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John Cousens
View John Cousens Profile
John Cousens
2013-06-06 16:59
Once again, I think we need to be adopters of it. At a government level, we need to be consuming it. A BlackBerry, iPad, or any of these devices is not merely there to e-mail and play solitaire. It's a device that you can run a business on, and this is what truly innovative companies are doing. So, for the government to be a model leader.... We have innovation coming in different segments of this marketplace throughout Canada in social, in mobile, and in cloud. If the government becomes an adopter and uses this well, I think you'll see that the small and medium enterprise community will also embrace it.
Barbara Jaworski
View Barbara Jaworski Profile
Barbara Jaworski
2013-06-04 11:43
Thanks.
The Workplace Institute has been focused on older workers since 2004. We've been putting together the best employers award for Canadians aged 50-plus. We've been working with organizations to help them adapt their workplace practices to look at incorporating the skills, talent, and experience of older workers.
In my presentation today I'm going to talk about some high-level concepts that we discuss with employers and ways to help employers understand that there is a really great business case for continuing to employ their older workers, as well as recruiting them.
The first thing is really about linking them to the business strategy. What is their pressing business issue? So often it's about talent and management issues, such as having the skills for their workplace, and linking it to bringing value to the business. Turnover is often a big issue, and training younger workers who are coming into the workplace but often don't have the skills and experience they need to get up and running as quickly as organizations would like.
We've really identified to employers that there's this period of time between the ages of 50 and 80 that they really need to be considering instead of looking at the time between 50 and 65 as a time for people to be transitioning out of the workplace. Because of the repeal of mandatory retirement and the great health of many individuals, we're looking at the period of time between the ages of 50 and 80 that we call the “kabooming years”. It's a period of time where baby boomers want to continue to make a contribution and have an impact. There are many different ways that organizations, because their needs are different, can do that.
The first is really about engaging older workers. The number one way to do that is through flexibility in the workplace. All employees want flexibility, but it's a very important piece for older workers.
Everybody wants to have a career path until the day they decide they're going to leave the organization. Everybody wants to have training and equal opportunity to apply for positions until the day they leave.
There are adaptations in the workplace, such as when we worked with the construction sector to help them develop an older workforce tool kit that helped them understand that heated cabs and joysticks were a way to extend the working life of people who are doing physical jobs. In health care, we helped nurses work with orderlies or have more equipment so that they're adapting the way they're working and redesigning some of that.
Recognition is also very important for individuals in the workplace, especially for older workers. As well, it's a great strategy for not-for-profits, where there may not be other kinds of financial incentives.
Financial guidance is really important throughout a person's career in the workplace. We know that if they are not getting that kind of education, then in fact people may be staying much longer than they would normally have done. A lot of people are in the position of not retiring not because they don't want to but also because they can't. We don't want to get into those kinds of situations in the workplace.
Total health is also important, meaning the relationships that people have with their managers, their co-workers, their physical health, as well as their mental health—which is another focus for some organizations—and work-life integration. Just as younger workers might want work-life balance because of where they are in their life stage in parenting, older workers certainly are interested in that same thing, but maybe for different reasons. They don't necessarily want to work full time, or they have caregiving issues, or they want to explore different kinds of opportunities.
There's caregiving support in the workplace and cycling retirement, which is a little different from phased retirement, and what more organizations have looked at who have defined benefit plans. It's having the opportunity to be in the workplace but to retire and to come back into the workplace, and having meaning in your work.
Then there are a number of strategies that are important for organizations to consider. The first and most important one is workforce planning. It's really a risk management strategy to help them understand how to mitigate the risks of losing those individuals who are providing a great deal of value to the business goals that an organization may have.
In hand with that is succession planning. We know that only about 20% of organizations actually do succession planning and, of those, most of them are focused on the most senior levels in the organization. But the individuals concerned are not necessarily only ones providing value within the organization. In fact, we know that in many organizations and industries there are some key workers whom it's important to continue to have available, even for the training of younger workers. So we see strategies like engagement, recruiting baby boomers, adapting the organization and helping the generations to work together and learn from each other.
For baby boomers themselves, having a career path and helping them develop a professional passport are important, so that they are actually tapping into their strengths and using them to be able to contribute to the organization and understanding what their transferable skills might be to do other things, helping them to learn how to teach other people. We know that mentoring will be a big part of what older workers are going to be tapped to do, but it's not a natural process and people need to learn how to do those things.
