a very rare case, but it is a possibility in a bilingual region. A person could get up one day and decide that even though they are in a unilingual French position, they would like to be supervised in English. That is the kind of case in issue here, and it's for that kind of case that we would require supervisors to take language training and to spend money.
It is very unlikely that a supervisor would have to supervise a team in another language, given that the people are in unilingual French positions.