Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue 11 - Evidence - Meeting of June 18, 2012
OTTAWA, Monday, June 18, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met this day at 4:35 p.m. to study the use of the Internet, new media and social media and the respect for Canadians' language rights.
Senator Maria Chaput (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages. I am Senator Maria Chaput, from Manitoba, chair of the committee.
Before introducing the witness joining us today, I would like to invite the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting to my left.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis, senator from Quebec.
Senator Nolin: Pierre Claude Nolin, also representing the Province of Quebec.
Senator Robichaud: Fernand Robichaud, Saint-Louis-de-Kent, New Brunswick.
Senator Poirier: Senator Rose-May Poirier, from New Brunswick.
[English]
The Chair: In early October the committee began its study on the use of Internet and social media and the respect for Canadians' language rights. It has heard from more than 45 organizations as part of this study. The committee is holding its last hearing today on this matter to commence a study in the fall.
It is a pleasure to welcome Ms. Erin O'Halloran, Information Specialist with CloudScout Information Services. This appearance will be an opportunity for the members of the committee to learn more on the research paper Ms. O'Halloran produced in April 2011, entitled Legal Language Parameters & Social Media: A New Brunswick Case Study.
Ms. O'Halloran, on behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for appearing today and invite you to provide introductory remarks. The senators will follow with questions. The floor is yours.
Erin O'Halloran, Information Specialist, CloudScout Information Services: Thank you so much. I am very pleased to be here today. I am a librarian and entrepreneur, and my company is CloudScout Information Services, which focuses on research. We are here to speak today about the research I conducted as part of my master's degree program last year. The topic of social media in bilingual jurisdictions came to me through a casual conversation I was having with a communications professional in Fredericton.
My former career was a journalist with CTV news, so I know a very large network of communications professionals in the province and the region. The topic came up fairly organically as an issue that they were dealing with day to day. They knew that they wanted to comply with the Official Languages Act of New Brunswick, but they were finding it very difficult to do so because they had very decentralized social media communications in place at the time.
That started the research, and it took shape when I did a literature review, looked at the Official Languages Act here in New Brunswick in addition to doing two case studies, as well as interviewing a representative of the Office of the Official Languages Commissioner in New Brunswick.
Based on that research, I was able to come to a few conclusions, the first being in the area of social media in general or the culture of social media, you could say. The second is conclusions about the Official Languages Act and what communications came from the Office of the Official Languages Commissioner.
I came to some conclusions based on the case studies and the models that organizations are using. I have also heard a few ideas for solutions on how to use social media in a bilingual jurisdiction and comply with the legislation and regulations in place.
In the first area, social media in general, Canadians are very active social networkers. Forrester Research released a report in 2009 stating that Canadians were the most active social networkers in the industrialized world.
Research from the social media community also suggests that organizations use social media as a tool to provide support, avoid misinformation and obtain feedback. They also talk about how it has created a new type of participant in the communications realm and that they are empowered, aggressive, fearless and have different expectations on how they will participant in communications. They certainly have higher expectations of when information will be released and disclosure. They also have higher expectations of what will be disclosed based on their experiences in other social media realms.
Based on my review of the Official Languages Act here, there was no question that social media messages do fall under the Official Languages Act. They are communications because of the very clear definition in the act. It was very clear also, from my discussion with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, that there are institutions and organizations here in New Brunswick that are non-compliant with the act. There have been no complaints lodged about this non-compliance, but I do not feel that is a reason to not act.
What was interesting was that the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has been receiving requests from communications professionals. They are looking for guidance on how to comply with the OLA and also how to effectively participate in the social media realm.
Based on the case studies conducted, we found a number of models in use in different institutions and organizations, and they include a variety of centralized and decentralized models. You can have one person tweeting on behalf of an organization or you can have dozens and dozens.
Another trend or model that people are using is institutions can have bilingual accounts on social media or they can have unilingual ones that are dedicated to one language and the same information is posted on each account.
I did find that the complexity of the organization often impacted the ability of that organization to comply with the OLA. The complexity impacted how easy or hard it was for them to comply.
Also from those case studies I found that people were adamant that social media communications do not fit easily into the existing communications model. I am sure you all know that the communications process involves a number of different steps: creating the message for a purpose, approving the message, having it translated and then eventually released.
Because there is a clearly defined culture around social media communications, many people were saying that it really did not fit within that model, and we need to figure out a way to comply with the OLA in addition to complying with the culture of social media and providing value to that community.