Helping people to understand social media and the new ways we are communicating, including everything from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, and understanding how those mediums are being used, is an essential social and workplace skill.
As for understanding how to create your life after work, that might involve starting your own business, or continuing to make a contribution to your community through volunteering and helping businesses to understand how to make links for people. People are sometimes afraid to leave the workplace, because they don't know what else is out there. Being able to link into the community may be very helpful and rewarding—or perhaps selling your services back into an organization or its competitor.
There are a number of key strategies that organizations can use. We have a process for that, so it's really important to structure opportunities to have a dialogue early on with older workers and to give them alternative work opportunities and transition planning. This will be a whole new way for organizations to innovate in the workplace, in the same way that we needed to innovate when women came into the workplace. Baby boomers, now aged between 50 and 80, are going to change the way workplace practices happen, integrating their initiatives into the diversity plans in the workplace. This is often where organizations already have a diversity plan, and developing an older workforce strategy is one place where they can do that, as well as establishing and supporting a connection to retirees.
We've actually presented to a number of organizations and government bodies about a customized video training and online resource tool kit that we have for employers to help them understand how to do this. It's really customizable for employers, and we're thinking that it will be really useful in targeted initiatives for older workers, organizations like Third Quarter, and other programs. We're not re-inventing the wheel. We know there's an issue about hiring and keeping older workers, and there are some very specific types of practices that would be really helpful to organizations in that regard.
That's my presentation.
Thank you.
View Peter Braid Profile
CPC (ON)
How do you drive customers to your website? How do they become aware that the company and the website exist?
Gary Collins
View Gary Collins Profile
Gary Collins
2013-05-30 17:20
We do have five bricks-and-mortar stores in Sweden. We've just recently opened our very first store in Canada, an actual footprint store on Robson street in Vancouver. We'll probably do a little bit of that across the country and in various markets, but it will be a small portion of what we do.
More than 90% of all our marketing and sales spend is online. We do that through search engine optimization, word search, display adds, and retargeting affiliates. We do a lot of e-mail. We have a customer base of about 4.4 million. We also have 2 million Facebook fans, which is a very large number. A million of those are in the U.S.
Graham Fraser
View Graham Fraser Profile
Graham Fraser
2013-05-09 15:33
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to let you know right away that my throat is a bit sore. So, if my voice gives out, my colleagues could certainly answer any questions.
Mr. Chair and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, I would like to thank your committee for its interest in the operations of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
As an agent of Parliament, I provide parliamentarians with unbiased advice based on objective and factual information. This is to help you hold the federal government accountable for its stewardship of the equal status of English and French in Canada.
I am accompanied today by the following people: Nancy Premdas, Assistant Commissioner, Corporate Management; Ghislaine Charlebois, Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Assurance; Sylvain Giguère, Assistant Commissioner, Policy and Communications; and Colette Lagacé, Director, Finance.
The Office of the Commissioner has a budget of $23.9 million to support it in its mandate for 2013-14. That amount includes $15.1 million in salaries, or 72% of the main budget. Our workforce consists of 163 full-time equivalents.
The expenditures planned for 2013-14 take into account the loan of $2.8 million from the Treasury Board to pay the cost of moving our offices to Gatineau. This relocation will allow us to streamline our operations and examine the possibility of sharing resources with other agents of Parliament who will be located under the same roof.
Our operations are divided into the following three program activities: protection of Canadians' language rights, promotion of linguistic duality and internal services. I suggest we look at these activities one by one.
To protect the language rights of Canadians, the Office of the Commissioner resolves complaints through investigations, conducts audits, evaluates the performance of federal institutions and intervenes in court when appropriate.
The expenditures planned for this activity are $6.5 million, which represents 27.4% of the total budget. The possible impacts of budget cuts on administrative programs and processes linked to official languages continue to preoccupy me. I will continue to observe the impacts of these budget cuts, both in Ottawa and in the regions. I will also continue to intervene, based on what is revealed by our investigations and observations.
I know that the numbers in the last census raised some concerns in a number of francophone communities across Canada. That is why we will analyze the impact of the 2011 census on bilingual services provided to official language communities by government offices across the country.
During the 2013-14 fiscal year, the Office of the Commissioner will release the results of an audit on how the government fulfils its language obligations with respect to provincial transfers.
