LANG Committee Report

In accordance with its mandate under section 88 of the Official Languages Act, the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages has undertaken a study on the bilingual services offered by Air Canada. Under section 10 of the Air Canada Public Participation Act, Air Canada is subject to the Official Languages Act and its subsidiaries are subject to Part IV of the Act. In this interim report, the Committee wishes to state a number of findings based on the testimony it has heard in the course of its proceedings. In the fall of 2001, the Committee intends to continue its study on the bilingual services offered by Air Canada and to submit a final report on the question to Parliament.

Five organisations have appeared before the Committee to date on the question of the bilingual services offered by Air Canada: the Department of Transport, the Treasury Board Secretariat, Air Canada, the Canadian Tourism Commission and the Association des Gens de l’Air du Québec.

A. Department of Transport

The testimony of the Department of Transport representatives on May 2, 2001,, essentially concerned the implications of the passage of Bill C-26 (An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act, the Competition Act, the Competition Tribunal Act and the Air Canada Public Participation Act) for Air Canada’s linguistic obligations. Since that bill was passed in June 2000, Air Canada has been required under subsection 10(2) to ensure that its subsidiaries comply with Part IV of the Official Languages Act with respect to air services, including related services. The language obligations imposed on its subsidiaries are to enter into effect on July 5, 2001, in the case of the subsidiary serving the wWestern pProvinces and the tTerritories, whereas they became effective in the rest of the country on the date of proclamation on July 5, 2000. In the case of Canadian Airlines International, which is now owned by Air Canada, tThe deadline for compliance is extended to January 1, 2004 in the case of Canadian Airlines, which is now owned by Air Canada. On the other hand where Canadian Aairlines or another subsidiary delivers a service offered by Air Canada, the Act provides that the company shall immediately comply with the same requirements as Air Canada.

The witnesses also explained to Committee members that the Department of Transport is responsible for compliance with linguistic obligations in safety and health matters. The Committee has asked for further information in this regard.

B. Treasury Board Secretariat

When they appeared on May 8, 2001, Treasury Board Secretariat representatives described the regulatory framework governing the offer of bilingual services by Air Canada. They explained that bilingual services must be offered at airports used by at least one million passengers a year and on all flights that take off from, touch down or land in the National Capital Region, Montreal and Moncton, on domestic flights within Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and on flights between two or three of those provinces. In other airports and on other routes, demand must be at least 5%.

The witnesses testified that the onus is ultimately on Air Canada to take appropriate corrective action in response to the complaints filed against it. Based on the answers provided and Air Canada’s follow-up, the Commissioner of Official Languages may take any action she deems necessary to respond to the complaints laid before her.

It should be noted that the Treasury Board Secretariat requires Air Canada to provide it with an action plan on the application of the Official Languages Act.

C. Air Canada

Ms. Michèle Perreault-Ieraci, Ombudsman and Senior Director, Employment Equity and Linguistic Affairs, Air Canada, testified appeared before the Committee on May 15, 2001. At the outset, she emphasized that the integration of Canadian Airlines International and its employees, the vast majority of whom were unilingual Anglophones, resulted in a dilution of Air Canada’s bilingual capability. She explained that, since the integration of flight personnel ofof Air Canada and of Canadian Airlines International had not yet been completedly merged, it is impossible to mix crews, which clearly complicates the matter of offering services in both official languages. She said that Air Canada had taken the necessary measures to address the situation, in particular by offering language training programs that will extend over a four-year period.

Ms. Perreault-Ieraci testified that Air Canada has always assigned bilingual flight attendants on to all its flights, whether or not demand is at 5%, but she admitted that a few problems remain for the delivery of bilingual ground services. She also stated that Air Canada has no problems of Francophone under-representation, either in general or among its pilots.

D. Canadian Tourism Commission

When he appeared on May 29, 2001, Mr. Jim Watson, President and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission, recalled that air passenger service is a significant factor in the Canadian tourism industry. He observed that Canada’s official bilingual status is one of the country’s distinguishing features and an asset in the context of the prevailing competition in the global tourism market. He asserted that, from a tourism standpoint, it was appropriate to aim for a situation in which the services offered by the national air carrier are provided in both official languages, across the country, regardless of the 5% rule, both on flights and in airports, and that those services should preferably be offered in flight by a flight attendant, not by means of a cassette.

