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.

• We welcome with great interest the Commissioner of Official Languages’ Annual Reports, and pay close attention to his recommendations.
• The modernized Act is in tune with the Commissioner’s recommendations and includes strong measures to achieve substantive equality of English and French in Canadian society and to ensure compliance by federal institutions.
• Our government is deeply committed to doing more for official languages, as demonstrated in the 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.
• 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 (Act). In addition, 77 complaints concerned airport authorities. In all, over a 10-year period, 5635 complaints have targeted service to the travelling public.
o Recommendation 1: that 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; that 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 is 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 obtain 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 language designation of positions (section 91), totalling 714.
• The Commissioner stresses the importance of senior management for official languages, and that expectations should be higher.
• 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.
o Recommendation 2: To the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Official Languages and the Clerk of the Privy Council: work together by the end of June 2025, at the latest, to define, in an action plan, concrete ways of highlighting the place of official languages in the federal Public Service; and measure the actual ability 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 at the latest, to ensure that federal institutions comply with section 91 of the 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 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 claim that they didn’t have enough time to prepare. The Commissioner reiterates his 14 recommendations made in his report on the Action Plan 2018-2023, including the difficulties of allocating funds quickly and the reporting burden, and states that he will closely monitor the implementation of the present Action Plan. He affirms that he is confident that the future will be bright and vibrant with the modernized OLA, stakeholders properly consulted for future Action Plans, and the implementation of the programs and initiatives that stem from them.

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