 Well, first of all I want to thank Jeff for the both the invitation and the and the introduction And as he said Jeff was we we got to know each other first in the Globe and Mail newsroom and then he was my bureau chief when I moved from Quebec City to Ottawa and I was his bureau chief and it's That is actually an interesting cultural phenomenon for those of you who are Studying public administration that's one of the particularities of Journalism that is unimaginable in government if people don't work for each that don't switch roles like that in a more hierarchical work environment Which is one of the things that I've had to adjust to and I'll talk a little bit about that later on of the transition from having spent Basically my career in journalism and then moving to be commissioner of official languages Jeff asked me to talk about how journalists holds governments to account and how Agents of Parliament hold governments to account and First of all, I should tell you that both as a Reporter and as an agent of Parliament I Am not part of that group which all polls show Includes a majority of Canadians That does not have any respect for politicians I've always had a lot of respect for for politicians They have it is in many ways thankless work and I have always Treated people whatever their political affiliation whatever their Political view with respect and and I'm thinking about coming to speak to you it has occurred to me that that Actually, it's not a very good idea to go into a field of journalism if you don't have any respect for the people who are Doing the work that you're covering if you don't have any respect for athletes probably not a good idea to be a sports reporter if you are Contemptuous of the the people who are engaged in Nutrition probably not a good idea to write about food So I think respect has always struck me as one of the the key qualities required to be an effective journalist certainly the the way I tried to Conduct myself during my career I think there are a number of ways in which reporters hold governments and Individual politicians to account the most obvious is investigative reporting And in many ways, that's the the most spectacular whether it's watergate or whether it's Bob Fife having revealed the 90,172 dollar check that Nigel Wright wrote to Mike Duffy Whether it's the work on the robo calls that was done by Glenn McGregor and Steve Steve mahar That is the kind of work that is inevitably done by a minority of reporters in in most Institutions of journalism which isn't to say that in any area that you that you are working that there you cannot Find that there are areas that require serious investigation that there can be ways in which you can pursue a lines of inquiry that Go beyond what what people are are saying in interviews or news conferences Jeff's done more of that kind of work than than I have but there have been a At least a couple of examples in my career I guess the most recent stories that Jeff and I both both worked on was a story that I Did during the mayor or our Controversy in which which was described by the Royal Commission as a Inquiry into the mahar incident as leak. It was not in fact a leak. It was a I had figured out somebody who had probably been briefed by security agencies and talked to him and He told me the nature of the briefing which which Convinced me and enabled me to write that the Canadian security forces had basically bought the The CIA version version of events But this was the exception of the work that I did through through most of my my years in journalism There's another form of journalism which I Can I would say Holds governments to account. It's a much more modest much more day-to-day, but I think in some ways And just as important if not more so I Call it ladybug magnet journalism Those are the stories that people who live in neighborhoods Clip out and pin to their fridge with ladybug magnets because a Reporter has been able to tell them about something that is Happening or is going to happen or may happen in their neighborhood That enables them to work with to mobilize with their neighbors so it can be stories about a planning decision at City Hall it can be stories about a Campaign that is being organized to clean up the banks of the the the Rideau River it can be a community mobilizing reporting that Enables people to have a better understanding of the decisions that are being made that affect their daily lives It's often not dramatic. It's often not spectacular. It rarely makes the front page, but it it is the the nitty-gritty decision-making in Community activities and community work in municipalities that has in many ways a much more direct impact on people's everyday lives than the trade negotiations that may or may not be going on between Canada and the European community And the variety of other Stories that that are given often much more much more prominent the third category I would describe as Public memory journalism and again, this often can be treated dismissively as Stenography writing down what politicians say writing down what officials say the Documents that they publish the but It is the way that one can compare What people are doing and saying now with what they did and said during election campaigns During the initial months that they came to power during the times that a policy was first announced before the measures were taken to implement it and in any Public debate on a matter of controversy It is really important to be able to track a timeline of what Is being said now as compared to what was said a year ago? What was said six months ago because that is also a very important way of Holding governments to account the I guess the most dramatic example of Public memory journalism that I was engaged in as a Reporter was an interview that three of us at the Globe and Mail had with Brian Mulroney Story that was published in June 12th 1990 it was near the end of a an extremely intense week of Negotiations over the Meach Lake Accord the Meach Lake Accord was the Agreement that had been reached by all ten Premiers in 1987 that would have permitted Quebec to some sign the the Constitution in the nature of the agreement was that there was a three-year deadline that would expire at the end of June in 