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Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this 41
st meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
This morning, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(f), we are discussing the 2009-2010 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Official Languages, which was referred to the committee on November 2, 2010. We are continuing the meeting with the agencies reviewed by the Commissioner of Official Languages.
[English]
This morning we have the pleasure of having with us the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, Mr. Don Head.
Welcome, Mr. Head.
We also have with us Mr. Fraser Macaulay. He is assistant commissioner of human resource management. I invite you to begin with your opening comments, and then the members of the committee will have some questions for you.
[English]
Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the latest results of the Correctional Service of Canada's performance report card on official languages.
I'd like to start by sharing with you a quick overview of the Correctional Service of Canada. On an average day, the Correctional Service of Canada is responsible for approximately 13,800 federally incarcerated inmates and 8,700 offenders in the community. CSC employs approximately 17,400 staff across the country and strives to maintain a workforce that is reflective of a Canadian society. Just over 47% of our staff are women; slightly more than 5% are from visible and minority groups; approximately 4% are persons with a disability; and over 7% are individuals of aboriginal ancestry.
Two occupational groups, for the most part exclusive to the Correctional Service of Canada, represent over half of all of the staff employed in—
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Two occupational groups, for the most part exclusive to the Correctional Service of Canada, represent over half of all staff employed in the operational units across the country: the correctional officer group comprises 39% of staff, while another 16% of staff are in the welfare programs category, the group that includes parole and program officers who work in the institutions and in the community.
The remainder of the Correctional Service of Canada's workforce reflects the variety of other skills required to operate institutions and community parole offices, from health care professionals, to electricians, to food service staff, as well as staff providing corporate and administrative functions at the local, regional, and national levels.
All staff work together to ensure that the institutions operate in a secure and safe fashion and that offenders are properly supervised on release, with specialized initiatives and approaches for aboriginal offenders, women offenders, and offenders with mental health needs.
CSC also benefits from the contributions of over 9,000 volunteers active in our institutions and working with our community parole offices. Correctional Service of Canada volunteers are involved in activities ranging from one-time events to providing ongoing services to inmates and offenders in the community, including tutoring, social and cultural events, faith-based services, and substance abuse programming.
CSC also supports the involvement of volunteer citizen advisory committees at the local, regional, and national levels to provide citizen feedback on CSC policies and practices.
In relation to our official languages obligations, let me state from the outset that CSC is fully committed to having a public service that promotes Canada's linguistic duality, both nationally and at its nearly 200 points of service across the country. We take the 2009-10 results very seriously, and the decline in our overall rating, as well as most of the individual elements, was cause for great concern fore me as commissioner and for my entire executive committee, which is the leadership team for the organization.
Under my direction, we have already begun to look at ways we can improve our results and service to Canadians in a substantive way, as was intended by the legislation. For my part, this includes personally engaging Mr. Graham Fraser, the official languages commissioner, so we can work together to continuously move the yardsticks forward.
I'd like to note that this year in particular, CSC made significant efforts to improve the response of in-person active offers. Although our rating for part IV, “Service to the public”, regressed, the Commissioner of Official Languages did recognize our efforts in this regard in the 2009-10 report card. Since the release of the report card, we have undertaken a rigorous self-audit throughout the organization, as well as a daily verification through the staff in my office, to test our ability to actively offer services to the public in both official languages.
We are currently updating our action plan to fully integrate both official languages into our daily work practices to cover the period 2011-2014. The updated plan has a clear focus on enhanced communications, monitoring, regular reporting, and accountability. It will of course target key concerns identified by the official languages commissioner in the report card.
I'd like to provide you with some key examples of where we are placing our focus. The 2011-2014 action plan features two components. The first component addresses CSC's obligations under part IV, “Services to the Public”; part V, “Language of Work”; and part VI, “Participation of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians”, of the Official Languages Act.
The activities within this first component will be organized under the following three overarching themes: management and leadership, employee capacities, and service to the public. Of course, our main focus will be on increasing awareness of the Official Languages Act obligations for both managers and employees.
The second component addresses CSC's obligations under part VII of the act and will include action items to raise awareness, enhance consultation, communication, and coordination, and reinforce our accountabilities in light of the CALDECH decision. As you are aware, this is the Supreme Court decision that mandated that services to the public be of equal quality, and which all departments in the federal public service are required to implement. In short, Mr. Chair and committee members, I am not here today to dispute the findings of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Rather, I want to reiterate our commitment to continuous improvement. In fact, since the report card was released, we have been putting significant pressure on our weakest areas and we have realized some gains. Under my leadership, we will continue to do so.
