:
Good morning and welcome to the 33
rd meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will proceed with a study of services in French on board VIA Rail trains. It is our pleasure to welcome the Chairman of the Board, Mr. Donald Wright.
[English]
Welcome to our committee, Mr. Wright.
[Translation]
We also welcome the President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Paul Côté. He is accompanied by Ms. Christena Keon Sirsly, who is VIA Rail official languages champion and Chief Strategy Officer.
Without further ado, I invite you to make your opening statement. We will then move on to questions from committee members.
:
Merci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity to speak about VIA Rail's record with respect to the official languages.
In light of the incident on train 46 in August, I think it's important to affirm VIA's wholehearted commitment to the principles of the Official Languages Act. The corporation has a clear record in this regard. VIA not only supports the letter of the law, but is an energetic supporter of the fundamental goals of the law, providing quality fully bilingual service to the public, promoting the advancement of French and English as the official languages of the country in all parts of the country.
When concerns were raised about bilingual service following the incident, VIA acted very quickly to investigate the matter and to dispel any confusion about where the corporation stands on bilingual service, both with the travelling public and throughout our own corporation. I am confident that the corporation is taking whatever action is necessary to address the concerns raised about the provision of bilingual service during the incident and to maintain its record of supporting federal official language policies.
My colleague Mr. Côté would like to speak briefly about that record and VIA's support for official languages.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, VIA Rail faces unique challenges with respect to bilingual service, because of the unique relationship we have with our customers. Extended, interpersonal relationships are formed between our employees and travellers, with personal contact over the course of a trip that may last hours or even days on our transcontinental trains.
We are proud of ourselves on providing excellent, personal customer service, and we recognize that quality service in both official languages is essential.
I have been personally involved in developing VIA's policies and programs supporting bilingual service for over 20 years. We adopted our first bilingual hiring policies in the early 1980s, setting specific bilingualism requirements for all front-line personal hired throughout the system. This provided the foundation for providing bilingual services throughout the VIA network in the years thereafter.
A train crewing initiative in 1986 designated the position of assistant service coordinator as a bilingual position; it thereby ceased to be staffed solely on the basis of seniority. In the 1990s, we continued working with VIA's unions to establish additional bilingually designated positions, including service managers, which became enshrined in our collective agreements
[English]
In 1998, we established a new framework for hiring, training, and staffing bilingual positions with our new era passenger operations initiative. We consolidated the conductor's duties with those of a bilingually designated service manager position, ensuring a minimum level of bilingual service on all VIA trains. Since then we have continued to develop and refine policies and training programs to ensure that employees have the skills and the understanding necessary to serve customers in the language of their choice.
We have developed a very positive, constructive working relationship with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. I personally meet the commissioner on a regular basis to provide updates on our initiatives and to exchange ideas on best practices and opportunities for improving service. Everyone at VIA takes great pride in the continuous improvements in service that we have achieved as a result.
[Translation]
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages issues a “Report card” measuring VIA's performance with respect to language policies each year. Those reports demonstrate the progress we have achieved, with significant improvements in the past few years regarding service to the public.
We get very few complaints from customers regarding bilingual service—only one in 2008. In fact, in our own customers' survey completed last year, 99% of customers surveyed confirmed that they were served in the language of their choice, whether it was on the telephone, in a station, or on board our trains.
Today, VIA's policy with respect to official languages is clear and unequivocal.
Any person applying to work at VIA Rail Canada in a front-line service position must pass a language test to show they are functionally bilingual in both official languages. Candidates who do not pass this test are not hired.
There are employees on every VIA train and every VIA station and call centre who are capable of providing service to customers in both official languages. All on-train and station announcements are made in both official languages. All other communications to customers are either bilingual or in the customers' language of choice.
That being said, it is also clear that we are not perfect—and we take the concerns raised following the incident on train number 46 last August very seriously.
As you know, these concerns stamped from the evacuation of the train following a fire—a stressful situation where human shortcomings regarding the use of official languages may be understandable, but are not acceptable.
Our investigation of the incident included a debriefing with all employees on board the train.
[English]
I can confirm that all employees were indeed bilingual, and we have confirmed that all announcements made over the public address system were made in each official language.
However, we recognize that communications from individual employees may not have been made in a consistent manner, particularly with respect to making an active offer of communicating in the language of preference for each customer. This is difficult to determine with certainty because there were many other people on the scene--emergency response personnel from local fire departments, for example, and police--which may have caused some confusion about this issue.
[Translation]
However, all VIA employees involved—indeed, all VIA employees throughout the corporation—have been reminded that they must always offer service in the language of choice for every customer.
I would also like to state that unfortunate public comments made subsequent to the onboard incident do not, in any way, reflect the position of VIA Rail with respect to our commitment to bilingual services throughout our network.
The corporation remains fully and actively committed to supporting and implementing that principle, and we will do everything possible to reinforce this point in the future.
I and my colleagues will be happy to discuss details of this incident further, or to answer any question you might have regarding VIA's policy with respect to Canada's official languages.
:
All right, I will try to clarify.
Up until 1985, the people hired to work for VIA Rail, namely to work on board trains, in stations or in telephone sales offices, did not have to speak both official languages. You could, for example, be hired to work in a train traveling between Montreal and Toronto as a unilingual English service attendant. If you knew somebody he could hire you; working for the railway was a great job.
That created all kinds of problems because we were never able to establish a minimum level of bilingual services and this was pointed out to us constantly by the Official Languages Commissioner. In 1985, we decided to implement a hiring policy requiring that, from now on, a bilingualism test would be administered and candidates had to have good knowledge of both official languages, English and French.
First of all, I would like to take a few moments to congratulate Mr. Pablo Rodriguez, who is Mr. Ignatieff's new representative in Quebec. Congratulations, it has been recorded.
Mr. Côté, my questions are a little off-topic. My colleague asked questions about the incident itself, but given that I have the opportunity to have you here today, and since VIA Rail is a federal corporation, I would like to know a few things.
I would imagine that you are already aware of the fact that the Bloc Québécois tabled a bill that would oblige all federal corporations to use only French when in Quebec territory under Bill 101.
I would like to know one thing. When your employees work—the employees from Quebec, for example—do they have bilingual or unilingual agreements?
:
They were about the public statement that had been made and for which I apologized earlier. I also apologized yesterday before a committee that was held here. Mr. Nadeau was present.
The individual who represented us and who was responsible for the public statements unfortunately indicated that, since this had occurred in Ontario, it wasn't really necessary to speak French. I acknowledge that this was a major, regrettable and unacceptable mistake. This individual, this individual's coordinators and supervisors, were told about this in a respectful fashion. This is not acceptable.
This is not our policy, regardless of where the train is. I have just given you the example from Manitoba. It is not every day that VIA Rail finds itself in court, being prosecuted by its employees, but all the same—
:
I would also like to sincerely congratulate VIA Rail. Continue with what you are doing because you're on the right track, what we need is recognition of the importance of providing service in both of Canada's official languages.
I do however feel that Mr. Petit is exaggerating when he says that there is a complete change of personnel at the Quebec border, although I do not know why he uses that term as Quebec is not a country. The NDP is aware of the reality of the situation and tabled a similar bill seeking to recognize the right to choose one's language of work so as to allow people to address their employer in their language and be served in their language.
You have no need to be concerned, Mr. Côté, because you claim to already provide your employees with this choice. All forms are available in both languages and if an employee wishes to speak to her boss, she can do so in the language of her choice. However, there is a problem in Quebec, as people are made to speak English. I think that it's what this bill is trying to remedy. I think that Mr. Petit went a little too far.