Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House once again today to talk about official languages.
I have here a very important report that I was just reviewing. It is a special report to Parliament entitled “Air Canada: On the road to increased compliance through an effective enforcement regime”. Some people may be unaware that a number of complaints have been made about bilingual service at Air Canada, and there have been consequences.
Over the years, official languages commissioners have tried to fix the problem. According to the report, every single commissioner has repeatedly made recommendations concerning Air Canada. It is also worth noting that Air Canada has the singular distinction of being the only organization subject to the act that has been taken to court during the term of each of the commissioners since 1988.
Clearly, Air Canada has been having trouble providing services in both official languages across Canada for some time now. The report is damning, and the problem has been around for quite a while.
However, some attempts have been made to improve the situation. In 2005, a bill was introduced to clarify Air Canada's language obligations. However, Parliament was dissolved. In 2007, another bill was introduced, but it died on the Order Paper. In 2008, another bill did not make it past first reading. Finally, in 2011, a bill was introduced just before the election.
Parliamentarians have therefore recognized that improvements need to be made so that Air Canada and other organizations meet their obligations under the Official Languages Act. Unfortunately, no sooner had they made the announcement than these ministers realized they lacked the will to deal with the problem by passing one of these four bills.
The Commissioner of Official Languages is so discouraged that he decided to issue a special report on official languages, and more specifically on the problem at Air Canada. In this special report, he sets out three solutions.
The first solution is enforceable agreements. In June 2015, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act was amended to allow the Privacy Commissioner to enter into compliance agreements, which are also known as enforceable agreements. This would ensure that any organization that fails to comply with the Official Languages Act, for example, would be required to comply with the commissioner’s recommendations following an investigation. If not, action could be taken against it.
An enforceable agreement would therefore carry much more weight than a report that can easily be shelved and forgotten. As result, this is a very important recommendation. If memory serves, the report was tabled in June 2016. It is now October, and we want the government to implement these recommendations as quickly as possible.