CSC recognizes it has a long way to go before we can consider our performance as fully meeting the intent of the legislation. I welcome the findings of this report card so that CSC can better target its efforts and resources to making a significant difference in how we respect the linguistic duality of the country we live in and the people we serve.
Thank you again for the opportunity to discuss the report card's findings with you today, as well as highlighting some of our remedial actions. I would be happy to entertain any questions you may have for me at this time.
Yes, part of the problem was the process that we had in place for responding to complaints that were brought to our attention. We have put a lot of effort into realigning the manner in which complaints are brought to our attention, information is collected, and we respond to the complaints.
Part of the problem we had was that when the complaints came from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages to our regional coordinators, they would start some work, but our managers were not necessarily engaged to ensure that things were being done in a timely way. So we've focused on that.
As well, the role played at NHQ by my staff, by Mr. Macaulay's staff, has been enhanced so that we're on top of complaints and are ensuring that we're responding in a timely way.
So yes, the notation was correct, but we've taken some specific actions to rectify that.
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As I mentioned earlier, we've taken this on at the senior executive table within the organization and looked at the work we need to do in relation to parts IV, V, VI, and VII of the act.
Just to give you some examples, in relation to providing active offer to the public, our score several years ago was absolutely dismal. It was 0%, when we go back to 2005-06. The following year it went up to only 4%, and then to 32%. I've set a very high-level goal that's intended to get us to 100% in the next three years. I've established very specific targets for that. We've also implemented a self-audit regime so that sites and managers can audit their own performances.
As well, through my office on a weekly basis, every work site that has a public phone number is contacted to verify whether the active offer is made, whether the individual is referred to somebody who can assist them in the language of their choice, how long it takes them to get somebody on the line that they can talk to, as well as the quality of the service that's being provided. That has been put in place.
Some of the other items that were identified in the report were in relation to providing health care professionals who were bilingual to provide services to offenders. I've set very rigid targets to ensure that we have the right capacity across the country so we meet our target. We're up to 50% this year, 80% next year, and 100% the following year.
We are starting to engage in activities that will help us with part VII in terms of the advancement of English and French across the country in the communities. As I pointed out, I'm going to be engaging the official languages commissioner specifically on this for his advice and guidance as to how our organization can best do that.
As a starting point, I've asked that all our managers across the country ensure through their citizens advisory committees that they're reaching out to the other official language community in the community where they're located.
I should mention that we've also sent out materials to about 140 different communities in the other official language than the one they are deemed to be in, inviting people in the community to engage us and help us in discussions as to how we can advance the minority language community in the area we're located.
We will continue with our investment of moneys in language training for staff, and ideally move to be proactive. One of the challenges that has been identified for us is that individuals do not need to be bilingual or deemed to be bilingual in order to advance within the organization. So we need to do some proactive language training assignments to prepare the next wave of leaders to come within the organization.
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It is one of our challenges for some of our more remote locations, remote institutions. As an example, at Grande Cache, Alberta, our penitentiary located there, there is no significant francophone community. We have to look outside. The nearest communities are places like Hinton and Edson, and then four hours away, Edmonton. So we do have challenges.
We look to encourage bilingual staff to move there, even if it's for a two-year assignment, to try to provide that service. We look to make sure that we have a capacity, one way or another, to meet the needs of individuals who are requesting services in the other official language, whether it be English or French, depending on the location of the facility.
We know the breakdown of the offender population for each of the institutions, for each of the regions, and that is factored into our human resource planning and staffing document. We take that into account and strive to ensure that we're hiring staff with a bilingual capacity. Where it is difficult, we're making additional investments in language training so individuals can learn the other language and have that capacity within the facility. We're trying to tackle this the best way we can, given the challenges associated with some of our remote locations.
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You're right. I didn't read it correctly. I apologize.
So, mister coach, you forgot your goalie. It's too bad because we have very important questions.
I have a lot of difficulty accepting what you're saying. In fact, the situation is appalling. You're going to meet with the commissioner, or at least people from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, on February 17, 2011. Has your action plan already been prepared or are you waiting to meet with the commissioner? Are you just telling us things to lull us to sleep and make it all sweetness and light? Clearly, in light of your comments and given the results we got from the Commissioner of Official Languages for Correctional Service of Canada, I don't have the impression that you are on a path that the committee is satisfied with. Have you already established an action plan to respond to this appalling official languages situation?
I didn't write report, we all know. The commissioner answers to parliamentarians in the House of Commons. Do you have the report? Could you get it to us right away so that we know what direction you're taking or if these are only ideas, good ideas, leads. We know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it remains nonetheless that the path isn't exactly satisfactory. Do you have an action plan?