It will not be a financial audit, but rather a review of the accountability process. The Office of the Commissioner will also publish audit follow-up reports for National Defence, Service Canada, and the Halifax airport authority. We will also begin two new audits. One will be a horizontal audit on the impacts on official languages of new service management models in a limited number of federal institutions. The other will be on Treasury Board Secretariat's role in the review of the impacts of proposed budget cuts on official languages. We will also follow up on two others: one on Air Canada, and the other on Industry Canada.
I will continue to use my authority to intervene before the courts when necessary. During the next year, I will act as joint appellant in the Thibodeau v. Air Canada case appealed to the Supreme Court. This is to ensure consistent interpretation of Air Canada's language obligations and the primacy of the Official Languages Act.
Court proceedings against CBC/Radio-Canada are ongoing, and we will be able to evaluate the next steps once the CRTC renders a decision on the renewal of CBC/Radio-Canada's licences—specifically the licence for CBEF Windsor.
In 2012-13, the Office of the Commissioner received 505 complaints from people who claimed that their language rights had been infringed. Of those complaints, 415 were admissible. To exercise our investigative powers in the most efficient way possible, we will conduct a survey of the complainants and federal institutions involved. Moreover, since February 2013, the Office of the Commissioner has been providing the possibility of filing a complaint online.
We have also implemented a strategy to reduce the number of files in arrears. On April 1, 2012, there were 624 complaint files that had been ongoing for more than a year, 437 of which involved a single incident. As of March 31, 2013, only 69 of these files were still active.
Expenditures linked to promotion of linguistic duality are $6.7 million, which represents 28% of the total budget. To promote linguistic duality, the Office of the Commissioner communicates regularly with parliamentarians, official language minority communities, federal institutions, and the Canadian public.
Canadians fully benefit from our research, our studies, the distribution of our information products and our exchanges with many key stakeholders. Since September, these exchanges have been able to take place on social media. The Office of the Commissioner now manages a Facebook page and a Twitter feed to promote the conversation with Canadians.
Over the next year, the Office of the Commissioner will communicate regularly with federal institutions that anticipate making investments under the new road map. This will be done to better understand the expected results on the vitality of communities and the teaching of official languages.
With the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017, I will follow up on recommendations from my last annual report, aimed at raising the government’s profile when it comes to linguistic duality in Canadian society.
Furthermore, from 2013 to 2015, we will carry out an information campaign on the rights of the public who transit in airports.
Four studies will be published this year. A study on the bilingual capacity of the judiciary of superior courts—conducted in collaboration with the French Language Services Commissioner of Ontario and the Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick—will be completed shortly. That study will be a thorough examination of the federal judiciary appointment process and the language training offered to superior court judges.
We will also finalize a study on language training in the federal public service and another on English-speaking seniors in Quebec. In addition, we're working on a study on Governor in Council appointments. Lastly, we will look at a few potential study projects such as a survey of Canadians on bilingualism, the possibilities of learning a second language in colleges and CEGEPs, and a literature review of the effects of social media on our official languages.
It is also important to encourage the Canadian public to celebrate linguistic duality during various events across the country. For example, this summer, my staff will be on hand throughout the Canada Games in Sherbrooke to promote Canada's linguistic duality to thousands of visitors.
This effort is part of a strategy to work with organizers of major events to ensure that they include Canada's linguistic duality in their planning.
Our third program activity allows the Office of the Commissioner to bring together resources that support the organization as a whole, including asset management, finance, and human resources management. This activity is allocated a budget of $6.7 million, which is 28.2% of our total budget. This amount does not include the cost of technological updates, which were $1.1 million for this year, or the cost of moving to 30 Victoria, which was $2.8 million. Together these represent $3.9 million or 16.4% of our total budget for 2013-14.
These services, which are essential to any organization, ensure that taxpayers' dollars are used efficiently and transparently.
With that in mind, we have invested in new technological tools to optimize resources. For example, employees now rely on video and teleconferences to reduce the need for travel, increase productivity and lower operational costs significantly.
Thank you for your attention. I would now be pleased to answer your questions.
View LaVar Payne Profile
CPC (AB)
One of the other things you talked about was how your model must be evolving all the time and particularly with changes in on-the-ground policing. I'm just wondering what you're getting from the on-the-ground police officers that helps you in terms of developing programs or updating programs that you might already have.