1990 and Two provinces were deeply resistant to it. And so there was an extremely intense week of Negotiations going on day and night some of those sessions in public some of them private between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the and the ten Premiers it was Intense it was dramatic it was and at the Very late on the Friday night It's I think it was meeting the Saturday. It was the Saturday night a an agreement was reached and it looked as if this was going to be successful and on Sunday The Prime Minister was Phoning around to the people who had been allies in this process And one of the people that he called was William Thorsell who was the editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail at the time and Thorsell suggested to the Prime Minister that he should give an interview to the Globe and Mail the next day to Tell the people of Canada how this success had been achieved Keep in mind that Brian Mulroney was exhausted seriously sleep deprived and but he agreed and so Jeff Simpson Susan Delacorte and I went over to 24 Sussex on Monday morning and sat down in his den and had an interview with him and The the fact of being so exhausted Stripped away his natural defenses. We got a glimpse of the colloquial gamey direct Brian Mulroney all of those qualities that he had used with great effectiveness to hold his caucus together Unfortunately the his Ruthless realism Which came out in the interview did not appear did not read well in print and He told us how he had picked the day for the beginning of these negotiations that he had Identified the deadline and had counted backwards Now you want to keep in mind that one of the reasons that he was Relaxed and comfortable talking to us Was that With the exception of Susan He knew Jeff and me I had known him Since I moved to Montreal in in 1976 and a mutual friend had Put us in touch and I had Covered parts of his return to to politics and after having originally been defeated in 1976 I'd had lunch with him when he was a business leader in Montreal He was one of the people who I interviewed several times because many of his his College classmates had gone on to become cabinet minister ministers in the Patsy K. Bakewell government I had been Later that when I was with the Globe and Mail I'd been on the plane that had flown into Bacomo on election night for the election in 1984 so Even though when I had only been in Ottawa for a few years when we did this interview I'd known him for quite a long time and he was comfortable with me he'd known Jeff for quite a long time and it I think speaks to the importance of Journalists who are covering politics actually getting to know the politicians that they are they are writing about The questioning was not aggressive. It was it was respectful and we basically Listened hard to try and recreate to get at his sense of what was going to happen next and get him to recreate how the events had happened and When he told us about counting back from the day that the Incident that the the deadline for the Meach Lake Accord He said so I counted back and said that's the day. I'll roll all the dice and the impact of that story and of the subsequent transcript that was published in Saturday's paper the following the first story ran on Tuesday actually contributed to the sense that there was something wrong with this deal and reinforced both Those in Manitoba and particularly Clyde Wells in Newfoundland who were looking for Justifications to vote down the agreement that they'd agreed to under substantial pressure in Ottawa and so again Not investigative reporting not Not the kind of story that ordinary people would pin out and attach to their fridge but a degree of serious listening to somebody whom Jeff Simpson and I had had got to know well over the years and the result was a remarkably revealing interview which had a substantial political political impact Let me tell you a little bit about How I got from from there to here as Jeff said we were Both reporters in the newsroom. I was in at the Globe and Mail. I was Concentrating on on municipal affairs Municipal affairs and then and then regional development. I spent basically seven years writing about City politics and there were ways in which in some ways it was the most as satisfying as any other part of my career in journalism because I Focused in particular on planning and development and there was a period where I knew Somebody at every level of the bureaucracy in planning and at City Hall I wrote a book about a neighborhood that was threatened with emolition and Was was covering city politics in Toronto at a time when the Globe and Mail was extremely interested in in city politics much more interested than it is although Rob Ford has Reignited interest in municipal politics in Toronto and In the summer of 1976 I was Approached by McLean's to move to Montreal. I'd always thought that at some point I would Move to to Quebec. I thought I had a kind of rendezvous because at when I was at university I Spent three summer jobs working in Quebec the first summer I worked as a on an archaeological dig on I don't know what which is about 50 kilometers south of Montreal on the Richard River and That was the experience that transformed what had been a High school subject into a language I could actually speak and in the fall when I was doing my study on Writing up my report on the archaeology. I had been engaged in I Realized quite deeply that I was much more interested in Quebec than I was in archaeology and I spent the next two summers working as a Unordinary in a mental hospital in the east end of Montreal and so this was at a period when in the 1960s when the quiet revolution was meant that and the independence movement meant that Quebec was a hugely dynamic Interesting changing society and so I always had some sense that that I I would want to go there as as a journalist so when I got the Job offer from from McLean's I took it but felt in a in a funny way that this would be a Continuation of my my work on on urban politics 1976 Olympics had resulted in the A huge financial crisis for for Montreal 1975 New York had almost gone bankrupt And so I thought well the next the next really dramatic urban story is going to be how Montreal fends off bankruptcy