Some ideas that were tossed around as solutions to this problem that communications people are having is the consideration of translation periods, the possibility of pre-translation of frequently used messages and also transferring the responsibility of social media communications to bilingual staff members.
Another solution or possible solution that was brought up in the literature by human resources professionals was the idea of creating new positions that are in charge of social media communications. In the literature these positions are called community managers. In the New Brunswick context, or in the bilingual context, these people would be in charge of building a relationship and managing the communications, but also being aware of the implications of the legislation and regulations in place for official languages.
Finally, the last conclusion I came to during my research last year is that the federal government literature that I did find was focused on respecting bilingualism and accessibility, which I think is paramount. However, I would like to see the research also focus on continuing to provide value to the social media community and taking into consideration the culture of social media. That is one remark that I would make.
I do not think it is a stretch to foresee a future where people younger than us would rely on social media primarily for their source of information, whether it is from their friends or their government. I believe that complying with the culture of social media and continuing to add value will be very important into the future.
That is the conclusion of the remarks I would like to make. Does anyone have any questions?
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Thank you very much. First of all, welcome. We are pleased to hear from you.
My first question is simple; now that Facebook has become the most popular social media on the planet with approximately 800 million users, where will the French language fit in this new virtual universe?
Do we need to be wary of social media or, conversely, do we need to believe in their power to reach the whole world with just a few clicks?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: I believe there is the potential for excitement and concern for the French community. The excitement is that you will be able to reach so many people through these communications tools, and I believe they should be viewed as communications tools. They have a lot of potential.
However, because there is an expectation within the social media community for messages to be responded to immediately, it does require that there be someone on standby for translation or that messages be pre-translated if they are used often. I do think there needs to be a strategy around how we deliver communications to both French and English communities. The timelines and expectations of people who use social media are a real challenge to the existing communications process.
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: In April 2011, you submitted a paper for a lecture given at Dalhousie University; the paper was about legal language, library science, and social media platforms used in New Brunswick in compliance with the requirements of the Official Languages Act. You pointed out the various approaches that government bodies have taken to deal with social media.
Are you familiar with any ongoing research on finding the best approach to delivering bilingual services?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: I am not aware of any ongoing research into the best practices of offering bilingual communications via social media. I believe there are practices out there, and institutions and organizations are looking for any kind of guidance that they can receive in this area. However, I do not feel that there are defined best practices based on well-done research. I feel that people are looking to their neighbours and colleagues and asking how they are doing this and if it is working for them. They are trying to adopt those same strategies based on what their neighbours are doing.
I feel that is acceptable for now but I believe we should look into best practices because in the future we will be relying on social media more often. I think that involves talking to citizens about how they prefer to receive communications.
For instance, right now many organizations are calling the unilingual account structure or method a best practice. I am not sure if I agree with that, mostly because social media is meant to be focused on relationships. It is not just the relationship between the government and the citizen; it is also based on the relationship between citizens, so we want to be communicating on all different levels.
Let us say I receive information from the government on the English Facebook account. I then ask a question and a representative from the government will answer that question on that same Facebook account. The French account would not see my question and would not see the answer to my question. That means that there is a barrier in the relationship between myself and the other account.
I feel we should be looking into the relationship aspect of social media and determining best practices based on that research.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for being here. It is nice to hear from a fellow New Brunswicker.
From your comments and what I have read, the Moncton Public Library has a provincial identity under the Official Languages Act and is excelling in the ability of using social media to fulfill its legal obligations. You also stated that they had recently changed the way that they were using it. Could you explain to me, if you know, what prompted the Moncton Public Library to switch from using a bilingual social media account to a separate account for both official languages? Do you believe that a separate social media account is a more effective communication tool?
Ms. O'Halloran: When I spoke about the bilingual and unilingual accounts, I was thinking of the Moncton library. They had a bilingual account and they had some followers, albeit not a large following. It was a Twitter account, and I think they had less than 100 followers. That is not very many for a large area like the Moncton-Dieppe-Riverview region. They looked to other libraries to find out whether they should continue the bilingual approach or go the unilingual route. Based on what their neighbours were doing, they made the change. They consider that a growing pain. The unilingual approach is working for them.
I did ask Chantale Bellemare at the Moncton library whether she felt that having unilingual accounts was isolating the communities from each other in the relationship-building aspect. She said it was absolutely not because most people who follow the English account also follow the French account.
[Editor's Note: Technical difficulties with video conference.]
(The committee continued in camera.)
——————
(The committee resumed in public.)
