Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue 9 - Evidence - Meeting of November 17, 2014
OTTAWA, Monday, November 17, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met this day, at 5 p.m., to study Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Official Languages Act (communications with and services to the public).
Senator Claudette Tardif (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good afternoon, honourable senators. My name is Claudette Tardif. I am a senator for Alberta and chair of this committee. Before beginning our study, I would like to ask the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator McIntyre: Paul McIntyre, senator for New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis, deputy chair of this committee. I am from Quebec City.
Senator Maltais: Ghislain Maltais, from Quebec.
Senator Charette-Poulin: Marie Poulin. I have been representing northern Ontario since 1995.
Senator Chaput: Maria Chaput from Manitoba.
[English]
Senator Wells: David Wells, Newfoundland and Labrador.
[Translation]
The Chair: Today's meeting is comprised of two parts. We will begin with our study of Bill S-205, An Act to amend the Official Languages Act (communications with and services to the public). Following that, we will review Treasury Board Secretariat's annual reports on official languages for the last three years.
Our first witness is Marc Tremblay, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Governance, Planning and Policy Sector, at Treasury Board Secretariat.
I would like to remind you that this bill, sponsored by Senator Chaput, introduces the notion of equal quality with respect to communications and services offered in each official language by federal institutions. The bill specifies the locations in which federal institutions must offer communications and services in both official languages.
Mr. Tremblay, welcome.
Marc Tremblay, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Governance, Planning and Policy Sector, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Thank you.
The Chair: You indicated to the clerk that you did not wish to make a presentation. We will therefore proceed directly to senators' questions.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: I would also like to welcome you, Mr. Tremblay, but I confess that I am disappointed to see you have no opening remarks for us, as in my opinion the French language across this country is really quite important.
According to Treasury Board Secretariat's most recent report, a review of compliance with the regulations is under way. Given the testimony heard so far on Bill S-205, we can expect to see a reduction in the number of offices that are designated bilingual during the course of this review. Can you tell us approximately how many federal offices and service locations will be affected by the calculation of significant demand?
Mr. Tremblay: For the committee to understand this review of regulatory compliance, we must begin by stating that we are dealing with the 1988 Official Languages Act, which provides for regulations to establish which locations have significant demand or where the nature of the office warrants providing services in both official languages. In 1991, as you know, regulations were proposed. They entered into force in 1992. Under those regulations, based on the data from the 10-year census, it was determined which of the approximately 12,000 federal service locations were under the obligation to offer the public services and communicate in English in some cases, in French in others, or in both English and in French in a third case.
This regulatory compliance review is based on data from the most recent census, which was done in 2011. We have now completed the second phase of that review and, in the case of about 90 per cent of the offices, we are in a position to determine the language requirements that apply, meaning for 90 per cent of the offices that require a review every 10 years. Approximately 2,000 offices are automatically designated bilingual, either because they are associated with a federal institution's headquarters or because they are located in the National Capital Region. Of the remaining 10,000 offices, the 2-phase review is completed for about 9,000 of them. At this stage, the results, when it comes to previous bilingual designation with respect to the proposed unilingual designation, are ''positive'', since by virtue of the work I do, I have no opinion as to whether designating an office bilingual or unilingual is a good thing or a bad thing. The regulatory compliance review requires that we apply neutral and objective rules.
Following the end of those first two phases, of the 9,000 offices for which the work has been completed, 84 will have new bilingualism requirements, meaning that offices that were formally unilingual will become bilingual, and ten offices will lose their bilingual designation at the end of a transitional period.
Under Treasury Board directives, in the case of an office that was formally bilingual and becomes unilingual following the application of the new census data, there will be a transition period during which the community served by that office will be consulted.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Here is my second question: in your opinion, is it possible to restructure the services on offer in order to achieve the same results aimed for in the bill, that is, greater respect for the principle of equal services offered in both official languages?
Mr. Tremblay: I am not certain there are other ways to obtain precisely the same results Bill S-205 is aiming for. However, we have noted that providing services in the context of online services, for example, has repercussions that make the physical presence of a local office progressively less important. As we speak, while we are conducting the regulatory compliance review, local offices do remain important, in terms of the volume of service delivery and communications, but they become gradually less important the more services are offered online or over the telephone. According to the rules that currently apply, these automated services or services that are provided through centralized lines must be offered in both official languages, and on that level, we have noted an increased availability of services offered in Canadians' language of choice.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Thank you very much. I will have more questions for the second round.
Senator Maltais: Welcome, Mr. Tremblay. Did you say that you had 12,000 bilingual offices?
Mr. Tremblay: I have a total of 12,000 offices.
Senator Maltais: How many of those are bilingual?
Mr. Tremblay: About 34 per cent of them are designated bilingual. It is difficult to answer for all 12,000 of my offices today, because 1,000 of them are still awaiting the final assessment of their situation. We have begun phase 3 for those offices.
This is a true measure, as opposed to a measure by substitution. The other applicable rules are actually what are called in English ''proxies'' meaning a substitution for real demand, whereas in the case of these 1,000 offices, we will be measuring demand on site. It is therefore difficult to establish the number of offices we will have by the end of this exercise, but as we speak — and by March 31 — approximately 34 per cent of all federal offices are designated bilingual.
Senator Maltais: I imagine that it is Treasury Board, in collaboration with Canadian Heritage, that is responsible for enforcing the Official Languages Act. When you decide that a certain office will be bilingual or that another one will no longer be bilingual, is there an interdepartmental consultation or is the decision simply made by Treasury Board?
Mr. Tremblay: The way you phrased your question leads me to make some distinctions. I work at Treasury Board Secretariat, which is the administrative arm supporting Treasury Board's mission. The regulations were adopted by the Governor-in-Council, which means that the government, the cabinet, passed these regulations. We administrators are simply enforcing the regulations we were handed. The Department of Canadian Heritage therefore has no role in this file, and we have no discretion to exercise. We truly have a kind of numbers machine we have programmed, in which we enter data and the list of offices, and from which we receive a list of offices that are unilingual English, bilingual or unilingual French.
We are working closely with Heritage Canada, given its role of horizontal coordination. Even if I gave you the positive count of new offices designated bilingual as opposed to offices that will lose their bilingual language designation, in any given village, when an office that was formerly bilingual no longer is, that is a true loss. That is why, given the important work done by Heritage Canada with respect to interdepartmental consultation and the consultation of minority communities, we do work in close collaboration with that department.
Senator Maltais: With respect to the decisions you make, you mentioned that you rely almost solely on numbers; there are the two columns, and one arrives at an equation by the end of the exercise. However, amongst other criteria besides numbers, does the criterion of sufficient numbers mean anything to you?
Mr. Tremblay: I would like to clarify something once again, if you do not mind. Although I did say these were just numbers, I would like to clarify that the regulations do not only take numbers into account. The regulations identify, for example, certain types of services that for obvious reasons mean a great deal to the public, and for which the Governor-in-Council, in its wisdom, has determined that no matter what the demand is, services would be delivered bilingually.