so we moved and and then in the End of September early October Liberal Premier Robert Boussa called an election I Got on the election bus and I only really got it off at ten years later it was three years in Montreal and seven years in Quebec City in which I covered the election the party came a quay the Debate over the chapelle en français and Bill 101 the the various measures introduced by by the the new PQ government the The 1980 referendum the constitutional debate that that followed that resulted in the Patriot and the Constitution in 1982 the the return of the Liberals in in 1985 and then in 1986 I moved to Ottawa and Have basically been here ever since with the exception of four years in Washington where I was the Washington bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, but in a way from that Experience in Quebec as a student my experience in Montreal In the late 70s my experience in Quebec City In the early 80s and then moving to Ottawa. I continued to follow language issues and in fact the I wrote a book on on honey the back and the parts of Quebec wine power and There was one chapter that I wrote about the cultural tensions between Frank phones and Aglophones And it didn't really fit into the narrative of the book So I basically popped the chapter into a file folder and stuck the file folder Into a drawer and then at the time of the Meach Lake controversy I pulled the file folder out and and wrote a 60 page book proposal which At that point publishers had had it up to here with with anything about Quebec language the Constitution and so I then stuck that in a file folder and In 2004 2005 Doug Gibson who'd been my publisher who was the publisher of Douglas Gibson books at Macleon Stewart had published Jeff Simpson's book the friendly dictatorship on the powers of the Prime Minister Andrew Cohen's book on on foreign policy, and so I thought Simpson on Prime Ministerial policy Cohen on foreign policy Fraser on language policy, and so I made the pitch To Doug Gibson and he bought it and so I spent Took a leave of absence from I was then at the drone a star took a leave of absence and wrote the book and in the fall of 2005 I had Basically sent them in I was down to the final revisions of the of the book and bumped into Michael Benangie who was then the minister responsible for language policy who said you know the Position of commissioner official languages is coming open next year is that something you might be interested in and I said I would be and Then two weeks later the liberals were defeated the conservatives were elected and I thought well if if the liberals were interested in Appointing me the conservatives certainly won't be so I forgot about that and To make a long story short short the end of June After the conservatives were elected they decided that they would post the job Instead previously for the previous five commissioners It had been a process that was worked out entirely behind closed doors in which the hand of God would descend on the shoulder of the person Who was to be named commissioner and an announcement would be made so I applied and I I I got the job and I became Canada's sixth commissioner official languages and My Doug Gibson my publisher said that it was the first time that he'd ever published a 93,000 word job application now When I applied for the job the process is that Your name is proposed by the prime minister you appear before a Committee of the House and the Committee of the Senate they report to Parliament that they have heard your presentation They don't actually have power to Refuse you or not and then both houses vote and so when I appeared before the houses I Defined the The position as part cheerleader part nag The position is that of An ombudsman it was established In 1969 after recommendation of the Royal Commission on bilingualism biculturalism in which they Called for the creation of not only an official languages act but someone who would report to Parliament on whether government had lived up to its responsibilities under the act and That they described this person as being the active conscience actually protector of the language rights of Canadians who would receive complaints investigate complaints and Actually act as an informal advisor to to to governments monitor whether Pieces of legislation were appropriately respectful of language policy and language rights And report to to to Parliament not through a minister the and so it has always been described as a job of Protection and promotion and Interestingly enough in the recommendation of the Royal Commission and in the act there is relatively little that talks about the promotion aspect and Just yesterday I was reading an MA thesis on the the role of the commissioner official languages in terms of the independence of the role and She pointed out that Keith Spicer who was the first commissioner official languages used Article 25 of the first act, which is now article 56 of the current act to really open the door to using a The position of the commissioner to be a promoter of language rights and Article 56 of the act reads it is the duty of the commissioner to take all actions and measures within the authority of the commissioner with a view to ensuring recognition of the status of each of the official languages and compliance with the spirit and intent of this act in the administration of the affairs of federal institutions Including any of their activities relating to the advancement of English and French in Canadian society and in the preamble, which was not in the there are a Whole lot of where as is that again make it very clear that this is much broader than simply whether somebody can be Served in English or French when they get their passport Whereas the government of Canada is committed to cooperating with provincial governments and their institutions to support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities to provide services in both English and French to respect the constitutional guarantees of minority language educational rights and to enhance opportunities for all to learn both English and French and Whereas the government of Canada is committed to enhancing the bilingual character of the national capital region and to encouraging the business community