Sandy Sweet
View Sandy Sweet Profile
Sandy Sweet
2013-05-07 9:57
It's interesting. The two biggest issues we're dealing with right now are around social media. It goes both ways: how do police services use social media to their advantage, and how do they intercept or understand what bad people are doing when they're using social media? And that includes all the various groups, whether it's Occupy or Idle No More, or any kind of crowd-sourcing kind of thing going on.
So they're looking for courses on that and we're looking for subject matter experts on that. What it comes down to is the whole field changes very quickly. So you have to chase that.
The other issue coming out of Boston was anti-terrorism, front-line police officer anti-terrorism. And actually we had just launched a course. The RCMP had developed it. We hosted it and made it available for free to police officers across the country, and as soon as that situation hit in Boston, we had a big uptick in people wanting to understand...you know, if you see something, say something, that sort of thing.
We try to be really responsive but we can only be as responsive as the content allows, if you will. We can't just put training out there until it has been vetted through the whole process that we use.
Corinne Pohlmann
View Corinne Pohlmann Profile
Corinne Pohlmann
2013-04-30 16:12
Certainly. We're currently looking at offering online types of services to our members so they can actually go in and create their own websites and e-commerce types of websites. We're currently looking at partnerships there so that we might be able provide our members with access to these services at lower cost than they would otherwise would be able to do. We're also looking at developing an online database, where our members can go and promote their firms electronically and encourage them to use social media in a more active way to promote themselves as well as the database that we're trying to put together. We're doing that in partnership with Interac.
There are things that we're trying to do to encourage the greater use of social media, online tools, and so forth among our membership. We're just starting to explore that more as an organization. These are just some of the things that are still under development right now but are a part of our initiative to make sure that our members are actively thinking about how they can use online tools to promote and expand their businesses.
Ken Milne
View Ken Milne Profile
Ken Milne
2013-04-30 17:20
From the provider side, in the package you guys will get later, when it's translated, there is one nice picture that shows the leaky pipe model. It's the various different leaks in the system that cause physicians to not adapt new information, whether it be information technology...but new information.
We're trying to address that by using social media to turn it on its head so it doesn't have to trickle down from above. We give the high-quality information to the front-line providers using social media, especially when you're talking about distributive learning.
View Diane Ablonczy Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Mr. Chair and colleagues. It's good to be here with you.
As you know, I support Minister Baird in two areas, in the Americas and also in consular affairs. I'll give you a brief overview of our Americas work first.
Recognizing the importance of our own hemisphere, you may recall that Prime Minister Harper made the Americas a foreign policy priority in 2007. So here we are, six years on, and I can tell you that our engagement in the region is very strong. We remain deeply committed to the three pillars of the Americas' strategy, which is to a more prosperous, a more secure, and a more democratic hemisphere. Hélène and I were talking earlier about how important each of those three pillars are. It's like a three-legged stool, without one of those pillars the stool tips over. Canada is working with our partners to increase economic opportunity, to strengthen security in institutions, and to foster lasting relationships, because that is the way people work together.
I can also tell you that I believe we've achieved concrete results in each of these areas. On increasing economic opportunity, the Americas, as big emerging markets, of course present great opportunities for Canada. We have more free trade agreements in the Americas than in any other region of the world—in fact, with the rest of the world combined—and we continue to work hard to increase trade and investment throughout the hemisphere. I should say we really believe this kind of economic growth and economic dynamism is going to bring greater social supports to countries in the Americas, and greater equality, which is a real issue for many of our neighbours.
Most recently, Canada gained observer status in the Pacific Alliance. For those who don't know, this is a very new trade agreement begun by Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia, and Canada is an observer to that alliance now. We also contributed greatly through our Canadian companies to a $600 million, world-class international airport in Quito, Ecuador. I had the pleasure of being there to see that launched. This past February, I also was privileged to announce a coming into force of the latest free trade agreement in the Americas, the one with Panama. Panama is a country that boasts one of the fastest-growing markets in our hemisphere. It's also a strategic gateway to Latin America. You may be interested to know that our trading relationship with Panama increased by 62% in less than four years, so this agreement is going to open even more doors.
Strengthening security in institutions, increasing economic opportunities, as I mentioned before, require peace and stability. Security and governance challenges in the Americas continue to pose significant threats, locally of course, but also to Canada because we're so interconnected as a hemisphere. We've been working with our neighbours to jointly address the region's security challenges, especially fighting transnational organized crime and drug trafficking. We have a number of projects along this line, and I'll mention one. A couple of months ago I was in Costa Rica. We support the national police school there. We gave them new equipment, helmets, bulletproof vests, GPSs, and vehicles, so they can do their work better.