We are also talking about the nature of offices; when it comes to public safety and health, it will be necessary to apply consistent rules automatically, and certain services will have to be bilingual. There is one aspect that deals with measuring demand, precisely because the legislator and the constituent before it, in enacting section 20 of the Charter, indicated that services would not be offered in English and in French everywhere in Canada, but would be offered where demand warrants. Parliament therefore gave us the same instructions, the Governor-in-Council put them into the regulations, and we at Treasury Board Secretariat help federal institutions to determine how to apply those rules on a 10-year basis, as stipulated.
Senator Maltais: If I have correctly understood, the expression ''sufficient number'' is not the one you use; you deal with demand.
Mr. Tremblay: Demand, yes.
Senator Charette-Poulin: Mr. Tremblay, over the course of my 20 years in the Senate, this is the first time I find myself before a witness who has not made a presentation. I find it a bit difficult to ask questions, without any frame of reference whatsoever. May I ask why you have chosen not to speak about the bill?
Mr. Tremblay: I am here as a technical witness to answer questions about the application of the Official Languages Act and its regulations, and to help the committee in its deliberations so that if you have any questions about what may be replaced, you have the necessary information to make decisions.
Senator Charette-Poulin: As you stated earlier, the secretariat facilitates regulatory application, and if I have understood correctly, that is your role and responsibility as Assistant Deputy Minister of Governance, Planning and Policy. I realize this is probably very complex work, and I am not trying to simplify it, but I gather your responsibilities largely entail facilitation that you provide to other departments.
Mr. Tremblay: Yes; I am acting assistant deputy minister. In my usual work, to which I will soon return, I am the Executive Director of the Centre of Excellence for Official Languages, which is the organizational entity created to support the execution of the Treasury Board president's mission, which itself supports Treasury Board's functions under Part VIII of the Official Languages Act.
Treasury Board and its president recommend regulatory measures to the Governor-in-Council, and did so following the adoption of the act in 1988; these regulations were adopted in 1991-92. Since then, the administrative branch has been helping institutions — because that is also part of our duties — to comply with their obligations. We could leave them to it; at last count, there were 191 federal institutions, which we could leave to determine themselves how to apply the regulations. However, we consider it more efficient and more certain to provide a central role, to have one entity ensuring regulatory compliance rather than 191, and therefore, exercise some degree of determinism as to the execution of such an important mission.
Senator Charette-Poulin: I would like to follow up on Senator Maltais' question. Even though you are what I call ''responsible for technical decisions,'' those decisions still affect regional offices; do you have a consultation system to help you make the right decisions for the right cities?
Mr. Tremblay: Once again, we do not really have any discretionary power with respect to applying these rules. I do not want to go into too much detail and you may have read the regulations: this is not a document to help the public find out where they may obtain a given service — because that would be quite an arduous task to impose upon it — but rather to help the administration make that calculation. Therefore, yes, these are indeed technical demographic rules which determine, for example, that in 2011, Vancouver was a census metropolitan area because of its population, and that such and such a rule applied to Vancouver generally speaking; the social development office located downtown offers certain types of services under certain provisions of the regulations, et cetera. The work we do is ensuring that the right rules are applied to the right situations, but the situations are determined by circumstance to a certain degree.
There are demographic data and there are the offices of federal institutions. The federal institutions tell us how many offices they manage, where they are located and the type of services they provide. So this is a double interface. Departments enter data about their offices into our software and we make sure the work was properly done. Then, depending upon the determination, different rules will apply to those offices. It is in fact, quite technical.
We do have consultations in the sense that we ensure that those we are serving — federal institutions, in this case — know what to do and are able to determine what type of offices they have; they ask us questions, they want to make sure they are doing the work properly and applying the proper rules.
As an example, during phase 2, they must determine their service area. In fact, I am not completely certain what ''determining a service area'' means. But in the case of certain types of offices, once again determined by the regulations, the linguistic designation of certain types of services was not established by their location, but rather by their service area. Therefore, we are talking about a geographical area for the census. They must consult a map that we fine-tuned for them, then they click on various service areas, or the various census zones created by Statistics Canada, and when they click on that map, they end up with the number of people whose first official spoken language is the minority language, as well as the second, third and fourth geographical areas. That number will determine whether or not they are obligated to offer services in both official languages.
In determining which areas to choose, the institution must make a decision about service delivery, and from that perspective, they can consult us to find out which aspects should be taken into account. From time to time, they may decide to consider, or even reconsider, the work they have done. When the results they obtain seem innocuous to them, or once they have shared their decision with local and national organizations that represent the minority — for example, when there is a loss of linguistic designation — the local community may say, ''Yes, but you did not take into account the fact that between office A and office B, there is a river with no bridge, or the bridge is very far, which means the local community does not use the office you designated for it, and you should have counted such and such a service area within the service area of a different office.'' In some cases, that may change the service area for that office and change its linguistic designation.
Senator Charette-Poulin: That is very helpful. I will not deny that I would have liked for you to hear representatives from different groups across the country who came to testify and spoke to us with so much passion about the fact that sometimes, by only considering numbers, some important factors go unrecognized as they will only surface in the context of consultations.
Senator Chaput: Welcome, Mr. Tremblay. We met a few times, in 2012, to discuss Bill S-205 that I tabled in 2013.
During these meetings, you explained to me the work you had to do in the context of applying the Official Languages Act and its regulations. This is work that I found fascinating, because it is comprehensive; there are endless details. I was wondering whether you could tell us a bit more about it so that senators could understand the scope of the work.
If I have understood correctly, to prepare for the 2011 exercise, you had begun preliminary work at least two years previously. Following that, there was the 2011 census; you received the final data in 2014. Now, I presume you must work with departments as to the application of this data.
Would it be fair to say that this major project has lasted about seven years, including a few years before the census and several years afterwards?
Mr. Tremblay: I will answer as a bureaucrat, for which I apologize. Indeed, when we are given a 10-year cycle for such an instrument, that means getting organized accordingly. We organize our work for there to be a period before, during and afterwards. I have other policy instruments which, for purposes of internal management, are spread out over a 5-year cycle. Treasury Board adopted these policies in 2012, we announced them, and provided information sessions in 2013. In 2014, we began to see how all of this had been implemented, whether there had been problems or issues emerging. In 2015, we will start working again to amend these policies.
So, over a 10-year cycle, there will be a bit of that, and preparatory work is done. In the case of these regulations, one particular factor that took up more of our time was technology. During the last cycle, we worked on paper. It was not so long ago, in 2001, but in 2001, we were working with paper and fax machines.
We have institutions like the RCMP, that assess their service areas, who have over 200 stations spread out across the country and who must undertake this exercise using geographic maps. Working with fax machines is a huge undertaking and subject to error. We had to reverify, redo, there were poor transmissions, and so forth. Therefore, we wanted to design an automated instrument to facilitate the work and ensure better quality. Unfortunately, automated instruments mean challenges. At times, things move along quite well, whereas at other times, programming is more difficult. Did we really need two years? Yes, we probably did need two years before having what I call the ''machine.'' Once we had the machine — you mentioned the 2011 census — indeed, it was 2012, nearly one year later, that Statistics Canada published the census data pertaining to language. For us, that is the instrument, those are the data we will input into this machine to execute the exercise, and we had to wait for the data.