Labour organizations and voluntary organizations in Canada to foster the recognition and use of English and French so from Keith Spicer's Using a crowbar to open the door to promotion Back in 1970 when he started doing this work one sees that that promotional aspect has gone very strongly into the preamble and into Article 56, so there is this Strong protection and promotion role in the area of language rights Well, let me talk a little bit about the category of agents of Parliament the We are guardians of values Each one of these positions was created because Parliamentarians felt that at a particular moment in time It was important to create a position for someone to protect a value that transcended The partisan debates of the day So the position of Auditor General was this was created in 1868 at a time when there was a certain amount of Corruption in government administration the chief electoral officer was established in 1920 to ensure that Elections were organized fairly that everyone would let everyone's right to vote would be protected Job official languages commissioner was established by legislation in 1969 as part of the federal government's response to the surge of Quebec nationalism in the 1960s and the growing sense that had been identified by the Royal Commission on bilingualism biculturalism that French was discriminated against and was did not have the role that it should play in Canadian life the Privacy commissioner and the information commissioners positions were both established in 1983 as there was a growing awareness of the threats to privacy and the importance of Transparency you heard last week about the degree to which that is under threat My I've often thought that in fact Susan ago is the is the only agent of Parliament who Faces the challenge of governments Fundamentally not Accepting the idea of the act there is a kind of every other as agent of Parliament has a A general commitment and acceptance that ranges from grudging to enthusiastic But government after government finds that it really does not like the idea of access to information and Then the conflict of interest commissioner in the public sector integrity commissioners were both established by the present government in 2007 and the commissioner of lobbying position was established in 2008 now To understand those lat the creation of those last positions. It's worth understanding that there were a number of Controversies that arose in part following the impact of the budget cuts in 1995 one of the effects of the budget cuts in 1995 was to eliminate a whole slice of the public service that Was engaged particularly in the what was then called HRDC human development and human resources It changes its initials every few years But it continues to work in the same in the same area in which the people whose job It was to monitor the grants that went out to community organizations and non-governmental organizations a lot of those positions were just eliminated So it was not entirely surprising that there was an auditing gap and this became known as the Billion-dollar boondoggle This was totally unfair totally inappropriate at the end of the day when the dust all settled there was a what was Thought to be or accused of being a billion dollars that had gone missing turned out to be $68,000 that that had not been properly tracked, but because of the cuts the It became the auditing process was not as rigorous as it had been part of the response to that was the I Push for a much more careful tracking of money that that is that is spent in 2003 Sheila Fraser then Audit General did a report on the privacy commissioner George Radwanski and was extremely critical of How he had been spending public money and how he had been misusing the the rules for hiring for human resources I think the phrase reign of terror was used in in the report accused him of having Neglected his his duty in terms of responsible handling of public money He resigned before he could be Fired by both both houses it requires a vote of both houses of Parliament to to fire an agent of Parliament and In February 2004 Sheila Fraser wrote a devastating report on these Bunchership scandal in which she memorably said that they're They broke every rule in the book all of those Incidents from 2004 through from from 2000 through to 2004 Created a sense of the need to tighten the rules have a big thicker rule book a more bureaucratic process of ensuring that the rules are respected which emerged First of all with with reforms that were introduced in during the Martin government and then the Accountability Act that was introduced by this government We all live and by we I mean agents of Parliament, but also senior officials throughout government in a Post HRDC post Gomery post Radwanski and now post Pamela wall and Mike Duffy environment Now there are there are good things about this. It means that we all have to be much more careful It means that we are all much more transparent all of my expenses are posted on our website But there are disadvantages as well. It means that things happen more slowly. There is much more paperwork there is The the the wheels of government move more slowly when there are when people have to sign forms to At many more people have to sign many more forms to Approve any kind of discretionary spending whatsoever so it's a And that is becomes part of what we as agents of Parliament inevitably have to do which is to monitor how Federal institutions are respecting the rules whether they are spending rules whether they are privacy rules whether they are Accessed information rules whether they are The rules concerning official languages Political scientist David Smith has said that we are Increasingly living in what he calls the audit society and there are some observers of the political process Who are are critical of the the role of agents of Parliament who feel that that The that agents of Parliament have undermined the role of Parliamentarians. I Don't think that's true. I think that While I Don't think there should be any more agents of Parliament created. I think that what each one of us does in a provides Tools for Parliamentarians to do their job their job better Few brief words about the the evolution of the the the position of