Official Languages committee  Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will start. On behalf of Air Canada, I thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today. We are pleased to be here today and to have the opportunity to speak to the committee on behalf of Air Canada. We are here today to

Official Languages committee  Mrs. Boucher, I would also like to answer your question. We are making efforts to increase the percentage of bilingual employees across the country, as are several government institutions. Here is the difficulty with regard to service at airports. Call centres, for example, are

Official Languages committee  That is a good question. I find sometimes it's hard to explain. When bilingualism is mentioned in the presentation, it is referring to French and English. Many of our employees are bilingual, but the languages they speak are English and Cantonese.

Official Languages committee  It could also involve English and Mandarin. The fact remains that, in general, most of the staff speak English.

Official Languages committee  It represents francophones who speak English or anglophones who speak French, who know the language.

Official Languages committee  This is part of our daily lives.

Official Languages committee  I'm sorry about that.

Official Languages committee  It's on page 17.

Official Languages committee  The message we want to deliver is that the situation is improving.

Official Languages committee  Yes. It would be wrong to tell you that it is easy to hire bilingual people in some parts of the country.

Official Languages committee  The fact remains that efforts have been made. For example, there were recently six airport employee positions to be filled at St. John's, Newfoundland. We determined we had to hire six bilingual people. Finding six unilingual employees for the airport in St. John's would have tak

Official Languages committee  I would like to add an anecdote. When we had to fill the post of director of government relations for the western region, we made an extra effort to find a bilingual candidate. That is how Mr. Corbeil joined us last October. His French is not bad.

Official Languages committee  With regard to our unions, some of their members will appear following our presentation. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that clients and passengers benefit from a service in both official languages. We have developed a number of tools, and, together with the unions, we are worki

Official Languages committee  Jazz must offer services in both official languages, in the same manner as, and as if it were, Air Canada.

Official Languages committee  Jazz employees have their union and Air Canada employees have another.