In Guatemala, we contributed state-of-the-art forensic equipment and training, and this has really helped to achieve results in Guatemala. This is not just because of what Canada has done, but together we've helped increase the crime resolution rate from 5% in 2009 to 30% last year, a very significant change.
Building and nurturing relationships with partners in the Americas is the foundation for engagement. The Americas, more than any other part of the world, really rely and put value on trusted relationships and personal ties, so we work hard to build those. As many of you know, Canada is very well regarded throughout the region.
Just a little bit on consular then, my other mandate from Minister Baird. Enhancing safety awareness for Canadians abroad is the priority of our consular activities. As you know, Canadians love to travel. We took 59 million trips out of the country last year, and that's with a population of around 33 million to 34 million. We really work hard to provide Canadians with timely and accurate information, and of course, high-quality consular services.
Fortunately, most trips go off without a hitch. They are hugely enjoyable for travellers. But even with the best preparation and advice, some Canadians do encounter difficulties. In fact, in 2012, more than 235,000 consular cases were opened. We work closely with other countries to work as quickly and effectively as possible when Canadians are caught in emergencies abroad.
I do consular outreach trips to the region. The last one was to Asia, which is a region that hosts hundreds of thousands of Canadian visitors, residents, and students each year. We meet with counterparts to discuss how we can better work together to resolve issues as they arise.
I want to now say something about travel.gc.ca. How many of you have ever looked at that website? We have a couple. I have to confess I was not familiar with that website before I took this job, so if you're not, you don't have to feel bad. Well, maybe you should, but I felt bad too. It's a tremendous resource for Canadians and we work very hard to make this a top-notch website.
We just relaunched the website, and it now incorporates information from all government departments, from Health, Agriculture, and Trade, so it's really a one-window information portal for travelling Canadians. We have had good response from Canadians to the new website. We had over three million Canadians visit the website since it has been revamped, and that's an increase of 21% over 2012. The number of separate visitors to the website rose by over 90%. We're very happy about that.
We also have a mobile app now for the website. The users of the mobile app have increased by over 100%. I asked, “Is it from 1% to 2%, or what?” So here's the number in case you're as curious as I am. It's from over 9% to over 19%. We still have a ways to go, but it's still significant growth.
We have also streamlined the registration of Canadians abroad service on that website. That allows people to register so we know where they are, and if there's some disaster or unexpected political upheaval, we can send them information about how to keep themselves safe. The registration has increased since November by 46% because we made it easier to use that resource.
We're also using new social media channels and kind of dragging ourselves into the 21st century. We really saw how that worked with the Boston bombing earlier this month. We have quite a few followers on our travel.gc.ca Twitter account, and the tweets we sent out about consular contact information, in case any Canadians needed support or assistance, were retweeted 2,400 times. We were able to amplify the reach of that message to a total of 2.3 million impressions just through Twitter, so we're pretty excited about that.
The Emergency Watch and Response Centre responded to about 500 calls from Canadians who were looking for information about their friends or loved ones. We had an unfortunately sad situation, but an opportunity to test how responsive we were able to be. We were very happy with the results.
So these are key services that really do support Canadians in need. I'd encourage you, colleagues, to spread the word about these tools to your constituents.
In conclusion, as you have seen, our engagement in the Americas is benefiting Canadians and our hemispheric neighbours. We're also committed to ensuring that Canadians are well prepared to ensure their own safety when they're abroad and that they receive the support they need when challenges and emergencies arise.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, for having the opportunity to be with you today. Minister Baird and I are very pleased to respond to your questions after you get a little more information from my colleague. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Alireza Jalali
View Alireza Jalali Profile
Alireza Jalali
2013-02-05 15:32
Madam Chair and honourable members, thank you for having me here. I am Ali Jalali. I am a professor of anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. I also do a lot of research on innovative methods in teaching.
I'm going to start by talking a bit about the innovative technologies we use in medical education and that I've seen being used. I'll talk about some advantages, some disadvantages, and then some main points that I think are important for you to know about.
Why is all this talk about technology coming out right now? It's because of the digital native.
It is because of the new generation that we are trying to teach: a bit in medicine, a bit in nursing, and a bit in physiotherapy. These guys all come from an era when the Internet was always there. These guys were born with the Internet. They were born with technology, so education needs to adapt for them a little bit.