ombudsman The job of ombudsman was first created by the the king of Sweden in the late 18th century and it was basically somebody who would go off and look at how his Administration was performing its duties while he was off leading armies fighting wars in Europe And so it was a kind of a king spy who would see if people were doing what they were supposed to be doing in 1809 the king lost a critical battle. He was deposed the and the position of ombudsman became a parliamentary position and so this is the 204th anniversary if you like of the creation of the ombudsman's role and through Around the world those positions have become important ways in which Parliamentarians have an independent tool to report to them on How the government that they are supposed to be holding to account is actually living up to to its responsibility Let me tell you a little bit about how I had to adapt to moving from a Career in which I really didn't have to manage anything more than a keyboard to being the head of an organization of 170 people It was I was I was actually quite Uneasy about this through the I felt that the the Interview would that somebody would ask me. How do you how can you possibly imagine? Running a government organization after having been a journalist for all those years And I had worked up an answer Which was that when I was bureau chief the Globe and Mail I had nine people reporting to me And that was a larger number than the number of people on the executive committee at the office of the commissioner official languages I never got asked But it was a an entirely artificial answer since bureau chiefs Don't have the power to fire the prior to power to hire or have any direct responsibility for managing a budget so But it was but in fact it was not a it had turned out that the My management style which which was a fairly collaborative one Was one that I was able to to transfer to the management of the But I learned a number of a number of things about what it means to be the the head of a large organization. I Think about policy. I worry about human resources In many cases they had of any large organization spends a Significant amount of his or her time worrying about the weak links in the organizations and there's much more time spent and Trying to solve the the human resources labor relations problems in an organization than there is and how can we Get our really good performers to be even better How do I deal with Parliament well I report to two parliamentary committees One the Senate one the House of Commons and I concluded pretty for early on that I had a rather fine line to walk that if I did nothing but Beat the government over the head that I would lose any capacity that I might have had to actually have some kind of influence that the But if on the other hand, I was seen as being a pushover Tolerant of government's failure to live up to their obligations under the acts too easy going Seen as too close to the government of the day I would lose the confidence of parliamentarians and I would lose the confidence of minority language communities, so it's it's a Careful line to walk similar in a way To the line that any journalist has to walk which is if they are seen as Entirely predictable that you know exactly what a columnist or a reporter is going to write before they've written it Then you don't bother reading them. You just know what they're going to what they're going to say How would I measure success? and this became a Tricky threads of reporters relatively easy with the You can simply check how many stories you've written how many stories have gotten the front page. How many stories you've broken When you're an agent of parliament, you're in the influence business. I don't manage programs. I don't I don't have a other than my reports my studies my reports on investigations difficult to say it's difficult to measure Actual impact, but there are a couple of things that I think I can point to as having been successes between the time my name was announced in September 2006 and my starting on the job in October the government canceled the court challenges program and By the time I'd arrived at the office there were 140 complaints about the cancellation of the court challenges program the court challenges program was a program that funded people who were you going to court to Challenge decisions that they felt took away their rights as defined by the Charter and So we did a very detailed report on Whether or not the government had respected its obligations under the act which requires the federal government's institutions to take positive measures for the growth and development of minority language communities had they had they Consulted had they taken any mitigating of Actions to reduce the impact of this decision and we found it to a substantial degree. They had not Now before we'd finished that process the federation the community francophonie accadienne took the government to court we intervened on behalf of the of the FCFA and our report was the only piece of Textual evidence heard by the court On the Friday before the judge was about to issue his decision There was a meeting in the prime minister's office in which an out-of-court settlement was Reached and a it was agreed that the government would set up an Organization to fund language rights cases under the Charter the judge was quite disappointed because his decision was all written and so Very unusually he had us all in a conference call on Monday to answer the question Are you really sure that this out-of-court settlement is satisfactory? We all agreed that it was and there is now a language rights program that's run out of the University of Audubon the program that he would want any we stick and That I think was a very tangible result of Work that we had done of intervention before the courts Another success I would say was the the work that we did before the Vancouver Olympics the Vancouver Olympics Was on the ground a great success in terms of delivery services in both languages. I was able to Register in French. I was welcomed in both languages. There were announcements in both languages the signage was in both languages the Is that one of my Turn okay, so just sort of step back like that Okay Why don't I just stand with