The Chair: Welcome back to the committee.
Senator Poirier: We were in the middle of a question and answer when we lost contact. We were discussing the changes at the Moncton Public Library. I asked whether you felt it was more effective for them to go separately than to stay with a single identity as they were before.
Ms. O'Halloran: When I was responding to the previous question about people looking to their neighbours in order to determine best practice, this is what I was referring to. The Moncton library did have a bilingual Twitter account. They had less than 100 followers and they started looking to other libraries and other organizations within their professional realm to see what they should be doing, because there really is not a best practice out there. They decided to go with the two unilingual accounts, based on what their colleagues were doing in other institutions.
I asked Chantale Bellemare if she felt that separating the accounts was impeding the different communities from creating a relationship. She said no, that people who want to see both accounts follow both accounts. She did not see it as impeding relationships between members of the community whatsoever.
Senator Poirier: My other question concerns the Commissioner of Official Languages from New Brunswick. Were the recommendations he gave you significant? Do you have additional recommendations?
Ms. O'Halloran: Certainly. When I was speaking to the Office of the Official Languages Commissioner last year, I felt that looking to the federal government for guidance was a good idea. However, at the time there was no published material to go on.
Therefore, the fall annual report recommended having a regulation to guide people in the public service on how to use social media communications. It is very difficult to say whether that will happen.
Also, I would not want that regulation to come into place without a study on best practices being done first. I feel that creating a regulation is not the solution. We really should be looking into what citizens would like to see and how they want to participate in the social media realm with the government. Since citizens are empowered and fearless in the social media realm, they really should be consulted before we make a regulation that we have to live with.
Senator Poirier: Do you have examples of any government departments, either federally or at the provincial level, that you feel have excelled at using social media, and could you share those with us?
Ms. O'Halloran: You can excel at the use of social media, but doing it in a bilingual jurisdiction is more difficult. For instance, the Moncton Public Library is doing a good job. However, the complexity of their organization does not make it very difficult for them to do a good job to communicate via social media in a bilingual jurisdiction.
The other case study I looked at was the City of Fredericton. They are fairly detailed, and have a large following on their Twitter accounts. For instance, the parks and recreation is a big part of life in Fredericton. The people who groom the trails in the winter for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing actually tweet updates about what has been groomed, what pools are open and what skating rinks have been updated or are ready to roll.
They actually do a wonderful job of providing value to citizens through social media. However, the kicker is that they are not doing it in both official languages because it is so decentralized. The people who are grooming those trails and the people who are opening the pools may not be bilingual. Therefore, the decentralized format is giving people pertinent information in a timely manner, but it is not speaking to both communities, and that is a big problem.
I would say they are doing a good job, but they are not complying with the OLA.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for sharing that.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Talking about bilingualism or unilingualism in New Brunswick brings out strong emotions. When you talk about a unilingual account, does that mean that a francophone would answer one call and an anglophone would answer a call in the other language? Or is it a bilingual person who answers in either language?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: In the instance of the Moncton Public Library, it is a bilingual staff person; it is one person who is responding to both accounts. They are essentially posting messages. However, there is not a large amount of conversation on that account, so this person is essentially just delivering messages instead of interacting in conversations.
Regardless, yes, it is one bilingual staff member in that instance.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: You live in New Brunswick. You know that, when they are dealing with government departments and when someone answers with an English accent, most francophones will speak in English, unfortunately, and that is what I am worried about. The person taking the call is not to blame. They often speak in English because they are afraid of offending people or they want the conversation to move forward quickly. That is why I think it is important for a francophone to respond in French and an anglophone in English.
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: I understand what you mean, and I do know the instance you described. I think that happens very frequently. There is a situation where you could have a francophone answering questions for the French feed and an anglophone for the English feed. I think it will be a tough sell, staff resource-wise, to have two people dedicated to separate accounts.
Also, we would want the same information shared to both communities. I feel that whatever is posted on one feed should be posted on the other feed. I think it is important to provide some equality in the information that is being shared.
Senator Robichaud: I have no problem with sharing the information; it is just the communication to establish with the person at the other end of the line in that he feels that he is being served in his language. In New Brunswick, that is very important.
Ms. O'Halloran: Absolutely. I agree with you.
[Translation]
The Chair: If an organization wants to serve official language minority communities properly, what main criteria do you think they should use?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: Right now, I believe that the Official Languages Commissioner has been giving some informal guidance to institutions and organizations, saying that the initial message being released via social media must be released in both official languages. However, if there is a question or comment on social media regarding that initial message, the response only has to be in the language in which the question or comment was delivered.
