Raising the linguistic bar, again
Move exacerbates public service imbalance
Canada is blessed with a bilingual public service — a bureaucracy mildewed with caution and capable of stifling innovation in both official languages.
We are better at stopping things happening than anyone — Canada is number one in the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index.
Yet, nearly five decades after the passage of the Official Languages Act, the public service is not bilingual enough, it seems.
A new report by two senior bureaucrats, commissioned by the Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, has found many public servants working in bilingual regions do not feel comfortable using their language of choice at work.
The solution, according to Patrick Borbey, president of the Public Service Commission of Canada, and senior bureaucrat Matthew Mendelsohn, is to raise the linguistic requirements for those in supervisory roles.
This sounds fair enough at first blush: people should be able to work in the language in which they can express themselves most easily. The complaint is even when French is used, it is symbolic — typically introduced at the beginning or end of a discussion but not sustained.
However, the backdrop to this is a public service already over-represented in executive positions by French speakers. Twenty three per cent of Canadians identify French as their first language but 26 per cent of Canada’s 250,000 federal public servants are French speakers and fully 31 per cent of those in executive positions primarily speak French.
Raising the linguistic bar is likely to exacerbate the dominance of French speakers in the upper echelons of the public service, sparking more resentment inside the bureaucracy, where many view the existing requirements as an insurmountable hurdle to promotion. The proposal is to raise the requirement for French oral expression and comprehension from Level B to Level C —a test which only 35 to 45 per cent of employees pass.
The Liberals point out the move toward superior proficiency levels is just one of 14 recommendations made by Borbey and Mendelsohn, and none are likely to be adopted in isolation.
The hope is that by increasing training levels across the public service, proficiency would improve at all levels.
“We’re committed to ensuring English- and Frenchspeaking Canadians have equal opportunities of employment and advancement in federal institutions, including through better and more accessible language training necessary to achieve higher language standards,” said Jean-Luc Ferland, press secretary to Scott Brison, president of the Treasury Board.
He blamed the Conservative government for cutting training budgets and said any proposed changes would be made in consultation with public sector unions.
That goes without saying, since the report recommends the government fund increased training by “repurposing” the $800 bilingualism bonus paid to public servants who meet the language requirements for their position. (Full disclosure: my spouse qualifies for the bonus.)
Killing the bonus could prove counter-productive — many bureaucrats maintain their skills with the express purpose of passing their language test every five years and qualifying for the $800 bonus.
One wonders if Justin Trudeau would be mobbed by joyful civil servants, as he was at the Global Affairs building two years ago, if he claws back the bilingualism bonus?
André Picotte, acting president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, said his union has not been consulted on what would constitute a hefty pay cut for his members.
“There are several ways we can foster bilingualism in the workplace. But not by axing benefits in place since the 1970s,” he said.
He called on the government to increase the training budget so it is accessible to junior bureaucrats, who find it difficult to cultivate the language skills necessary for jobs requiring bilingualism.
It’s a long-standing criticism that language training is offered too late in the career of public servants, and is often allocated through performance management processes, with the result some staff never have access to inperson language training.
The report’s recommendations may mitigate some of those shortcomings — for example, the requirement for each institution or department to create a “personal language training account” to enable all employees to receive a certain number of hours of language training.
But outside of Quebec and New Brunswick, just eight per cent of Canadians are bilingual — for the vast majority, ordering quiche lorraine taxes their linguistic ability.
If the Liberals adopt a policy that makes the federal public service even less representative of the Canadian public than it is already, they will stoke the impression that the West, in particular, is being frozen out.