Official Languages committee  Thank you. As you say, we use the expression “points of service”. We do not talk about “offices”, because they are not all offices...

Official Languages committee  That includes 136 Service Canada centres, 50 regular mobile service sites, and 8 community offices. As of April 1, there will be two fewer, in other words 192, because two community offices will be closed.

Official Languages committee  The Service Canada centre in Port Hawkesbury is designated bilingual.

Official Languages committee  We handle one million transactions per day. That includes telephone calls, people who come in, cases relating to employment insurance that are dealt with, and so on.

Official Languages committee  The 98% figure that I mentioned comes from a client survey. Every two years, we conduct a client satisfaction survey. We have just wrapped up the most recent survey, which was conducted in 2010. We have not yet fully analyzed the results, but we have an overall picture of them. We surveyed 6,000 people.

Official Languages committee  Allow me to explain the difference between a unilingual service centre and a bilingual service centre. In a unilingual service centre, management and oversight are carried out in one language. It could be French in Quebec or English elsewhere. The entire monitoring and management structure is in English.

Official Languages committee  The Atlantic Region is unilingual. it includes one bilingual province: New Brunswick.

Official Languages committee  Our offices and service centres are designated unilingual or bilingual, according to local presence and demand. The administrative region of the Atlantic extends to Newfoundland and all of the Maritime Provinces and is designated unilingual...

Official Languages committee  As I was saying, it is true that the administrative structure in the Atlantic Region is unilingual. However, New Brunswick is a bilingual province. We have many employees in New Brunswick, whether in Bathurst or in Fredericton, who are in bilingual positions. As soon as we have employees in bilingual positions, supervision of these positions must also be provided in both official languages.

Official Languages committee  The 58% figure for active offer performance comes from the Commissioner of Official Languages when this area was last audited. I believe that was in 2008. As he mentioned in his audit, that is in the report you have before you today, we have make considerable efforts since that time using a strategy that was carried out by Mr.

Official Languages committee  Every five years, employees must demonstrate that they are still bilingual. Some employees may no longer make the grade after a while. Other people may have just been appointed or just be staffing the position on an acting basis because the position was vacant. We have to take into account all of these staffing and employee fluctuations.

Official Languages committee  The two organizations consulted were the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité of Nova Scotia and another economic development organization, also in Nova Scotia. They are both provincial organizations.

Official Languages committee  That is the response we gave. We did not conduct an impact study because in the case of the community offices in Cape Breton, the people who had access to bilingual service through these community centres would continue to have access to bilingual services through a regular outreach site that will go to Chéticamp, for example...

Official Languages committee  They will go regularly. No matter what, these visits will be made regularly. The frequency of these visits will be based on demand, but they will occur regularly. They will be announced in advance. They will be reliable in that sense.

Official Languages committee  We called the employees in the Kemptville office, where the incident you referred to took place. There was indeed a misunderstanding, when an employee, a man or a woman, believed that they did not have permission to speak French in a unilingual centre.