Good afternoon. I would first like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today.
My name is Angela Cassie and I am the president of the Société de la francophonie manitobaine, the SFM. I'm also a former federal public servant.
As you know, the SFM is the voice of Manitoba's French-speaking community, in all its diversity.
I'd like to present a few ideas today on two major themes, namely the impact of unilingual senior public servants on official language minority communities, OLMCs, and finding structural solutions to foster official bilingualism.
The issue at hand is of paramount importance to our community. The bilingual capacity of senior public servants is not just a matter of spoken language, but also of understanding the unique challenges our communities face on a daily basis. This has a real impact on decision-making, including the funding of organizations that support our OLMCs, as well as the provision of vital public services, among others.
All too often, unconscious prejudices trample the rights and interests of francophones. Taken together, these prejudices create a culture of laxity and indifference to our needs. We see this with the RCMP, among others, which fails to meet its bilingual obligations, despite the essential service it provides.
We also find it very worrying that managers can make decisions about the language requirements of a position without asking for, or simply ignoring, the advice of specialist official languages staff. Our community and our francophone communities deserve robust processes to ensure representativeness of the Canadian population, as well as fair and equitable treatment.
It goes without saying that the SFM supports the recommendations put forward by the Commissioner of Official Languages, which address the sources of the problem. This includes structural investments in our French education continuum to strengthen francophone labour pools. It also includes training for managers, aimed at clarifying the intent of Section 91 of the Official Languages Act, as Official Languages Commissioner Théberge emphasized in his address to this committee a few weeks ago.
In 2024, the approach based on mere compliance must be a practice of the past. What we need now is a values-based approach and a public service that is proud of and able to offer service of equal quality in both of the country's official languages. Managers who capture and embody these values will, we believe, find ways to attract, recruit and develop more bilingual senior public servants.
So I'll stop here. Thank you for your attention and for the opportunity to present our perspective today. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.