this one my one in my the Even the private sponsors got into the spirit and were announcing in French and announced a big big posters in French big posters in English there was one failure and that was the opening ceremonies and that Got a great deal of attention and it made me realize that Failures are obvious Success is invisible, but one of the things that we also Developed from that having worked very closely with the federal institutions was the degree to which Planning is necessary for any national sporting event to ensure that it can actually Operate in both languages, so we developed a a manual for the organizers Laying out the kind of planning that needs to be done and I was at the Canada Games in Sherbrooke in beginning of August and it was a huge success in terms of both official languages and there were people there from the Canada Games Winter Games that are going to take place in British Columbia next year and from the Pan Am Games in Toronto And they were furiously taking notes on how well the Canada Games had done it the Paradoxically this may sound as if it were a failure it turned out to be a success the government appointed a unilingual auditor general That stirred up controversy across the country Editorials criticizing this and the Calgary Herald in the Edmonton Journal the Ottawa citizen not generally strong advocates of a vigorous language policy and the result of all that is that the There was a private members bill It was endorsed unanimously by all parties that has been passed into law ensuring that all agents of parliament hence forth Will be required to be bilingual so that they can understand speak to all Canadians They can answer questions in French they can have have conversations with members of parliament in the official language of their choice one Significant failure and that was there was a private members bill on requiring Judges the Supreme Court to be able to understand testimony pleadings by lawyers before the Supreme Court in English or in French Interestingly enough and it reflects the changes in coverage of the House of Commons this went entirely through every step of the house Without any coverage whatsoever and it got voted on the conservatives had been clearly counting on this This is when they were in a minority on the Liberals voting it down So their comments in the debate in the house were very very Careful saying you know we're not quite you're not there yet They're problems with the pool of possible candidates. We you know, it's a laudable idea. It's an important asset But when it passed and went to the Senate all of a sudden the rhetoric got cranked up This is unconstitutional. This is discriminatory. It discriminates against the unlingual and I and when some of what I thought were some of the stupider interpretations of what this meant were in in op-ed pieces I responded and Found out quite quickly how strongly the government disagreed with me I was told quite directly by two ministers and the Prime Minister how strongly they disagreed with me and the legislation was talked out on the in the Senate died in the order paper and and a Unilingual judge was named the Supreme Court Now, I don't think that was because he was not named because he was unlingual. He was named because the government Appreciated the kind of decisions that he had made in the past But it was nevertheless, I thought a Setback and in my view a failure to understand how critical it is That the Supreme Court be able to understand pleadings and the documentation One-third of the cases that come from from provinces Come from Quebec all of the previous pleadings all the factum's have been written and pleaded in French and so a judge who does not read or understand French is depending on the page and a half bench memo that's written by a freshly graduated law clerk and for a Lawyer who has pleaded of course Pleaded a case at every stage through the process in Quebec and comes the Supreme Court is suddenly faced with a dilemma Do they make the arguments in French knowing that one or two judges are not going to understand them and Count on the simultaneous interpretation Do they do part of it in French or part of it in English? Do they is the burden of bilingualism going to be on them? to make themselves understood by the courts and Not to mention what it means that for those French-speaking judges have to do all of their work in their second language Interestingly all the arguments that were made against the requirement Were exactly the same arguments that were heard in 1969 against the official languages Act It's discriminatory. There aren't going to be any lawyers that come Nobody from the West is going to be able to get a job of the federal government The pool is too much too small Well in the last few years we've had a chief justice the Supreme Court from Alberta a chief the defense staff from from Manitoba a Clerk of the Privy Council from Saskatchewan The idea that this has proven the end of any Possibility of people from Western Canada having senior senior positions in government has proven to be totally untrue anyhow Proof that you win some you lose some With that Let me answer any questions you might have. I put it the other way around I think that journalists who are binding you will have an advantage but I think that there are all kinds of areas of Journalism where knowledge of both languages is Is not essential But I would not expect if you were on a unilingual journalist to be part of the group that was Sent to Quebec City to follow the debate on the Charter of Values who are sent to lack make on sick to interview residents after the after the disaster I Think that where it is extremely important for a Reporter to be bilingual bilingual is in terms of either understanding the country as a whole notes understanding those Debates that are happening in different form in Quebec than they are in the rest of the country And we're seeing that playing out now with the debate over the Charter of Values where it is I think Difficult to follow the complexity of that debate if you aren't able to read what's being written or hear what's being said in French Or to cover the Prime Minister if the I think that anybody who is a political reporter ought to be able to cover the Prime