Human Resources committee  Yes, I think all the complaints received in those two time periods were resolved to nearly everyone's satisfaction. If the complainant loses, however, that is another matter. I should also mention that there is a big difference between the member's context and my own environmen

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Robert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about our organization and how we currently deal with safety and harassment prevention at the House of Commons. The following items detail the guiding principles, mechanisms, and tools that we

Official Languages committee  Yes, we have the tools. It's a bit more difficult to conduct follow-ups because we need to proceed member by member. I need to verify the situation from a technical standpoint. I know there's electronic identification for members. I'll talk about it with my colleague who works w

Official Languages committee  We raise awareness internally, within the administration. I'm also responsible for the House administration employees. As part of our mandate, we must inform our 1,800 employees, who are there to serve you, about the importance of the official languages. However, outside our orga

Official Languages committee  In the members' case the training is paid out of a central budget, so there is no problem. A member's personal budget is affected only if there is a cancellation with less than 24 hours' notice, or if a situation that is unrelated to parliamentary activities occurs, or events out

Official Languages committee  I haven't conducted any specific analyses on this subject. I'm speaking from memory, but if we had to establish a curve for the members—

Official Languages committee  We haven't done so for a number of reasons, but we have the necessary tools. We could easily send out a survey containing three or four questions. However, in my experience, given the large number of members, it's always difficult to obtain responses.

Official Languages committee  I won't comment on that. However, since you're very busy, it's difficult to reach you. If the committee were to ask us to conduct a survey of this nature, we could do so. We could ask a few questions to determine, for example, whether people know about the House's language train

Official Languages committee  That is a generalization.

Official Languages committee  It is a fact in this region. I have been in this area since 1990, and so in the region...

Official Languages committee  Exactly. So it is a generalization made on the basis of that reality. However, if you get away from the national capital or even the large cities in Quebec, the level of bilingualism probably goes down considerably.

Official Languages committee  We have both. Since there is a lot of fluctuation in our activity level, we have a core group of permanent employees, employees who work when demand is minimal. When demand peaks, we have a pool of contract employees who work elsewhere but who also provide services to us. Also, t

Official Languages committee  Once again, this is very anecdotal. We can suppose that certain students reach the desired level of knowledge, that others lose interest, and that others have heavy workloads that prevent them from continuing. We have never really done any specific surveys to determine the reason

Official Languages committee  I can answer that question. I have seen the same figures, basically, since 1993. Indeed I see that the number of people who take English classes has always been lower. In a previous job I managed a language school and it was the same thing. Here we always start from the premise

Official Languages committee  Are you talking about members' employees?