I do see a problem with that, though, because it does impede the relationship-building that could occur in the social media realm and that I would like to see occur in the social media realm. Therefore, I think that issuing the initial message in both official languages and responding to questions and comments in both official languages would be necessary to be successful in that area.
I think another factor of success would be timeliness. Turnaround is certainly a big issue. It is important to be able to answer questions quickly and efficiently and to disclose and provide non-sensitive information as a real service. Those are needed for success.
[Translation]
The Chair: Is this a big challenge at both provincial and federal levels? Would it be more or less the same challenge? Also, is it realistic to think that we can take on this challenge?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: It certainly depends on the approach that you want to take. If you want to have a centralized model where one person is tweeting or posting Facebook messages on behalf of an organization, I believe that it is less of a challenge; it is a more controlled environment. However, you may lose some value, because the social media culture is built around decentralizing communications and having everyone participate. It will depend on the model that is established in the federal government or in the provincial government.
[Translation]
The Chair: If you had a recommendation to make to the committee, what would it be?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: My recommendation would be to take into consideration the social media culture, which has been created by the people who participate in social media. To do that would require further study and consultation with the members of those communities.
Senator Mockler: I am from New Brunswick. I was looking at some of your sites, and you have one called askmeanything.ca.
Ms. O'Halloran: Yes.
Senator Mockler: You said at the beginning that there will be excitement and concern about the application of social media. You were also talking about New Brunswick as possibly leading the way when we look at the Official Languages Act. In one of your articles — basically the article that came to the Telegraph Journal — you say:
There is confusion at present about how government agencies can best use social media while complying with the OLA and adhering to the culture of the social media realm.
Could you explain that? Where would be the excitement and the concern in that?
Ms. O'Halloran: I believe that communications people are excited at any new opportunity to reach the community they want to communicate with. Social media can be a really creative space, and so that is the exciting part.
You can also reach a vast number of people. In some instances, it would be even more than what the media could reach. It also takes fewer resources if you do it, strategize it and plan it correctly. The concern is that in some jurisdictions they do not have bilingual staff members in charge of communication via social media. There is a concern that in order to communicate in both official languages, you need to pull the communications power away from people who are not bilingual. Sometimes that means you will lose some of the value that is created by social media.
My example would be the people who perhaps groom the trails in Fredericton; they provide good information, but they may not be able to provide it in both official languages. That is why I suggest some strategies, like pre-translation of common messages. That might be a way to get around certain instances where the decentralized model is not working or complying with the OLA.
Senator Mockler: Would you walk me through or give me a dry run, for example — you have touched a bit on it — in terms of grooming the trails? Within the administration service, if we take a department, how could we have better services for our people?
I am reminded of Services Nouveau Brunswick when it was started by previous governments. As following governments improved it, we saw an agreement with the federal government, and they now use Service Canada. Basically, the program comes from New Brunswick.
Can you walk me through a service that Service New Brunswick, the Department of Natural Resources or the Department of the Environment could provide to increase the quality of life of our people in better communicating the object we want to attain?
Ms. O'Halloran: Absolutely. Social media is more frequently being used as a customer service tool as well, and this was not touched on in the paper, but I have done research regarding social media as a customer service tool with the company Eastlink, a telecommunications company in Nova Scotia.
For an information service, social media can be a tremendous tool to provide information services, and you can essentially have the social media account be a supplement to a 1-800 number, let us say.
In the instance of Service New Brunswick, you probably have many people looking for information, and the three avenues to receive information would be to go to an office, to call a 1-800 number or to go to a "frequently asked questions" page on their website.
Social media can certainly be a big part of that strategy for customer service and for providing information, and what it would entail is to have people standing by to answer questions or direct people to other information in both official languages.
The model in other companies is that you have a call centre, but in the future you will have social media centres, where people are on standby, waiting to receive a Twitter message and then they respond.
Senator Mockler: I like what you just said about social media centres that will connect with Service New Brunswick. I will just give you a little example, one of which I shared a few weeks ago with the chair of our committee.
I was called to go to an activity. It involved a house that burned down in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. It involved a young couple, in their mid-twenties. In the span of approximately two and a half hours, they had collected, through social media with their friends and even some people from Moncton who donated $5 or $10, a little over $1,500 in two and a half hours, plus they got all kinds of clothing and furniture, you name it.
