Question Period Note: Tabling of the 2022-2023 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Official Languages

The Commissioner of Official Languages tabled his 2022-2023 Annual Report on Official Languages in Parliament on May 30, 2023. It addresses three main themes and includes three recommendations.

• I welcome with great interest the Commissioner of Official Languages’ 2022-2023 Annual Report, and our government will carefully examine its recommendations.
• Our Bill C-13 to modernize and strengthen the Official Languages Act includes strong measures to help achieve substantive equality of English and French in Canadian society and the federal public service, as called for in the Commissioner's report.
• Our government wants to do more for official languages, as demonstrated in its Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028, with historic investments of more than $4.1 billion over this period.

• The 2022-2023 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Official Languages (Commissioner) was released on May 30, 2023. It addresses three main themes and includes three recommendations.
• The first theme covers services offered to the travelling public in English and French. The trend in complaints in this area is still upward in 2022-2023, as reflected in several previous reports by the Commissioner, who has conducted audits and issued recommendations to the federal institutions concerned. The Commissioner notes systemic issues of recognition of linguistic obligations by airport authorities.
• Once again this year, Air Canada received the highest number of admissible complaints (276), 99% of which concerned Part IV of the Official Languages Act (OLA). In addition, 77 complaints concerned airport authorities. In all, over a 10-year period, 5635 complaints were lodged concerning service to the travelling public.
o Recommendation 1: the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Transport develop tools and guidelines related to the language obligations of airport authorities and share them with the airport authorities by March 31, 2024; the Minister of Transport require airport authorities to submit a plan on how they will fulfill their language obligations to the public by June 30, 2025.
• The second theme discussed was the place of official languages in the public service. The Commissioner acknowledges that progress has been made but stresses that much remains to be done to ensure a truly bilingual public service. In 2022-2023, 207 complaints were received on Part V. Language insecurity persists within the public service. Many complaints also concerned the linguistic designation of positions (section 91), totaling 714.
• The Commissioner speaks of the importance of senior management for official languages, that expectations should be higher. He welcomes the amendment adopted by the House of Commons on the bilingual capacity of deputy ministers as part of Bill C-13.
• The Commissioner reiterates that government priorities, such as equity, diversity, inclusion and reconciliation, can be addressed in a complementary manner, and are not in competition with one another. He would like to find a long-term, structuring solution for language of work, and avoid official languages being at the bottom of the list of competing priorities. He affirms that the Clerk of the Privy Council is listening to his concerns.
o Recommendation 2: to the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Official Languages and the Clerk of the Privy Council: to work together by the end of June 2025 to draft an action plan in which they define concrete ways to highlight the role of official languages in the federal public service; measure the actual capacity of federal public servants to work in the official language of their choice in regions designated bilingual for language-of-work purposes.
o Recommendation 3: to the President of the Treasury Board: to implement her three-year action plan by June 2025 to ensure that federal institutions comply with section 91 of the Official Languages Act.
• The third theme of the report is the Action Plan for Official Languages (Action Plan). The Commissioner points out that the funds announced in Budget 2023 will make it possible to catch up, particularly in the areas of education, second-language learning and bilingual services. He is pleased that Bill C-13 makes the government-wide strategy mandatory.
• He points out that stakeholders were dissatisfied with the public consultations that took place as part of the Action Plan in the summer of 2022, and that they claimed they didn’t have enough time to prepare. The Commissioner reiterates his 14 recommendations made in his report on the 2018-2023 Action Plan, including the difficulties of allocating funds quickly and the reporting burden, and states that he will closely monitor the implementation of the new Action Plan. He says he is confident that the future will be bright and vibrant with the OLA modernized and stakeholders properly consulted for future Action Plans and the implementation of the programs and initiatives that derive from them.

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