LANG Committee Report

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AIR CANADA

        In 1996, the Commissioner initiated two court remedy proceedings in the Federal Court because of Air Canada’s lack of ground services in French at the Pearson (Toronto) and Halifax airports. In 1997, a Reference application was also filed to clarify how the Official Languages Act applies to regional carriers. In addition, another court remedy application had been filed previously to obtain a decision on a specific complaint about the lack of French-language services on an Air Ontario route. This latter was suspended, however, pending the Court’s decision on the Reference.

        To date, the first remedy concerning section 30 has been settled out of court; the Reference application and the remedy concerning Air Ontario’s in-flight services were abandoned when Bill C-26 came into effect; and the two remedy applications concerning the Pearson and Halifax airports are still pending.

To improve its linguistic performance, the Corporation must develop an action plan setting out a series of specific operational objectives that take into account the recommendations of the Commissioner of Official Languages and specify the appropriate means for achieving them by assigning, as necessary, the human and financial resources required.

Priorities

With regard to service to the public, the Corporation will have to provide active offer of services of equal quality to its customers and the general public, in English and French, on all flights that have significant demand, as well as on the ground, in airports, at its ticket offices and in its communications. This must also apply to the subsidiaries involved.

With regard to language of work, the senior management of Air Canada will have to create an environment conducive to the use of both official languages in the regions designated bilingual for this purpose within its new corporation.

To respect the government’s commitment to promoting the participation of English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians in institutions subject to the OLA, the Corporation will have to take a series of measures. Among other things, it will have to establish a better system of gathering information on the first official language of its employees and reporting on this, as it is required to do, to the Treasury Board Secretariat. It will also have to identify the employment sectors that are deficient in terms of Part VI of the OLA and set specific recruitment objectives, together with effective measures for achieving them.

Air Canada must ensure that responsibilities are properly divided among executive, management and operational staff at all the levels concerned. It must also put in place mechanisms to ensure reporting on the progress of implementation of the OLA and on the results achieved and the submission, each year, of a detailed report to the Minister of Transport, the Treasury Board and the Commissioner of Official Languages.

        Putting in place such an implementation scheme could result, within the new Air Canada, in a change of attitude and enable it in future to meet its linguistic obligations proactively. Linguistic duality must hold an important place in its organizational culture. This seems all the more necessary given that, by integrating the staff of Canadian International, Air Canada must meet the challenge of full compliance with the Official Languages Act with a staff that includes a proportionately weaker bilingual capacity and a smaller percentage of Francophones.

        It goes without saying that the independent observer that the Minister will appoint will have to monitor very closely the introduction by Air Canada and its subsidiaries of this Official Languages Act implementation scheme and ensure full compliance with the OLA during the transition period. This function is all the more important in our opinion because, should Air Canada not succeed in complying with the OLA, the Minister will be responsible for proposing the legislative and regulatory measures required to remedy the situation effectively.