I was in Grand Falls. I asked them, when they communicated in their social media, as I am a member and our chair watches us closely, I asked, "How did you communicate?" Everything was done in English, and the majority of them, I would say nine out of ten, were francophones.
Ms. O'Halloran: That is a trend we do see in social media. I think there is a perception that the language of social media is English, mostly because the founders of these companies and these sites all started mainly in corporate America, in the Silicon Valley. I think there is a perception out there that English is the language of social media. I feel that is unfortunate; however, it is a perception that exists out there in reality.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: I understand that, when people communicate with each other, they use the language of their choice and the level of language they want. That is not the problem. In New Brunswick, all departmental communications have to be in both languages, and we are talking about media in real time, with everything happening right away, instantly. So to have a message in both official languages, I think we have a great deal of work to do, because both versions have to be of the same quality. Have you thought about that? Have you looked at that issue?
[English]
Ms. O'Halloran: I think you hit on an interesting point because translation services are currently external to governments in most instances, so we hire private companies in order to translate messages for us.
An example would be that a municipality has an English or an anglophone communications person, they write a message, have it approved and then they send it to an external corporation or an external business to have it translated. That model will absolutely not work for social media because the time to translate a message can take a few hours or a couple of days, and that takes the immediacy out of the message and extracts the value out of using social media.
It really means that we would need to put translation back into our government organizations and institutions in order to participate in real-time. It means having people on standby to do these translations or to communicate in both languages.
Senator De Bané: Have you had the opportunity to study how that challenge is dealt with in the European Union where they have a dozen languages? With respect to social media issued by the European Commission in Brussels, how do they deal with 27 countries with about 12 official languages? Have you had an opportunity to study how they deal with that situation?
Ms. O'Halloran: I actually looked into other countries that have multiple official languages, and I did not see any publications that were specific enough to that. Also, even in the legislation, in the law, I do not think there was anything similar or comparable to the Official Languages Act we have here in New Brunswick.
However, I would wager that they are communicating via social media in English, unfortunately, and they are probably linking to versions of different languages on their websites.
Senator De Bané: Maybe that is it. I know that they have managed up until now to broadcast EuroNews, which broadcasts in 11 languages every day. EuroNews is more watched in Europe than CNN and BBC. It is interesting that by using the national broadcasters in each of the countries, they have a system whereby they cover the news in those countries. Is your gut feeling that their social media is only in English?
Ms. O'Halloran: Without knowing for sure, certainly I can tell you that broadcasting in 11 different languages takes planning and structure. In order to do that daily and to have an audience find value in it, I would presume that they have a very important structure they must follow in order to achieve that. I feel it is important in any kind of communication strategy, including social media.
If they are communicating via social media in 11 different languages as well, it likely means that their social media use is also very structured and centralized. If that is the case, I would say that it is the method or the model they decided to go with. That is likely how they would do it if they were doing it in multiple languages.
Senator De Bané: As you know, in Canada I am able to access the websites in English or French of large institutions like the chartered banks and government institutions. Have you or your firm studied whether we can induce, incite or encourage the private sector to do that, so that the language choice is not restricted to some federal or regulated private businesses like banks? In our daily lives, we deal more often with the private sector than we deal with the government.
Ms. O'Halloran: Currently there is no legislation in place to do that. However, there is an opportunity to encourage private organizations to publish in both English and French. I believe it would require a culture change in general to enjoy communicating in both official languages and to respect both official languages. For instance, I had an experience after I finished my master's degree last year. I went to Quebec for five weeks and fell in love with speaking French. In my company, I sent out a media release about my presentation this evening in English and French. For me, it is worth paying the money to have the message translated.
I personally do not have the chops in order to translate the message myself, but I feel that a culture and an attitude change are required, not necessarily legislation. Things like that seem to spread. I feel like there is some work to do there. I have no idea how to do it, but the experience that I had in Quebec learning French was what did it for me.
Senator De Bané: Personally, I find it sad that we have not yet found a way to take advantage of the fact that the two official languages of our country are two of the most important languages in the Western world. That should be a big asset to all of us. Thank you so much.
Ms. O'Halloran: Thank you.
The Chair: Honourable senators, this is our last hearing, so this is our last witness. I am sure you would agree with me when I say that Ms. O'Halloran was a great witness and a very interesting one.
On behalf of the committee, I thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions and for the work that you have done.
Ms. O'Halloran: It was my pleasure, thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we have the draft plan; when we come back in September, we are going to look at the draft plan. If you have any suggestions, please forward them to Ms. Hudon. Thank you very much
(The committee adjourned.)