What type of education is out there? Probably you have all heard about e-learning. E-learning is electronic learning, so you really don't need classrooms anymore in many settings. This has its own advantages and disadvantages. The bigger part of e-learning now is m-learning, which is mobile learning. A lot of things can be developed on mobiles and given to people. I will get to the advantages and disadvantages in a second.
The huge thing that is very hot right now is MOOC. MOOC stands for “massive open online course”. Using MOOC means putting online a course that is certified, that people can get credit for, and that is open to everybody. You can have 10,000 people who have this certification from one course that someone has given.
What else do we have out there? Of course, we have Web 2.0, and for those who are not familiar with it, it's Web 2.0 against Web 1.0. Web 1.0 was the Internet, where you could go and have a look and see stuff, but you couldn't interact. With Web 2.0, you can interact with stuff. You can go to a hotel and comment on the hotel. The same thing applies in medicine. The same thing applies in education. A lot of teachers take advantage of that.
There are also a lot of wikis being born. You have heard of Wikipedia. What is Wikipedia? Is it the Internet? People can go there and write stuff on Wikipedia. Similarly, you can try to promote collaboration, communication, and inter-professionalism by using these types of tools.
The other huge Web 2.0? It's social networking. It's Twitter. It's Facebook. These are the things that our students and our residents, the people we are teaching, are using. We should embrace these. We should try to use them in education.
What else? There's simulation, of course. Everybody has probably heard of simulation. As soon as we talk about simulation, people usually think of high-fidelity simulation. They imagine a mock operating room, an OR built in a building such as we have here in Ottawa at the Civic Hospital, with a mannequin sitting on a bed and people working on it. Actually, though, simulation has been around for a while. The first type of simulation was with a standardized patient. To teach students, we brought in actors instead of actual patients.
The other type is virtual reality. I don't know if you have ever heard of a site called Second Life. It's a site that people go to where there are games, parties, and everything. It's a social network. Now in Second Life there are hospitals built by universities, where the students go to train, so this is another part of simulation.
There is procedure simulation. When I was in medical school, we used to do suturing on pigskin. That's another type of simulation. Simulation can be at different levels, but of course now what's hot is high-fidelity simulation, those Harvey mannequins that cost a lot of money and imitate a human being.
Those are the main points about the technologies I've found that are hot now and that I thought you should know about.
As for the advantages, these technologies of course help to adapt our education to the digital native, to these guys who are always technologically savvy and have their technology with them.
They also help with asynchronous learning, so the teacher doesn't have to be there. This saves time, money, and energy. Every four weeks you receive a new resident. A new doctor comes into the office and wants to work with you. You have to repeat the same things to him. Instead of the time that you or the nurses are spending on explaining this stuff to the students, you can just create a self-learning module, put it online, and ask people to look at it before coming to your office, so that when they do come in, they are ready for it. You take a passive technology such as a podcast and get more interaction with the patient out of it.
Those are the advantages. Of course, there also is a minimization of the risk to the patient. As I said, if you are suturing on pigskin, it is much better than doing it in the operating room for the first time.
This also gives power to students and patients. This is where the notion of e-student, to empower the student, and e-patient, to empower the patient, comes in.
If you go on Twitter, there are huge patient societies that talk about this stuff. There is no more of this “I am the doctor. I am the nurse. I am the health provider. I know everything.” No. There are patients who also have their say.
So these are the advantages I see.
As for the disadvantages, of course you need to learn all this stuff. When you have someone who wasn't born with the Internet—like me, like many of my colleagues—you have to go and embrace these types of technologies, and there's a learning curve.
Some people don't like it. If you say “Facebook” to them, they'll run away: “I'm not going to teach with Facebook. It's unprofessional.” No. You need to learn about it.
Then there's equipment failure. Everybody watched the Super Bowl. See what happens? It can happen. It happens everywhere. That was in the U.S., but it can happen here. When you're depending on technology, you need to have backup.
We need to teach our students about something that's new, which is online professionalism. They need to behave. I always tell my students, “You're a 24-7 MD. Deal with it.” For nurses, it's the same thing. When people look at your photo when you were drunk and under the table, they don't say, “Oh, that was his bachelor party.” No. For them, you're their doctor.
These are things we need to teach. You can't just tell the CMPA to, you know, go after people and.... No. They need to have policies for this.