[English]
We have our action plan. It has been drafted. It's a plan I want to discuss specifically with the official languages commissioner. He's the one who's going to be grading us, so I want him to understand the efforts we're making to help us identify whether there are still gaps that we need to address; to identify for me whether the targets that I set, which I briefly mentioned earlier, are appropriate, whether they're aggressive enough, and whether there are some other things that I need to take into account.
To be honest, Mr. Chair, regarding the analogy, hockey's not necessarily my favourite sport--I have others--but I understand the comparison you're making. But as the coach, ultimately, I'm responsible for the team, so I didn't see the comparison you're using about me needing to put my goalie up to defend me.
As the commissioner of the organization, I am responsible for this. I'm taking very serious ownership of this, and making my executive committee--my senior leadership team--take very serious ownership of this. And through my personal direct engagement with the official languages commissioner, I'm taking our plan, which our committee spent significant time going through, and strengthening it to get his comments so that we have a good, strong, viable plan that ultimately will pass the test.
I'm quite comfortable, after my meeting with the official languages commissioner, with providing a copy to this committee so that they can see that our plan is not just good intentions but concrete actions that my organization and I are going to pursue over the next couple of years.
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Good morning, Mr. Head and Mr. Macaulay.
I'm a little confused. I'd like to know if, before you read the Commissioner of Official Languages' evaluation, you had an action plan to help people in an official language minority situation. It's now 2011, and I'd like to know if you had taken measures previously to fill in the gaps. When you hire someone you describe as bilingual, do they have to be 10% bilingual? 25%? 50%? How do you evaluate that person's bilingualism? In my case, I speak English, but I don't consider myself bilingual. I still have trouble with verb tenses. If I say "I go", "I will go", or "I went", I'm going to the same place as you, but perhaps at a different time. I'd like to know what type of criteria you apply when you hire people.
Do you use a pool of passably bilingual people? Maybe you know that you can find bilingual francophones in a lot of areas. Can you tell me what you did and what you were doing before your evaluation? It seems a bit shady to me.
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I'll try to answer. You had several questions in your comment.
In terms of the plan question.... Yes, we had a plan that was covering the period 2008-2011. It very clearly outlined some steps that the organization was to take and it identified some specific roles and responsibilities for various managers within the organization. But it's very clear that the plan was not aggressive enough and was not necessarily being owned by managers right down to the local level within the organization.
The results of the official languages commissioner's report has pointed to those gaps. That's what has caused us to step back and put in place a much more stringent action plan with specific targets, as well as putting in place an official languages accountability framework, for which we are in the final stages of publishing. It's one of the things I'll be talking to the official languages commissioner about.
It terms of your question regarding the level of bilingualism of staff, we defer to the normal public service testing processes to determine whether people are meeting the BC levels, the exemption levels. We do not make any arbitrary decisions. Those are based on the standard testing tools and testers for all of the federal public service.
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I am just trying to understand. We have spent millions and millions of dollars on this roadmap. The department was supposed to warn everyone and introduce the roadmap by specifying that the official languages had to be respected.
Mr. Head, you have just told us that the report of the Commissioner of Official Languages was the wake-up call for you. Perhaps I am being a little harsh, but when the grade for the language of work is a D and for service to the public is also a D, that's just outrageous. It seems we believe that a person who is in prison deserves everything they get. I wouldn't want to be there. I would not have wanted to be that lady from Tracadie-Sheila who ended up in a prison in Truro, Nova Scotia, and who didn't speak a word of English.
Mr. Head, you also talked about the west. You said that, out west, if we know that a francophone is in an anglophone jail, you assign someone there for a year. How many people do you send? Is it just one person? Is there service for eight hours a day, five days a week? And during the two months or one month that person is off, is service provided? Could you please explain that to me because I think it's very serious?
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Yes, Mr. Chair, if I may.
[English]
I have two comments, one an unrelated one to Mr. Macaulay.
Sir, it's an honour to see you here today. I want to congratulate you as a public servant for your past involvement with the RCMP, particularly related to a very difficult case that Parliament has dealt with, as related by my colleague Mr. Wrzesnewskyj in his book. I think you know which book I'm talking about. I'm sorry I haven't heard you talk this morning.
For Mr. Head, I have a suggestion, sir. You may want to consider involving your senior deputy commissioner, Monsieur Marc-Arthur Hyppolite, in these efforts. I remember handing him a prize in 2005, the Public Service Award of Excellence in official languages, when I was the minister responsible.
It's just a suggestion for your consideration, sir. Thank you.