Status of Women committee  It's a challenge. I sometimes have a hard time balancing that myself. In terms of the evolution of how it started, next year will be the 40th anniversary of the act, and I've found myself asking precisely that question of how we got from there to here. So one of the things I've asked that we do is to do a study internally of precisely that.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. There are two kinds of roles we can play. We can point out that the law is not being respected, and if the law is not being respected—if an institution digs its heels in and says, “We're not respecting the law because that's not our interpretation and we don't have to”—then we will end up before the courts, or sometimes the complainant will take the action and we will intervene with the complainant.

Status of Women committee  No. When a recommendation is not respected, under the Official Languages Act there are a number of things we can do. We can make a special report to Parliament, we can make a special report to the Governor in Council, and we can go to court.

Status of Women committee  That's right. And when we feel that a federal institution has not respected its obligations under the act, we have that strategic decision to make. In some cases, what we can also do is simply draw it to the government's attention in our annual report, saying that this department is not living up to its obligations.

Status of Women committee  What we the agents of Parliament are working on is to try to see how this pilot project of a parliamentary panel can move from being a temporary measure to becoming a permanent parliamentary mechanism to deal with funding requests from agents of Parliament. We've had a report done by William Corbett, the former Clerk of the House, who has done an assessment of our views of the successes and limitations of the approach so far.

Status of Women committee  Well, I believe very strongly in the independence of the office, and I believe very strongly in the importance of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages having a strong relationship not only with Parliament as an abstraction but with parliamentarians and with parliamentary committees.

Status of Women committee  No. In neither case have we completed it. We have had at least one meeting of each organization, of each committee, and others are planned. I'm not sure whether in the past there were other consultative committees. Catherine, do you want to speak to that?

Status of Women committee  I don't want this to be formulated in terms of advice, but in my experience, one of the reasons I think the parliamentary panel is so important is that it enables me as commissioner and my colleagues to develop a reporting relationship—on financial matters as well as the subject matter that is our responsibility to cover—to Parliament rather than reporting to the government.

Status of Women committee  Are you talking about advisory committees of our own or about those environmental advisory committees?

Status of Women committee  What we are free to do, and what we have done in a couple of areas, is set up advisory committees that are essentially voluntary. I mean, we don't pay people to be on those committees, although we will pay their expenses. We will fly people to Ottawa for the meetings. Two are under way now.

Status of Women committee  I hesitate to make any specific recommendations regarding a commissioner, but I can tell you how the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages was established. During the 1960s, the Royal Commission of Enquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism made a number of recommendations to the government.

Status of Women committee  Yes. This is set out in the act. Initially, this salary protection did not exist. This was brought in by means of an amendment to the act in 1988 which set the Commissioner's salary at the same level as that of a Federal Court judge. You talked about the Commissioner's independence.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  A certain percentage of our budget goes to operations. Wages and benefits for 175 people accounts for a certain amount. Of the reminder, 45% to 50% is for protection activities—compliance with the act, audits and court cases—and 50% to 55% is used for research and promotional activities, the operation of our regional offices and communications.

Status of Women committee  That is a very good question. I was pleasantly surprised to see how sensitive departments were to our audits. We hand out marks so that departments can see where their weaknesses lie. Deputy ministers are competitive by nature; they do not like to get a poor grade, nor do ministers.