One other thing that lots of my colleagues are afraid of is that we will lose empathy when we bring technology into teaching. When you have a Harvey mannequin in front of you, you can do whatever you want with the disease. There is no patient there. You can cure the mannequin. But when you're in the hospital, this is someone's grandfather. This is someone's grandmother. This is someone's mother in front of you. So we need to teach the students some empathy and the humanities of medicine.
Technology is great, but there are some main points that I want to get through first.
First we need to have needs assessments. Are you just using technology because everybody's giving iPads out? You shouldn't just hand iPads to people. You should not buy the hype. You need to make a needs assessment, and make sure that the people you want to give iPads to are comfortable with it.
Let's say I develop this great video, high-quality everything, and put it online with the thought that a remote-area patient will have a look at it. But if they don't even have high-speed Internet, then it's a waste of everybody's time and money. That's because I didn't do a needs assessment and didn't realize that these people didn't even have access to that. We need to be careful about this.
At the University of Ottawa, in fact at all the universities, we emphasize using technology that is based on educational theory. You know, have good objectives; know about adult learners; know about constructivism. If you're going to collaborate with each other and communicate, these are the theories of education that people need to know about.
We have two complete facilities—one AIME, the other CAPSAF—doing research in medical education to have the best practices. These things need to be based on solid ground. We need to research them.
As well, we always need to give feedback to people and follow up. You can't just give technology to people and hope that will solve all the problems. There are different levels of evaluation. You don't just give iPads to everybody, ask “So how many people liked it?”, and then write an article, if everybody puts their hand up to show “yes”, saying iPads are great. No. It's not that.
Our main goal in medical education, in health care, is patient care. That's the ultimate goal. Someone should see if this thing reduces the cost, if this things helps with patient care or not. That people are happy with it is not really what we should be after.
Finally, let's not forget about the humanities. If we just go with technology, then empathy may be lost.
Merci. Thank you.
Larry Ostola
View Larry Ostola Profile
Larry Ostola
2013-01-31 16:34
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, honourable members of Parliament on the House of Commons of Canada Standing Committee on Official Languages.
Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before you today.
As the Official Languages Champion of Parks Canada, I am pleased to share with you our plans for promoting linguistic duality as part of the activities we will offer Canadians on the “Road to 2017”, which will lead us to the 150th anniversary celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017.
I should rather say the activities we are offering, since one of the first themes of these celebrations, the bicentennial of the War of 1812, already constitutes one concrete example.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, allow me to provide a quick background regarding our agency which, with its 44 national parks, four national marine conservation areas and 167 national historic sites, is present in hundreds of communities, including many linguistic minority communities across the country. This presence makes Parks Canada one of the major players of the country’s tourism industry.
The mandate entrusted to Parks Canada on behalf of the people of Canada is as follows:
...protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage, and foster public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment in ways that ensure the ecological and commemorative integrity...for present and future generations.
Our vision further states that:
Canada's treasured natural and historic places will be a living legacy, connecting hearts and minds to a stronger, deeper understanding of the very essence of Canada.
Thanks to the hard work of our team of dedicated men and women and their genuine passion for our collective heritage, Parks Canada is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in heritage protection and conservation.
Through its presence in hundreds of communities across Canada, including many official language minority communities, our agency's overall national economic impact is estimated at more than $3 billion, according to recent figures, which benefits all Canadians from sea to sea.
Connecting hearts and minds to a stronger, deeper understanding of the very essence of Canada requires that we reach out to Canadians and engage them in their own official language.
For Parks Canada, the recognition and even the promotion of the linguistic duality goes well beyond a simple legal requirement. For our agency, linguistic duality constitutes one of the defining features that make Canada, Canada.
That is why we have, for example, quickly adopted new technologies.
Thanks to new technologies, we are now in a position to promote the linguistic duality of our country by reaching many individuals, including Canadians in official language minority communities, and by interacting with them not only in large centres or in places where we are present, but also directly in their homes.
The opportunities offered by these new media have quickly taken a strategic importance for us and have become an indispensable tool to reach new audiences in both official languages.
To give you a sense of our reach, Parks Canada's national YouTube channels, in both English and French, have more than a million videos viewed, with close to 1,500 viewers, and about 150 videos published from across the country.
The Parks Canada national Twitter feed has surpassed 30,000 followers.
Parks Canada's national brand channel on Facebook has more than 13,000 friends, who collectively have two million friends.