Minister wherever he goes and Understand whatever he says Not every not every reporter has an ambition to To cover the Prime Minister not every reporter wants to be a political journalist but The nature of the country is and the nature of the language policy has never been to require every Canadian to be bilingual the The policy always was to ensure that the four million Unilingual francophones in this country get the same level of service from the federal government as the 23 million unilingual anglophones So and there are all many parts of the country where one can live a Satisfying successful financially well-renumerated life Without speaking the other official language whether you're living in French in Quebec or in English outside Quebec But if you want to understand how those two parts of the country interact how the The debates that have been generated in Quebec are reverberating across the country It's important to be able to understand those debates in the language in which they were carried out First of all there has been the language learning statistics are complex and For really the last 30 years. We've had a pretty constant level of 300,000 students Who are studying in French immersion? The the drop to which Ariana referred is a drop in the enrollment in core French and I think there are a number of reasons for this one of them is I think unfortunately a bit of a a Collateral damage if you like from the success of immersion I think there are immersion has tend to draw The students who are most interested in learning French it has tended to draw the best teachers and it has had the unfortunate side effect of devaluing French as a as a core subject in high school the other factor which one has to keep in mind is that There is no province West of Ontario in which French is obligatory at any grade In every province on tear in Ontario and every province east there are at least some levels in which the Study of French is obligatory. It can be until grade nine. It can be between Grade six and grade nine. It can be in grade nine to anyhow. There is in every other every province in Eastern Canada It is an obligatory subject and the fact that it is a Not an obligatory subject means that it often becomes a choice between taking French or taking music taking French or taking art and often the the French teacher is in the difficult position of not even having a classroom of Moving their their stuff from one room to another and a trolley so it is what I think one of the ways that I think is important is to develop a kind of Cascade of messages in the educational system. I think it is important that government the federal government say to universities that Canada's largest employer needs bilingual bilingual graduates and That universities Turn around to students and to high schools and say We actually value second language Acquisition and second language learning. We are going to provide opportunities for those students who didn't have a chance to learn to To acquire that university and we are going to give special Advantages to those applying who have taken a more difficult program when they were in high school as things stand now I've talked to high school students who said that They've been told by their guidance counselor. Don't take the course don't take the Don't stay in immersion Switch to English you'll get because universities don't care. I've spoken to other students who've said Don't take the immersion exam. Take the core French exam. You'll ace it. You'll get a better mark And that's all universities care about that's all they're looking for is just the number on the sheet These are incentives to mediocrity What we need are incentives to excellence and so I think there are ways in which the and the problem and one of the reasons that I Restricted in what I can do about this issue is that it is a matter of provincial jurisdiction The Fathers of Confederation in 1867 and their wisdom decided that Ottawa would get all the things that they considered to be really important which is to say foreign affairs defense Major instruments the economy and they would leave all of the trivial unimportant things to the provinces like health and education well Almost a hundred and fifty years later Canadians have a slightly different set of priorities in terms of what they consider to be important than the Fathers of Confederation did and I think It's that difference of opinion that's been at the source of federal provincial conflicts ever since the Second World War But that's a whole other subject the The short answer for the first part is how does the Official Language Act affect journalists is? Not much except because of the successes of the Act now for the whenever a Government document is tabled or made public it is made public simultaneously in both languages You we are now 20 years beyond the period in which the federal documents would be Published in English with French to follow so it is for any news conference that's held in The press building there is simultaneous interpretation so the Official Languages Act has ensured that Journalists can get their information Their formal information in either official language Where journalists interact most with me I get relatively little contact from English-speaking journalists because By and large majorities aren't particularly interested in the challenges of the minorities I get a fair amount of attention from French language journalists who follow the cases that have been That we are investigating that write about the reports that we do on complaints that write about Our audits of federal departments who write about the the reports that we do so for and for French-speaking journalists will find out very quickly whether federal departments are able to serve the public in English or in French because if they phone up a Communications branch of a department and they can't get Somebody to explain a policy to them in French They know that that that department is not living up to its responsibilities under the act I get some complaints formal complaints that have been Presented by by journalists So but it's Not surprising that There was a period at the when the First reports of the earlier commissioners or commissioners official language Would be tabled that