Then, we conducted validation exercises. We wanted to allow institutions to learn about their results, but once we received the machine and the data, we did not require much time to use the software. Given the nature of the constitutional rights in question, we took this very seriously and worked meticulously. We are now talking about phase 1. That is when measuring the demand took place, meaning that the numbers and data from the census on the first official language spoken were evaluated.
During the second phase, which took about eight or nine months, the institutions had to establish their service area. Earlier, I referred to the software allowing them to that. Once again, there was work to do.
What is beyond our control is that at times institutions did not maintain their list of offices up to date. They did not necessarily see any great value in that. There are no other directories. In fact, this is another anomaly, but we at the small Centre of Excellence for Official Languages, are often called upon to provide data on all the federal offices, as there is no other central office able to do so.
However, if they do not do that work, when we tell the institutions that they have X number of bilingual offices, Y number of unilingual French offices, Z number of unilingual English offices, they come back to us saying that their numbers are lower. In those cases, we advise them to review their own lists. There may be offices that no longer exist, offices that have been amalgamated; all kinds of situations may transpire throughout the history of an institution, and that creates certain delays and a degree of complexity that is part of the administrative work of each of our organizations.
Senator Chaput: Thank you, I understand better now. I am pleased to hear that you are beginning to use an automated service. The next 10-year census will take place in 2021; when will you begin to prepare for that census?
Mr. Tremblay: I would have to take a look at our multiyear planning, but it should begin around 2017 or 2018. Please understand that we have an electronic machine that now functions according to certain rules; between now and then, all kinds of things can happen, including legislative amendments, regulatory amendments, service delivery changes, and so forth. Our electronic tool may no longer be appropriate, or it may fail for other reasons. We will have to ensure that everything is working properly, but normally, we would begin our preparations in 2017-18 in order to have everything we need on the day Statistics Canada provides us with its data, which I assume would be in 2022.
However, these are not considerable resources we are talking about. There is one person in charge as the manager of three or four others, and that person has many other issues to deal with. The work will be spread over a period of time we call ''keeping the lights on.'' There is a long period between two cycles where we have to keep the lights on.
Senator Chaput: One last brief question. Given what you have just told us, what would be the most appropriate time to amend the regulations so that we can include these changes in the existing process? Should such an amendment be made in 2017-2018 at the latest?
Mr. Tremblay: That is a question I can only answer by analogy. In the context of the Official Languages Act, there are two examples of regulatory measures: the first measure concerns the regulations, and the second is to amend a provision in response to a ruling by the courts stating that there was a slight shortcoming to that regulation. In the first case, the law was passed in 1988 but the regulation was only completed in 1991. Why? In this case the issues are constitutional and quasi-constitutional because, under the Official Languages Act of 1988, an ironclad procedure was established for drafting regulations. The procedure includes public consultations, and a specific number of regulations required deliberations in both Houses of Parliament — in the Senate and in the House of Commons — before they could be adopted. This was all to ensure that the work was done rigorously and that everybody, particularly parliamentarians, could contribute fully to the process. It also allowed for the full participation of the public and members of minority communities.
It took three years the first time and two and a half years the second time. You have to understand that in minority government situations, for example, sitting days where regulations can be submitted to the attention of Parliament may occur in quick succession and that a certain amount of time may elapse before arriving at a regulation that has gone through all of the steps required in sections — if I remember correctly — 84 and following of the act.
Senator Chaput: So you cannot give me an answer in terms of years? Would it be possible to aim for 2017-18?
Mr. Tremblay: What I can tell you is that there are ways and that it depends on the scope of the regulation you are trying to put in place and how acceptable the project is. Was there much discussion back and forth? In 1991, there had been much discussion on both sides, and much parliamentary work was done by this committee. If I remember correctly, this committee was a joint committee at the time. Much work was done to study this project. All of this is a little bit beyond the scope of my work. This is why I cannot estimate how much time this would take. However, experience shows that, in this field, a significant amount of time will be required because this legislation attracts much attention, and the regulations lead to debates that are quite broad, as we have seen in the past.
Senator Chaput: We should plan for it to take two years rather than six months, in that case.
Senator McIntyre: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Tremblay. I understand that, under the Official Languages Act, the Secretariat's obligations are mainly related to Parts IV, V and VI of the act. I also understand that you play a role in implementing Part VII, which deals with the development of official language minority communities and the promotion of linguistic duality.
The secretariat works very closely with Canadian Heritage in this regard. Accountability, for example, is a responsibility shared between the secretariat and Canadian Heritage. The secretariat is mainly responsible for Parts IV, V and VI of the Official Languages Act, while Canadian Heritage is chiefly responsible for Part VII of the act. What connection or relationship do you have with Canadian Heritage in terms of the implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act?
Mr. Tremblay: There are a number of elements to the answer to this seemingly simple question. First of all, the Treasury Board Secretariat is a federal institution and has no regional operations. This federal institution does not have a grants and contributions program. It is a central agency, and as is true of all federal institutions, the secretariat is subject to Part VII of the act and implements positive measures to support communities and the equality of status for English and French.
My team is not the organization within the Treasury Board Secretariat responsible for ensuring the coordination of this portion of our role; rather, that is what we call departmental work, and it is the organization as organization. I have colleagues who are in charge of the language of services and communications and who are responsible for Part VII and other issues of this nature at the departmental level.
In other words, my team is responsible for our work in relation to the central agency. Our work in this field consists in part of supporting other policy centres and authorities that advise the president and Treasury Board in developing this advice.
We represent the adviser to the advisers, the specialist who advises our other colleagues at the Treasury Board Secretariat when they are called upon to provide guidance. In this context, we ensured that our consulting analysts at the secretariat who review Treasury Board submissions have the tools, a manual and an analysis worksheet to consider not only Parts IV, V and VI, for which my unit plays a direct supporting role at Treasury Board, but also for Part VII. We thought it was good policy and a best practice to ensure that our colleagues take these factors into consideration when providing guidance.
Senator McIntyre: I understand that the secretariat and Canadian Heritage have changed their accountability approach. They now report every three years instead of every year, as was done in the past. What do you think of this new approach?
Mr. Tremblay: We just concluded the first three-year cycle under this new approach. What is new is the fact that we worked with Canadian Heritage to lighten the administrative burden of about 200 federal institutions that are required to report on Parts IV, V and VI as well as Part VII.
There are efficiencies to be gained by asking them to report just once. But there is more. We also wanted to transform the governance of official languages within institutions.
Traditionally, in the past, Parts IV, V and VI dealt with human resources. When we began setting up the official languages program, these positions had to be filled. My universe was therefore made up of human resources branches from the departments. At Canadian Heritage, this meant programs, grants and contributions. All of these were included in the policies or programs groups within the departments.
