Mr. Speaker, our motion today deals with facts.
The fact is that the Official Languages Act is a total failure. It is divisive. It is so overwhelmingly expensive it would even be impractical in a booming economy with an overflowing treasury, neither of which we currently enjoy.
One of the most curious aspects of the act is that no one asked for it. Quebec did not ask for it. Most certainly neither did the rest of Canada.
Quebec wanted the French language in its own province and we agree with that. It wanted access in French to key federal institutions such as Parliament and the Supreme Court and we agree with that. It expects federal services in French. We agree with that where there is sufficient demand to warrant cost effective provision of that service.
Given that the majority of the people in Quebec are not concerned about it and even a larger majority of Canadians in the rest of Canada are not in favour of continuing with it, why are we spending so much money to maintain a program that does not work, that we cannot afford and that no one wants?
One theory generally follows the concept of Newton's first law of physics that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force. In other words, the status quo reigns supreme.
In actual fact, given that the program is in fact flourishing it appears many are operating under their own special agendas without concern for the fact that the time for this program to end has long since past.
I would like to focus today on one particular aspect of the bilingual implementation program. The area I am personally concerned about is the introduction of bilingual services to the air traffic control system. These implementation programs are horrendously expensive and at times compromise the safety of the Canadian traveller.
Air traffic control primarily uses two types of services: tower control, which controls the movement of traffic on and in the immediate proximity to the airport; and radar control, which controls aircraft flying by use of aircraft instruments within a defined area of airspace.
The Official Languages Act imposes a duty on all federal institutions to ensure that the public can obtain all services
available from federal offices or facilities within the national capital region in either official language.
In keeping with that, Ottawa tower became fully bilingual 16 hours a day as of June 1990 and 24 hours a day as of March 1991. The cost of this was and still is outrageous. The staffing of Ottawa tower calls for 17 controllers but at present there are only 9 controllers available for duty. Part of the problem is that all positions are designated as bilingual imperative. This means a controller must be fully bilingual to even apply for the position.
I for one have no problem with the concept of providing bilingual service where demand is sufficient to warrant cost effective language services. I already mentioned this at the beginning of my talk. Just how much demand constitutes sufficient is a questionable point and well worth examining here.
Before I begin to discuss the need in the tower I would like to add that the full bilingual service is in place at Ottawa tower. It is now in the process of being implemented in Ottawa terminal.
Let us look at how one might determine what demands are and how much service is needed to satisfy those demands, if in fact they are in need of being satisfied.
Simulations were run on equipment then located at the research and development department in Hull. Operating from a single bilingual position, traffic that included 30 per cent French speaking pilots was handled acceptably. This establishes a rate at which we can then look at staffing plans if it can be determined that the demand exists. What of the demand? Controllers at Ottawa tower record each contact requesting service in French. The optimum amount of requests they receive is 2 per cent, one-fifteenth of the amount that has been demonstrated can be handled safely from a single position.
A little side note on that 2 per cent figure, these figures include Air Canada pilots who can obviously speak and operate in English. It includes an airline whose next stop after Ottawa is Boston. It includes pilots from Transport Canada who fly all over this country.
I suggest there is no justification at all for bilingual air traffic control services in the Ottawa area. If there is, it should only be in that single position originally envisioned which could demonstrably control not only that amount of traffic but a tremendous and unexpected amount of growth in the future.
The cost of this bilingual service is just one of the concerns of this program, but it certainly is a significant one. At present the combined cost of the overstaffing needed to implement the bilingual program in Ottawa terminal plus a shortage of three bilingual controllers from the tower who are now on training for the terminal to staff the new bilingual positions is almost $1 million per year. There are English speaking tower controllers in Ottawa who can relieve this cost but they are not allowed to control in the tower because they do not speak French. These costs are only the tip of the iceberg.
At the beginning I also mentioned the concern about safety. The source of this concern is the way the English speaking controllers are being dealt with during this highly questionable implementation of bilingual services. Incumbent rights are being ignored. Original implementation plans are being scrapped. Controllers' futures are up in the air, no pun intended.
I fly a lot, as do most of the members in this House. I would not want to have open heart surgery from a doctor whose face I had just slapped the night before. Why then are we doing the same thing to the people whose hands we place our lives in every time we take to the skies?
This is but one small example of the problem caused by the Official Languages Act. However it is a very important example of the extent to which this is getting out of hand.
The time to end the problem is now. It is time that we became the external force that will put an end to the motion of a program that has never worked in the interests of anyone.