E. Association des Gens de l’Air du Québec (AGAQ)

On May 30, 2001, Mr. Serge Martel, President of the AGAQ, deplored what he called the constant and systemic erosion of the place of Francophones in the Canadian air transportation industry. He reacted to certain statements cited from testimony before the Committee, in particular the statement by the Air Canada representative that the corporation had no problem of Francophone underrepresentationunder-representation, either in general or among its pilots. He also reported that the statistics provided by Air Canada to the Treasury Board Secretariat do not provide a basis for determining the Anglophone and Francophone participation rates within Air Canada because of the abnormally high non-response rate (37.7 % in 2000) to the question on the first official language.

He denounced what he viewed as violations on the part of Air Canada to apply Part V of the Official Languages Act on language of work. He also cited the findings of a preliminary report by the Commissioner of Official Languages on a complaint filed by the Association in January 2000 concerning the percentage of Francophone pilots at Air Canada. He concluded his presentation by proposing six recommendations which the Committee will consider in drafting its final report.

A number of questions from parliamentarians on the regulations concerning the use of both official languages in in-flight safety messages remained unanswered because they fell within the jurisdiction of the Civil Aviation Branch of Transport Canada, and the witnesses before the Committee were from that department’s Air Policy Branch. The Committee feels that Transport Canada has an important responsibility with regard to in-flight safety messages and proposes to follow up on this matter in the fall. In the meantime, the Committee expects to receive the information it requested from Transport Canada. The Committee noted that regional carriers that assign a single unilingual flight attendant to certain flights were in violation of the Official Languages Act.

B. Service to the public and complaints follow-up mechanisms

It is the Committee’s view that the complaints mechanism instituted under the Official Languages Act is not sufficiently known to the travelling public. It therefore believes that Air Canada cannot use the number of complaints filed with the Commissioner of Official Languages against it as an argument to characterize the manner in which it discharges its linguistic obligations. The committeeCommittee deplores the fact that Air Canada representatives were not able to address specific incidents brought to their attention by parliamentarians with respect to the lack of service in both official languages.

Air Canada is ultimately accountable for the manner in which it performs its linguistic obligations. The testimony heard revealed a lack of collaboration between the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages and the Treasury Board Secretariat with respect to the complaints follow-up mechanism. Closer co-operation between these two agencies would, for example, enable the Treasury Board Secretariat to target more effectively the audits it conducts to determine whether the service offered to the travelling public meets the requirements of the Official Languages Regulations. In the Committee’s view, such co-operation would tend to make Air Canada more accountable and to improve the manner in which it discharges its linguistic obligations. The committeeCommittee wishes to evaluate the effectiveness of the Treasury Board Secretariat auditoversight, particularly within the framework of its review of Air Canada’s annual report. The Committee is considering the possibility of recommending the use of enforcement measures to ensure full implementation of the Official Languages Act.

C. Hiring policy and equitable representation

The Committee is dissatisfied with the statistics it gathered during its hearings on Air Canada and finds the data that Air Canada submitted to the Treasury Board Secretariat in response to a request to divide the corporation’s employees into Anglophone and Francophone groups based on their first official language to be incomplete. The Committee is also surprised that, for many years, the Treasury Board Secretariat has allowed Air Canada to submit to it data based on a non-response rate of approximately 37 %. It should be noted that those data are used to determine whether the employer concerned is complying with the provisions of Part VI of the Official Languages Act, which concerns the equitable participation of English and French speaking Canadians.

The Committee acknowledges that the integration of Canadian Airlines obliges Air Canada to conduct a new gathering compilation of data on the bilingual capability of its employees. It notes that these statistics are fundamentally important since they must guide the deployment of personnel responsible for offering services to the travelling public in both official languages. The Committee urges Air Canada to compile this data as soon as possible.

The Committee gives notice to those concerned that, in the fall, it intends to clarify the discrepanciesy noted in the statistics which Air Canada has communicated to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages and to the Treasury Board Secretariat.