This created silos that often did not communicate with each other. It was inefficient for a deputy minister to receive a report on Part VII of the Official Languages Act in November and to also receive, before or after that report, another report from the same institution for Parts IV, V and VI. There was also a lack of coordination and overview of what the institutions could do to comply with the entire act and also the spirit of the law.
We are at the second year of this cycle with Canadian Heritage. We continue to believe that there were structuring effects and that people from the various silos had more interaction, which allowed for more communication between people with various official languages responsibilities within the departments.
The Chair: We will now begin a second round of questions. I would ask you to be specific when asking questions because we have little time.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Mr. Tremblay, although the two recent annual reports from the Treasury Board Secretariat mentioned the importance of social media as new methods of communication and that a number of federal institutions already use Twitter and Facebook, they did not indicate whether you had conducted formal research on the use of social media, as we had recommended in our committee report tabled in October 2012 entitled Internet, New Media and Social Media: Respect for Language Rights! Are you planning to conduct formal research on the use of social media by federal institutions?
Mr. Tremblay: I think the answer lies in the use of the word ''formal.'' We do not have any resources to allocate to this type of research as part of immediate priorities in the sense that this kind of research would require applying a scientific method, having experts on the matter, and ensuring that the work was done thoroughly.
The world of social media evolves almost daily and the tools we use are constantly changing. What we are doing instead, which is in a way more compatible with our mission, is to monitor the general way in which organizations use social media and stay abreast of developments so that they can respond relatively quickly.
I repeat, things change very quickly and any studies we could conduct on any aspect would become irrelevant very quickly.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: In his 2012-13 annual report, the Commissioner of Official Languages recommended that the president of the Treasury Board verify whether federal institutions had put in place a directive on language training and report to Parliament in 2014-15. Has this type of directive been put in place by all federal institutions?
Mr. Tremblay: I do not know the answer to that question. Treasury Board gave the secretariat the mandate to monitor the implementation of current policies. There are no policies at Treasury Board regarding language training. There is no requirement that each deputy minister adopt a directive on language training within his or her organization.
We would be going beyond the responsibilities entrusted to us if we went ahead. The commissioner's first recommendation on this subject was for deputy heads, who have not indicated how they will follow up on these recommendations.
As a central agency, we work with these deputy ministers and especially their representatives, as part of a working group on language training to establish whether there should be any follow-ups to this and other recommendations the commissioner made in his reports. The departments and organizations are still reviewing the issue at this time.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: In other words, you did not take this directive into consideration?
The Chair: Colleagues, I will remind you that we will be receiving a second panel to discuss the annual reports of the Treasury Board. Mr. Daniel Watson will join Mr. Tremblay to discuss this issue. For that part of the meeting, we will focus on Bill S-205.
Senator Maltais: I have a brief question, Mr. Tremblay. You said you were setting up Internet access. Have you received more requests for information since you set up your Internet access?
Mr. Tremblay: At the Treasury Board Secretariat?
Senator Maltais: Yes.
Mr. Tremblay: I would not say that there was a significant increase in the number of requests related to official languages that we receive from the public. Has there been an increase in the use of Internet networks and other technologies for all federal institutions? I think that the answer is clearly yes. Some service providers promote this feature.
As time goes on, I think some services will have to be available electronically. That is the way of the future and of growth for service delivery and communications.
Senator Charette-Poulin: Mr. Tremblay, earlier you mentioned that automated services are now being provided. Is the quality the same in English and in French? Are all services provided in both languages all across the country?
Mr. Tremblay: The model that is generally used is that of consistent bilingual service delivery. We could apply the act and regulations a little more strictly and say that communications from a local office should be subject to local rules. However, federal institutions are increasingly deciding that if they are going to do the work once, that is, preparing a tool for one region, why not make it more broadly available? Most of our websites are now used nationally, and we provide services in both official languages. In that sense, there has been an increase in the opportunity to use English and French nationally.
As for the quality of services, as with anything else, there are situations when delivery is uneven. As the Supreme Court noted, there may be times when services provided in English or in French may not meet our expectations. In other cases, the French version of a text may not have been prepared as carefully as it should have been. We can all make mistakes, especially now that we live in an era where the public expects things to be done quickly. It would be inaccurate to say that these kinds of situations do not ever occur. The goal is to have services in French offered as quickly and at the same quality level as any services provided in English. The guidance and manuals we provide to institutions are aimed at ensuring that this is the case.
Let us take 1-800 lines as an example. There are ways for institutions to ensure that wait times to obtain services in French are not any longer than those for services in English. Any dedicated line system will not have longer wait times on the French line than on the English line. You know, the French that is used when responding to calls on these lines is the French that is spoken by our francophones right across the country. These services are most often delivered in the service provider's first language, as using these tools allow us to distribute the work to areas where the capacity to provide these services exists. There are therefore significant advantages, which we continue to discover, to these methods of service delivery.
Senator Charette-Poulin: Thank you.
Senator Chaput: I would like to talk briefly about the cost of regulation compliance review. We know your secretariat has a budget to monitor this. If I understood correctly, each department is responsible for its own review, using your tools. The resources assigned to this exercise are distributed among all departments and institutions providing services to the public. That would be about how things are.
Do you have an idea of the overall amount spent by all of the departments and institutions, including the Treasury Board Secretariat, to manage this exercise?
Mr. Tremblay: No, we do not have any specific numbers. It would be very difficult to arrive at any. In most departments, according to our policies, there is one person designated as the person responsible for official languages. In some larger departments, there may be a single person but that person would manage a whole team. In many smaller organizations, there is one person who is in charge of this but who also has other responsibilities.
In these cases, it is difficult to determine what the breakdown is, unless the organization uses a time-reporting system, which some, but not all, organizations do. Even within my own team, nobody is in charge of this exercise full-time. At last count, six people are currently working on the team responsible for the regulation, but they also have a number of other duties and are therefore indirectly related to regulation compliance review. It is therefore difficult to add up the expenses related to this exercise the way the Auditor General of Canada would.
Senator Chaput: That is what I thought, but I wanted to hear you say it. If we were to propose a new regulation — this is something I care about and bring back often, please forgive me — your secretariat would be in charge of developing the required tools and all the other departments that already have persons responsible for official languages would be in charge of enforcing the new regulation, instead of the previous version. That is quite simplistic, but is that not how it would be?
Mr. Tremblay: That would essentially be what would happen, but there would be other transition costs related to this step. For now, we do not have any plans to amend the regulations. No team at the secretariat is in charge of amending the regulations or implementing new ones. This would take a fair number of resources and it would also take two or three years, as I mentioned previously. There would also be potential costs related to the implementation of requirements for new bilingual offices, as the bill would presumably increase the number of bilingual offices instead of decreasing them.
Senator Chaput: The goal could also be to use automated services even more efficiently throughout the entire country so that all of our federal offices can provide services in both official languages all across Canada without generating additional costs. We do not know, do we?
Mr. Tremblay: That is not quite the purpose of the regulation. In fact, what you have just described as the ideal situation already exists to a certain extent. Automated services, through the 1-800 number, are already provided to everyone. Everyone across Canada has access to online services. Every single person in Canada has access to services in the official language of his or her choice. What the regulations deal with are situations where you go to a federal institution's local office — and this is provided for under the act and its regulations — and services may not be available in both official languages at the counter or when you call that local office.