Be it Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or our website, or even our intranet site, everything we publish, everything we communicate, is done simultaneously in both official languages.
Thanks to new media, we can now reach and engage more Canadians than ever—young Canadians, new Canadians, urban Canadians, and Canadians in official language minority communities—and share our passion with them in the official language of their choice.
As we embark on the road to 2017, these new media will again help us promote the linguistic duality of this country. However, our efforts are not restricted to new media only.
Canada's linguistic duality was already at the heart of the celebrations that marked Parks Canada's centennial in 2011. And this is again the case as we make our way on the “Road to 2017”. Already, the activities and events celebrating the bicentennial of the War of 1812, one of the milestones of our history, are evidence of our commitment to give equal place to Canada's two official languages.
From Newfoundland to Ontario, Parks Canada administers more than 20 of the most important national historic sites associated with the War of 1812. We will keep those sites at the forefront of the Government of Canada's commemorations until 2014, and keep telling the story of how anglophones, francophones, and aboriginal peoples, working together, successfully defended their land and way of life, laying the foundation for the bilingual Canada that we're proud of today.
In each of these places, Canadians are invited to come celebrate with us through activities and events that make equal place for both official languages. This will continue as we reach and celebrate other important milestones leading to the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
Another major part of Parks Canada's contribution to these celebrations will be an increasing emphasis on connecting young Canadians with their national heritage places before, during, and after 2017. Our aim is to connect youth with their heritage for life, while exposing them to the other official language. This, we believe, will contribute to building the next generation of stewards who will comprise our future visitors, supporters, and employees in a true reflection of Canada's linguistic duality.
When he appeared before you last December, the Commissioner of Official Languages stated that linguistic duality was an integral part of Canada's history and identity, and that the Fathers of Confederation, and those inspired by them, saw the question of language in terms of a founding principle of respect.
We at Parks Canada totally agree. Linguistic duality increases our appeal to visitors from all parts of Canada and many parts of the world. Our brand personality is to be welcoming and warm, and linguistic duality doubles the warmth of our welcome.
Members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, for over 100 years, Parks Canada has not only been protecting, but also telling stories and bringing to life our heritage and history. We will be committing all the experience, all the leadership and, mainly, all the passion that drives us to offer Canadians exceptional opportunities to take part in this huge celebration, which is theirs, and reinforce, along the way, the Canadian linguistic duality.
Thank you for the kind attention you have given me. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you very much. I'd be pleased to answer any questions you might have.
View Jacques Gourde Profile
CPC (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Ostola, thank you for being here with us this afternoon.
In your presentation, I noticed statistics on social networks that promote Parks Canada. That is interesting.
How long did it take you to reach that traffic level? Do you have any projections for the period leading up to 2017? Could we reach 80% of Canadians through these networks?
Larry Ostola
View Larry Ostola Profile
Larry Ostola
2013-01-31 16:50
Thank you for the question.
As I mentioned in my presentation, we think that in our case—and indeed in that of other organizations—the use of social media is very promising. However, I must tell you right now that I am not an expert in new technologies. My children may be, but I am not. That said, Parks Canada has been getting into this for several years. We think we are leaders in the use of social networks such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
For the moment, I cannot provide you with projections for the coming years, but I am taking note of your request. I will ask our specialists to provide you with information on future growth.
View Tyrone Benskin Profile
NDP (QC)
Thank you.
I guess I'm just thinking about Mr. Galipeau's comment. I come from the world of the arts. I'm an actor. I've done a massive amount of theatre in my life. Theatre doesn't pay. It doesn't pay you as an actor, and it doesn't pay theatre companies, but it's extremely important because that live contact with an audience is something you'll never get in film and television. When I go out into schools, I say it's like the difference between buying Justin Bieber's CD and seeing Justin Bieber live. They get the difference.
Although I understand the pragmatism of it, I'm a bit concerned, I guess, about the reliance on technology. I'm fine with social media and so forth and everything else, but there's nothing like being able to walk into a museum and see a Van Gogh hanging on the wall. You can look at the picture. There's nothing like walking into la Maison-Riel or Laurier House and being able to tangibly ask questions of an individual, who can then give you answers.
I'm a bit concerned about whether or not the technology is going to drive people away from visiting sites. If you can look at it on YouTube, then what, as we say in theatre, will get more butts in the seats?
How is Parks Canada addressing that?
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