they would get an awful lot of attention in the English press because language policy was seen as threatening to the English majority it was seen as a barrier for people getting jobs it was seen as as as unfair and so but that that Now to a much greater extent We don't see we don't see much I'm of the same level of interest from English-speaking journalists as from French-speaking journalists one of the Terrific Elements of this job is that it takes a vote of two houses of parliament to fire me so I Have a Degree of job security that means that My that the various considerations that I take into account Don't involve any fear that I'm going to lose my job as a result Where I where I Do measure Measure my words carefully is I Try and ask myself the question How am I most likely to get results? How am I most likely to get a An institution to change its behavior? I've actually had a A pretty cordial relationship with with the Prime Minister and and with his ministers as I said over the issue of the Supreme Court, I was left in no doubt whatsoever that the The Prime Minister and two of his ministers Did not agree that bilingualism should be a criteria for an essential criteria for Supreme Court justices But again part of Part of my approach and you can contrast this with the approach that's taken by the Ontario ombudsman I Don't think it is useful to Publicly embarrass or humiliate Federal institutions I think it is more likely to generate resistance, it's more likely to generate resentment and less likely to Get people to take the issue seriously I mean one another the another way of Phrasing my role of Being part cheerleader part nag is I think that it's sometimes more effective to inspire Public servants to live up to their responsibilities than it is to simply require them to live up to their responsibilities my experience basically is that Federal public servants want to do the right thing. They want to get it right. They are not Intrinsically, there's not a deeply rooted antagonism or opposition to the idea that they have a responsibility to serve Canadians in both visual languages and the and I've observed if you like a Change in in the views of the Prime Minister I I interviewed Stephen Harper When he was leader of the opposition for my book on language policy and it was pretty clear that he believed that I People outside Quebec spoke English people inside Quebec spoke French, but the to achieve Succeed at anything they had to speak English and then he got elected in 2006 and Nine of the ten or eight of the nine MPs that he was that were elected from Quebec could barely put together a sentence in English and he had a number of MPs from outside Quebec who would not get re-elected if they were on the wrong side of the official languages issue and So any thought that any people in his Caucus might have had that the new government was going to revoke and repeal the Official Languages Act disappeared pretty quickly and And he has been personally quite rigorous in Always using both languages always starting off as public declarations in French going through the declaration in French And then going through the the declaration in English There are and I've been my my first mandate expires in about three weeks and I was the Prime Minister asked me to stay on for for another three years and I'm convinced that the reason is because of the election of a Patsy Quebec War government in Quebec that You've seen him say That He does not want to pick a fight with with the Quebec government. He is trying to play as as Calming and distant and low profile a role in the controversies involving the the Patsy Quebec War and he for whatever reasons saw I Think I was the devil that he deviled he knew so I think that I was seen as a source of continuity at a time when He wanted the the language issue to be relatively low profile and at this point as I've concluded in other areas It's failures that are obvious and successes are invisible and he would like to have as many invisible Successes on the language front as possible. I've actually taken some pains not to to wade into the the activities of the Fisca bequoise that on Francis I'm in the language monitoring business myself I have to respond to complaints some of which people may feel are Our trivial there is one of the interesting things about the The the complaints Investigation around the use of past on a menu and for that matter yogurt spoons Is that it ultimately resulted in the dismissal or forced resignation of the president of the office give a cause that on Francis so it is a It is a challenge for anybody who is in an ombudsman's position to decide What kind of tone they are going to adopt what kind of how rigorous are they going to apply the letter of the the letter of the law and To what extent do they use do they have the discretion under their particular act to Focus on some complaints and not on others and to what extent do they have no discretion some ombudsman do not have discretion as to what What complaints they investigate others are able to say I'm going to focus on that one because I can really embarrass the government on that the There are There are times where I've used The discretion that I have to say Actually, we're not going to investigate this because I don't think it meets our criteria There are but that can be tricky because you've got a complaint who is saying This is what the law says and so While I think that the and that's it be it it can become a Self-defeating process when the app when the I mean I You know I Had a I had a very cordial meeting through Luis Marchand who was the the former head of the Fiscapecoise that on Francis She's lost her job over over the way in which those those incidents were handled So I don't I don't need to comment That's it becomes a self-controlling mechanism that and this I think becomes part of part of my own view that I have to walk a line that if I am seen as as Beating the government over the head over over over trivia That becomes self-defeating for me I lose credibility the only way that a Agent of Parliament is able to be effective is if they maintain credibility in the way they carry out their carry out their work and Once you've lost credibility then you lose it you lose your effectiveness