Senator Chaput: Thank you for that clarification, it is very much appreciated.
The Chair: You have explained in detail the fact that, in your role, you ensure that the regulations are respected and applied by all departments. In the context of your responsibilities as assistant deputy minister, do you advise the minister on the subject of Bill S-205?
Mr. Tremblay: My advice to the president is subject to cabinet confidentiality. As such, I am unable to answer that question.
The Chair: I did not ask you for your opinion of the bill, Mr. Tremblay, but rather if, among your responsibilities, you have that role.
Mr. Tremblay: In the context of my responsibilities, it is clear that I am the main adviser to the president, generally speaking, with regard to official languages.
The Chair: Thank you. Are there any other questions? If there are no further questions, I would like to thank you, Mr. Tremblay, for appearing and providing your information and explanations today. We will now take a five-minute break to prepare the next group of witnesses.
(The committee suspended.)
(The committee resumed.)
The Chair: Honourable senators, we will now turn to the question of the three most recent annual reports tabled by the Treasury Board Secretariat in Parliament. Under the Official Languages Act, the Treasury Board Secretariat has responsibility for the general direction and coordination of federal policies and programs relating to language of service, under Part IV; language of work, under Part V; and the equitable participation of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians in federal institutions, under Part VI.
I am very happy, on behalf of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages, to welcome Daniel Watson, Chief Human Resources Officer and, once again, Marc Tremblay, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Governance, Planning and Policy Sector.
I invite Mr. Watson to begin his remarks.
Daniel Watson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. As you know, I am accompanied by Marc Tremblay, the Acting Assistant Deputy Minister of the Governance, Planning and Policy Sector, within the Treasury Board Secretariat. Let me begin with a few words on the role of the Treasury Board Secretariat in official languages.
We support approximately 200 federal institutions subject to the Official Languages Act in fulfilling their linguistic obligations under Parts IV, V and VI of the act.
[English]
Respectively, these three parts relate to communications with and services to the public, language of work and the participation of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians. Our support includes providing institutions with guidance, coordination and the tools they need to comply with the Official Languages Act.
As you know, our findings and observations on the progress federal institutions are making are found in the annual report on official languages. Our last report for the fiscal year of 2012-13 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the annual report on official languages, as well as the renewed Official Languages Act coming into force in 1988. This important milestone allowed us to look back on how far we have come.
[Translation]
Indeed, in 1988, one in three employees in the government was bilingual. Today, the public service has a pool of bilingual employees that makes up 45 per cent of its workforce. This has allowed the government to communicate with and serve Canadians more effectively in the official language of their choice. Today, the vast majority of Canadians have access to federal services in the official language of their choice by one means or another.
As you know, deputy heads of federal institutions have primary responsibility for implementing the act within their organization, including designing and delivering effectively the Official Languages Program. Our annual reviews of their activities and progress are now conducted on a three-year cycle. This means every institution is up for review at least once every three years, which is helping us to reduce the reporting burden of federal institutions and leads to a better allocation of resources.
This approach is consistent with the recommendations of both the Auditor General and the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service, which have called on central agencies responsible for human resources management to simplify and integrate data collection.
In 2011-12, we also began coordinating data and information collection with Canadian Heritage, which is responsible for Part VII of the act. This is to ensure institutions only complete one questionnaire, and is a positive step towards a more consistent and integrated implementation of all parts of the Official Languages Act.
[English]
Our annual reports indicate progress in a number of areas. On training, they demonstrate that a majority of institutions provide language training for career advancement and to meet position requirements. They also provide a work environment conducive to the use and maintenance of second-language skills for employees returning from language training.
On communicating with the public, our reports show that a large majority of institutions have taken effective measures. For example, almost all of the institutions questioned for the 2012-13 report stated that their electronic communications and website content are available in both official languages, that they are posted simultaneously, and that the English and French versions are nearly always and very often of equal quality.
Institutions have also consistently indicated that they have implemented effective measures to greet the public in both official languages on the telephone and in their use of displays, posters and recorded messages.
However, they also recognize they must continue to improve their results for the active offer of bilingual services in person. To that end, many have introduced telephone or in-person checks at some offices.
As for language of work, a majority of institutions indicated that documents can be written in the employee's official language of choice and that effective measures are being taken to create a work environment that is conducive to the use of both official languages.
[Translation]
Our reviews also show that anglophones and francophones are well represented across federal institutions subject to the act. The 2012-13 annual report shows the participation rate of anglophones in federal institutions was 73.3 per cent, while the participation of francophones was 26.6 per cent. This very closely matches the latest census data, showing that English is the first official language for 75 per cent of Canada's population and French for 23.2 per cent.
We have also been working with institutions in helping them to update the linguistic obligations of their federal offices, which could change as a result of Statistics Canada's release of the language data from the 2011 census. This Official Languages Regulations Reapplication exercise is currently underway, and some 10,000 federal offices are reviewing and adjusting their linguistic obligations. To put that in perspective, I think that there are two and a half times more service points than there are Tim Horton's restaurants in Canada.
The preliminary results indicate that there will not be a significant impact on minority official languages communities. In the weeks and months to come, my office will continue to provide advice and support to institutions require to take measures in response to the census results. We will also continue to support institutions in adapting to today's rapidly changing environment of instantaneous communication, particularly with respect to the use of social media. For example, our new official languages policy suite that came into effect in November 2012 takes into consideration new technologies.
[English]
Overall, the new suite gives deputy heads the tools they need by clarifying official languages obligations while allowing them the flexibility to put in place practices and procedures suited to their institutions and to the public they serve.
Since the release of the first annual report on official languages, much has been achieved. Challenges remain, but institutions are showing a strong commitment to meeting their obligations under the act.
[Translation]
This completes my opening remarks. We would now be happy to take the committee's questions. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Watson. The first question goes to Senator Chaput, followed by Senator Maltais.
Senator Chaput: Mr. Watson, I would like to ask a question concerning federal institutions that use third parties to reduce their operating costs, either through subcontracting, partnerships, or privatization. I will use the example of Canada Post which, for over-the-counter services, now signs an agreement with a third party, who is often a private local business that also offers Canada Post services.
Recently another Senate committee, of which I am a member, studied the issue of prisons where chaplains' services are now offered by a private business, which provides chaplains who offer service to prisoners.
It is difficult to ensure that services are offered in both official languages; this is the case, for example, in Manitoba, in French, and it is that much more difficult when services are offered by a third party, because of the language provision.
If I understand correctly, your policies indicate that when services are provided by a third party, there must be a language provision. How can this language provision be enforced if it is not respected? Who has that responsibility? This is a weakness. You have remade your policies; some have a much greater scope, but when it comes to subcontracting, there is truly a major weakness which often comes out at the local level in the smallest communities.
Mr. Watson: That is an excellent question. Under the act, the deputy head is responsible for program and service delivery, and regardless of the method of program and service delivery, the deputy head remains responsible. Whether it is done by public servants or people hired on a contractual basis, the responsibilities of the deputy head under the act do not change at all. When we negotiate a contract with a third party for program and service delivery, yes, to meet these obligations, the deputy head will ensure that the provisions are included in the contract.
We have all kinds of federal government contracts to manage a host of things. We undoubtedly have more contracts than any other employer or entity in Canada. The measures contained in these contracts are measures that all involved are very familiar with. It is through these contracts that the deputy minister ensures that the group providing the program and service delivery meets the requirements, and the contracts also outline penalties and methods set out for cases of non-compliance.
Senator Chaput: Have you ever had to impose penalties for non-compliance with a contract? Does Treasury Board impose the penalties or is it the deputy head of the department in question?
Mr. Watson: Let us look at how the act works. The act imposes an obligation on the deputy head to oversee service under the act. If a contract signed by a deputy head does not respect what it stipulated in the act, the deputy head must take remedial action.
Senator Chaput: As regards the deputy head, in a case of a service provided by a third party, like Canada Post, would the department be responsible or is it Treasury Board who is the deputy head in this case?
Mr. Watson: The responsibility under the act is always assigned to the same person.
Senator Chaput: Within a department.
Mr. Watson: In this case, the deputy head of the entity would be responsible for ensuring the service in question. My colleague, Mr. Tremblay would perhaps like to add something on this, but essentially that is how it works.
Senator Chaput: So it would be the entity or the department in charge that would be responsible.
Mr. Watson: Yes, because it is the act itself that assigns that responsibility to the deputy head.
Senator Chaput: Does your responsibility end once you have developed the policy? A linguistic provision is discussed and then your responsibility at Treasury Board ends? The issue is not black or white —
Mr. Watson: Our work is never done.
Senator Chaput: Yes, I understand that.
Mr. Watson: What we would do in that case is develop the tools and good knowledge, develop the networks to help people who are responsible in the various agencies and entities so that they can come together and share best practices and be well informed on the issue.
We also produce reports. For example, as regards the report we are discussing today, if someone failed to uphold his or her responsibilities, we would identify that. The act confers that responsibility upon the deputy head in question, and we help that deputy head so that that person is more likely to adequately meet his obligations.
Senator Maltais: Welcome, Mr. Watson.
You indicated in your brief, like Mr. Tremblay, that the institutions questioned are government services, and the various departments have said that it is much quicker to communicate using the website.
If people now communicate more using electronic services, which did not exist five or six years ago, does that mean that the various offices across Canada require less personnel? If people are now working more from their homes rather than going in to an office, does that mean we need fewer regional offices?
Mr. Watson: I am not an expert in designing services and programs. I know of no study that establishes a clear link between those two facts you stated. Canadians still use offices despite the arrival of Internet and online services. It is clear, however, that in the case of several services, people are going online. The Canada Revenue Agency offers a good example: it announced that about 84 per cent of people filed their income tax papers electronically. Ten years ago, almost no one did.
That being said, I don't know if anyone has come to the conclusion that this can allow for a reduced number of offices. I really am not an expert on the issue.
Senator Maltais: Are any of the bilingual service requests you receive from communities across Canada in 2012 or 2013 under review or backlogged, for administrative or other reasons? How many of them are there?
Mr. Watson: Let us say that every time we have undertaken the review — in 1991, 2001, and the one we started in 2011 — we have observed a sometimes notable, sometimes minimal increase, in the number of offices that ended up being designated bilingual. I believe this illustrates the robust nature of the rules put in place to deal with the major geographical and demographic changes we have seen in the last 25 years. It also indicates that there has been an increase in the number of bilingual offices across Canada, throughout all the regions. The bilingual offices didn't all move to a single region. All over Canada, we have seen not only good stability, but also a certain amount of growth.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: The official languages commissioner believes that the decentralization of official languages activities has negatively impacted federal public servants' rights regarding language at work. I speak here of both public servants with French as a mother tongue and those with English as a mother tongue.
The commissioner remarked in his 2012-13 annual report that there is no central figure to supervise or assess the effects of this decentralization. He spoke of having a ceiling in terms of language at work. How do you deal with institutions that do not fulfil their linguistic obligations? And what concrete measures have you taken in recent years to strengthen the language rights of federal public servants?
Mr. Watson: Thank you for the question. We have taken several measures. We understand the capital importance of language at work, as well as that of having a bilingual public service and institutions that Canadians everywhere can deal with in their language of choice. We know it is very important and we have to show that on a daily basis.
In terms of measures, I can point to the new policy and the three new directives adopted in 2012, which gather in a much more cohesive way what before was scattered.
Furthermore, we have made available to institutions an electronic platform called ''Clearspace.'' In this new world of decentralization and communications technology, we have connected public servants from across the country so that they may share their best practices, or simply encourage one another to develop solutions to particular challenges faced by certain institutions.
This platform is used by many people, but it is mostly used by a group we call ''COLOC,'' made up of 237 members from 90 institutions that continuously work together and help each other out. We are a part of the group and we support those institutions and members.
We also organize events, awareness sessions, and meetings to promote best practices. We hold, for example, an annual conference bringing together all the official languages champions in all government departments.
We have also tackled certain policy governance issues to make the processes clearer, and thus gain a better understanding of the impact of our decisions.
All of these measures aim not only to clarify standards and expectations, but also to support people and help them achieve those standards.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Have you something to add, Mr. Tremblay?
Mr. Tremblay: I would perhaps add two examples of the kinds of actions that can be taken.
The first example is the surveys taken of public servants, by means of the champions' network we alluded to. Mr. Watson is also responsible for this survey given to public servants every three years. A group came to us to make sure, first of all, that we would maintain the five language-related questions we had in the last survey. This group actually fought to get more questions added, mainly a question about language used during meetings, which is one of those issues that makes public servants feel their right to work in the language of their choice is not always respected. This tool will thus give us a clear view of the impressions employees have about using their language in the workplace. This information will support the development of work plans by those highest up, meaning CEOs, deputy heads.
The second example is the work spearheaded by the former Clerk of the Privy Council to develop a vision that we now know as ''Destination 2020.'' It was a wide-ranging dialogue between public servants on social media, without any censorship or refereeing, which gave everyone the opportunity to lay out their points of view or their grievances.
That space saw a number of discussions regarding language, and led the clerk to ask us to take certain steps in order to improve the situation and respond to the concerns raised by employees.
The School of Public Service committed to taking certain steps to improve the availability of certain language training tools. One of the employee complaints dealt with the difficulty in accessing language training, particularly in the regions.
So there you have two examples of the additional measures we have taken in response to certain weaknesses.
The Chair: Mr. Watson, if I understand correctly, the 2013 to 2018 Official Languages of Canada Roadmap does not contain any specific commitment pertaining to official languages in the public service. Furthermore, the funds previously earmarked for the Official Languages Centre of Excellence and for the governance of that horizontal initiative have been cut. When will the government make public the horizontal management and accountability framework for the 2013-18 roadmap?
Mr. Watson: My colleague here is an expert on the roadmap, so I will yield the floor to him in a few minutes. We already use many tools to measure impacts and results. One of these is the annual report we draw up, which allows up to conduct follow-ups with each institution on a three-year cycle. Another is the public service survey, which is the second largest survey undertaken by Statistics Canada. We just concluded it. We asked all sorts of questions. We even added one that deals with the subject at hand. The third thing I would point out is what we call the Management Accountability Framework, through which we get a clear view of departmental operations and what they do in a variety of areas, including very critical official languages issues. With these three measures, we illustrate the very important results and progress achieved in the matter of official languages in the public service.
As for the roadmap specifically, the approach was a little different this time around in terms of the issues discussed, and for more detail, I will cede the floor to Mr. Tremblay.
Mr. Tremblay: Mr. Watson spoke mainly of measures that fall under the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat's purview, meaning the Parts IV, V and VI we have been talking about. The roadmap, for reasons stemming from the consultative process underpinning it, is the product of wide-ranging consultations with minority communities, who in the end did not raise, among the issues and priorities concerning them, any tied to the public service. The roadmap is a reflection of the wishes expressed throughout the consultations. This does not mean — and I insist on this — that there was any decrease in funding available for the issues that TBS deals with. Those issues are simply no longer part of the roadmap, but we still have the necessary resources to continue our work.
As for the accountability framework you alluded to and which the commissioner suggested, — if memory serves, that was the gist of your question — Canadian Heritage, as the coordinator of the roadmap, will ensure its follow-up. However, I have no indication from the work we do together that there will be any absence of framework. It should come, and it will contain the same accountabilities as found in our previous roadmap.
The Chair: As for the federal institutions not included in the 2013-18 roadmap, have you noticed any difference in their compliance with linguistic obligations compared to the ones that are included?
Mr. Watson: I have not noticed anything of the sort. On the contrary, when we raise official languages issues with our deputy minister colleagues, for example, we also see what great respect they have for them. When we undertook studies for the report, it was clear that each institution we spoke to had put a lot of effort into the issue of official languages as part of its business.
Despite the great changes to the size of the public service in the last three years, we see that the percentage of bilingual employees and positions has actually increased. This is not an accident. It is because people have taken bilingualism seriously.
Senator McIntyre: I want to bring up the issue of obligations. The secretariat's obligations towards federal institutions are laid out in Parts IV, V and VI of the Official Languages Act, whereas the Department of Canadian Heritage has obligations under Part VII of the Official Languages Act. Now with the exception of the Senate, the House of Commons, the Library of Parliament, the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer and the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, is there a follow-up in terms of official languages?
Mr. Watson: The goal of our report is to review all these institutions on a three-year cycle in order to measure how well they fulfil their obligations, as well as to provide an account of the situation. Even though we are not responsible for ensuring the delivery of services and programs as per the first question, we are nevertheless responsible for reporting on it. We are tasked with providing tools to help people arrive at conclusions we all hope for, and we have the obligation to set the standards — the expectations and the related policies. That is our role in that environment, but it is the deputy heads who are responsible for ensuring obligations under the act are fulfilled within their own institutions.
Senator McIntyre: So the follow-up is done by the deputy heads and the Treasury Board Secretariat.
Mr. Watson: Correct. The deputy head is responsible for ensuring that he or she has met all the requirements under the Official Languages Act as it pertains to his or her institution, and we eventually issue a report on how well they did.
Mr. Tremblay: Perhaps I can offer a clarification. The organizations you mentioned earlier lie, in fact, outside the Treasury Board's purview because they are parliamentary bodies. It would thus be inappropriate to subject organizations such as the Senate, the House of Commons, the Library of Parliament, or those entities known as ''agents of Parliament'' in common parlance, such as the Senate Ethics Officer, to that oversight. These entities have three masters: you, meaning Senate and House of Commons committees; the Commissioner of Official Languages, who has the mandate to investigate, and has done just that in the case of parliamentary committees on occasion, and the courts, which can intervene when there are allegations of language rights being breached.
Mr. Watson: I misunderstood your question. I was speaking of institutions for which we are responsible. I apologize if you meant the others you named — I did not properly answer your question.
Senator McIntyre: You and Mr. Tremblay answered my question just fine. Thank you.
The Chair: Second round of questions.
Senator Chaput: My question is along the lines of those asked by Senator Fortin-Duplessis, though it will take a different tack. I want to know how budget cuts have affected the ability of federal institutions to fulfil their language obligations.
In his 2012-13 report, the Commissioner of Official Languages broached the complaints he received on the matter, and said that he needed to check with the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. There was talk of providing the statements you ask of federal institutions. There could be new questions to evaluate whether the cuts had repercussions or not.
Do you currently have any way of measuring the effect of budget cuts on the execution of the Official Languages Program?
Mr. Watson: I will say again that the deputy heads of departments and institutions are the ones responsible for insuring they fulfil all of their obligations under the Official Languages Act. We then issue a report for all of the institutions, on a three-year cycle. Through what we call the Management Accountability Framework, and those official languages champions networks, we have both formal and informal discussions about the challenges faced by departments and what can be done about them.
I have to tell you that in the context of the budget cuts we recently saw, the departments and agencies in question closely considered the delivery of all services and programs, including official languages in particular. Again, I come back to the fact that not only was there no drop in the number of bilingual positions, but indeed, there was a slight increase in the percentage of these positions. You do not get a result like that without spending a lot of time and effort thinking about how to maintain the capacity to meet your obligations.
Senator Chaput: So your reference tool is the reports you ask the federal departments to provide?
Mr. Watson: There are the reports, yes, but there are also the surveys given to public servants as well as the informal discussions we have with the official languages champions. If we ever found out that a complaint had been lodged with the Commissioner of Official Languages, it would concern us greatly, and we would analyze the situation to see if there were any lesson to be learned, and sometimes, even before a report is published. Those are additional important points.
Mr. Tremblay: Not all data find their way into the reports. I am simply making a clarification; there are data that are systematically collected, such as our indicators on the program's health, that have been part of our annual reports for many years and that show up in the statistics tables found at the end of the report. The data come from the human resources payroll systems and are collected annually for all institutions.
Senator Chaput: Could this data be used to determine whether budget cuts had an effect, for example?
Mr. Tremblay: If we saw, for example, a drop in the proportion of francophones below their representation in the general population, which falls under Part VI of the act, it could signal something requiring attention. If we observed a gradual decline in the way bilingual position holders were meeting the linguistic requirements of their job, it could be another indication that something was off.
All these indicators show us, in the reports we are studying today and the ones Mr. Watson alluded to earlier, improved, or at the very least, stable numbers. These indicators thus tell us about the capacity to offer and deliver services, if you will, according to policies and the requirements of the act.
Mr. Watson: You asked if there was any way to determine what difficulties budget cuts could have created. Had there been problems, no matter the reason, we would have indicators that would give us a good idea about what to watch closely.
Senator Chaput: If I understand correctly, you are open to discussing the complaints he has received about the budget cuts effects with the Commissioner of Official Languages? If he has received such complaints, you would be ready to discuss the matter with him?
Mr. Watson: We are always ready and quite happy to speak with the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Senator Chaput: If those complaints turned out to be well-founded, you would be ready, if need be, to add new questions to the federal institutions review or to do what it takes to avoid the situation in the future?
Mr. Watson: If ever obligations under the act were not met, we would want to know, and we would want to find solutions. Absolutely.
Senator Maltais: All this work done by you and all government departments must have a cost. Could you tell us what it is for your department?
Mr. Watson: I have always had trouble with that question, which is to determine whether answering the phone in one language or the other, the language of the caller, costs more under the obligations set out by the act than if we were to answer it in only one language.
Senator Maltais: I am sorry, I did not express myself correctly. I understand quite well what you are saying, and that is perfectly normal in a country like Canada. But is there a cost to bilingualism?
Mr. Watson: If you are offering language training, for example, there is a cost to that. I would not know where to begin or where to end if I were to add or subtract costs to that. It is up for debate. Through the years, we have had some data about certain costs. I know people outside our department have offered up their own ideas about the costs. We do not have a specific number we could give you.
Senator Maltais: What I am getting at is that bilingualism cannot be calculated as a cost, simply because it is a service we are providing to the population, and a service does not make money. I have never seen a service that makes money, and this is a service, as you say so well, offered from Vancouver to Labrador to St. John's and everywhere in between. We cannot assess its cost.
Now, if we were to add things to it, would there be costs? For example, Senator Chaput's Bill S-205. According to you are there economic costs associated to it?
Mr. Watson: I am unable to prognosticate in that regard. I would like to come back to the issue of serving Canadians across the country. This obviously requires certain investments and certain resources, but I am unable to attribute a set of activities to a certain set of policies.
Senator Maltais: It cannot be assessed either. I do not think you can establish the cost of a phone call. It would be impossible: it is a service. Canada has two official languages, and Canadians, whether they speak one or the other, are entitled to receive services in the official language of their choice. In my view, that cost cannot be set. It is very difficult to do so. In Switzerland, there are four official languages. They have five million people. I asked the government there how much it cost them, and no one knew, because these are mandatory services under the laws of their country. I do not think anyone can provide an accurate number for these services. We must see it as a service, and you explain that well. I think your explanation is spot on, and that will no doubt remove any judicial pressure, as always in cases where costs cannot be assessed.
I am reminded of a term that the Supreme Court was never able to define: ''sufficient number.'' The court did not want to define the term when Bill 178 was invalidated. The Official Languages Commissioner did not wish to define it either. Mr. Tremblay skated around it too, the sign of a good lawyer. But these are all things we cannot define in absolute terms. That is how I see it. If you have anything to add, please do.
Mr. Tremblay: To us, as a central agency, quantifying costs without taking into consideration the advantages would be a mistake. These would probably be difficult to quantify as well. However, a federal institution that begins to provide services in the official languages will incur costs. We could draw up an analogy with what would happen if Bill S-205 were passed and if new regulation was put in place — similar to what we are seeing now — the committee could ask that question of the Canada Border Services Agency, for example. CBSA would have newly designated bilingual offices, and given the nature of its services, it would want to comply with the requirements of the regulation compliance review, keeping in mind that its service includes the use of firearms that require rather long mandatory training for its employees, which would lead to significant costs. However, at that point, CBSA would be quantifying costs and developing an implementation plan as the initiative would be costly and complicated. In the case of CBSA, given its staff, it would have to move entire families of federal employees in order to comply with the new requirements.
Therefore there are implementation costs involved, but there are also other, social costs: family costs, moving costs, language training, firearms training, and the list goes on.
Thus, the CBSA, and other institutions, would be in a better position to provide you with information on the costs related to a new bilingual office designation, anywhere in Canada.
Mr. Watson: It is very easy, relatively speaking, to spend more or less money. What can sometimes be more difficult is establishing where these increases or decreases will take place. Clearly, then, we can spend more or less money on official languages or on anything else we can think of to spend or save money on. The issue that is more difficult to deal with is the allocation of the money.
Senator Maltais: Thank you very much, that was very clear.
Senator Chaput: Regarding the allocation of services, at another Senate committee meeting, we were just discussing the issue of the related costs when a bill is passed. Is it not the minister in charge who decides how the review will be conducted and who sets the timeframes? Could the work not be done gradually instead of being done from one day to the next? I thought it was left to the minister's discretion.
Mr. Watson: That would obviously depend on which act you are talking about. Some require that everything be done immediately while others provide for greater flexibility. It would of course depend on the specific context.
The Chair: Mr. Watson, you referred to the list of 84 offices subject to the regulation compliance review. Could we ask you for this list? Or perhaps it was Mr. Tremblay?
Mr. Tremblay: There are 84 newly designated bilingual offices and 74 offices that will no longer be designated as bilingual after a transition period.
The Chair: Could we ask you to provide that list to the committee?
Mr. Tremblay: Yes. Obviously, you will understand that the numbers are always changing as the service delivery models continue to progress day by day. But we can definitely send you that list.
Senator McIntyre: Mr. Tremblay, I have a question for you regarding the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the DesRochers case. As you know, these decisions have an impact on all federal institutions and I know that the Treasury Board Secretariat and Canadian Heritage analyzed the decision carefully.
We are reminded of the following in the annual report of 2012-13, and I quote:
That said, the observations made by institutions show there remain some interpretation challenges in distinguishing between the principle of substantive equality as applied in the context of Part IV of the act and the principle of advancement of English and French that applies under Part VII of the act.
Could you tell us more about this?
Mr. Tremblay: I referred to that earlier when I said that there were silos that developed more or less naturally within the departments and that there are Part IV silos and Part VII silos. All of that to say that one of them is in charge of Part VII; there is an understanding of what community development means and what progressing towards the equal status of French and English in Canadian society means; in the other silo, communication and services, there is an understanding of what providing services of equal quality means, and that is what they aim for.
The Supreme Court created a kind of link between these two parts of the act by using words that are very similar to those we have always used to talk about Part VII, that is, this idea that we have to consider the impact of what we do on minority communities. From now on, when providing services, we have to consider the impact of the service delivery on official language minority communities.
For those working on Part VII and wondering whether they were still working on Part IV as well, there was a certain amount of confusion, which we are trying to alleviate by providing information to federal institution representatives.
Senator McIntyre: Is the challenge still to create that link between Parts IV and VII?
Mr. Tremblay: Yes.
Senator McIntyre: Between the two silos you mentioned?
Mr. Tremblay: That is correct. I was also going to say that one of the factors that motivated us to adopt a common approach with Canadian Heritage was ensuring that people with skills and knowledge working in community development on one side would not be isolated from those working on Part IV who must now also consider the impact on minority communities.
We hope there will be structuring effects to bring these people closer together within their own organization. What we are hearing is that it is easier to develop a lens focused on community development now that all of these actors are working together within their own organization.
The Chair: Mr. Watson and Mr. Tremblay, on behalf of the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages, I wish to thank you very much for your participation today. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your expertise with us.
(The committee adjourned.)