References
Paragraph 32(1)(a) of the Official Languages
Act and paragraphs 5(1)(b), (c), (g), (i), and (m) of the
Official Languages (Communications with and Services to the
Public) Regulations.
Application
All institutions subject to the Official
Languages Act (including departments, agencies and Crown
corporations, and Air Canada pursuant to section 10 of the Air
Canada Public Participation Act).
1. The purpose of this directive is to ensure
that the views of the local official language minority population
are considered in the implementation of the provisions of the
Regulations that relate to the principle of proportionality.
2. A number of the significant demand provisions
in the Regulations require the application of a principle of
proportionality when an institution has several offices
providing the same services. These provisions apply to
institutions that are located:
(a) in Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) that have
an official language minority population of at least 5,000;
(b) in CMAs that have an official language
minority population of less than 5,000 where institutions offer
the following services: Post Office, Employment Centre, Income
Security, Income Tax, Secretary of State and Public Service
Commission (hereinafter referred to as key services);
(c) outside a CMA and in a census subdivision
(CSD) that has an official language minority population of at
least 500 which represents at least 5%, but less than 30%, of the
total population;
(d) outside a CMA and in a CSD that has an
official language minority population of at least 500 which
represents less than 5% of the total population and where the
institutions provide any of the key services as well as the
services of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
3. The principle of proportionality applies in
the circumstances identified in paragraph 2 above in the
following manner:
- when several offices of an institution provide the same
services, the number of offices that provide services in both
official languages must be at least equal to the
proportion that the minority represents of the total population
in the CMA or CSD in question. If the application of the
principle of proportionality produces a fraction rather than a
whole number, the result must be rounded off to the next higher
number, irrespective of the size of the fraction.
4. Institutions that offer any of the key
services in the Montréal or Toronto CMAs must provide these
services in both official languages in accordance with the
principle of proportionality as described in paragraph 3 above.
Furthermore, once the number of offices that must provide
services in both official languages is determined according to
that calculation, the number must be increased by one more office
per service.
5. The choice of the actual office or offices
that are designated as having significant demand for services in
both official languages must be made in consultation with the
official language minority associations that most widely
represent the minority served locally by the institution and must
take into account the following factors:
(a) the distribution of the official language
minority population in the CMA or CSD;
(b) the function of the offices that provide the
above services, their clientele (in particular, usage patterns)
and their location in the CMA or CSD (e.g. accessibility of the
office).
6. For convenience, the attached Annex contains
an example of the application of the principle of
proportionality.
References
Paragraph 32(1)(a) of the Official Languages
Act and paragraphs 5(1)(d), (k), (n), (q) and (r), subsection
5(3), paragraphs 6(1)(b), (c), (d) and (e), and subsections 7(1)
and 7(2) of the Official Languages (Communications with and
Services to the Public) Regulations.
Application
All institutions subject to the Official
Languages Act (including departments, agencies, Crown
corporations, and Air Canada pursuant to section 10 of the Air
Canada Public Participation Act).
1. This directive sets out the basic principles
that institutions must follow when carrying out surveys of the
language preference of the public served by their offices
required to assess demand for services in either official
language for the purpose of implementing the Regulations.
2. With the exception of paragraphs 6(1)(b) and
(e), which come into effect on December 16, 1994, the above-noted
provisions come into effect on December 16, 1993. Services must
be available in either official language by these implementation
dates if the assessments that are carried out show that demand
for service in that language is at least 5% of the total annual
demand.
3. Assessments of demand must be based on
appropriate surveys of the language preference of users. These
surveys must meet the following conditions:
(a) Assessment methods must be objective;
sampling, collection and analysis of data must be carried out
using sound methodologies.
(b) A third party must conduct the survey, i.e.,
an entity independent of the institution.
(c) The respondents must be given a clear
explanation of the objective of the survey. They must be told
that the purpose of the survey is to determine if the office or
facility that is being surveyed must provide services in both
official languages under the Official Languages Act.
(d) Interviewers must be bilingual and must also
be sensitized to the characteristics of the socio-linguistic
environment in which the survey is being carried out.
(e) Respondents must be given the choice of
answering in either official language. When data are gathered
through an interview, this choice should be made clear from the
start.
(f) Questionnaires and interview guides must be
in both official languages.
(g) The anonymity of respondents must be
protected.
(h) The overall results must be available for
public access.
(i) Institutions must keep on file the documents
supporting the results obtained during the collection of data
(description of methodology, i.e., the approach used, the
sampling plan, the evaluation tools, data obtained, etc.). These
supporting documents should be maintained on file until a new
assessment of demand has been carried out.
4. If an institution considers it appropriate to
alter any of the above conditions, it must consult the Official
Languages and Employment Equity Branch (OLEEB) of the Treasury
Board Secretariat.
5. Institutions must submit to OLEEB the list of
their offices, and their locations, that require an assessment of
demand.
6. Departments and agencies so designated under
the Financial Administration Act are subject to the
Treasury Board policy on the management of information held by
government (Treasury Board Manual -- Information
Management -- Chapter 2, Management of Government Information
Holdings). Projects for assessing demand in either official
language covered by the present directive are not considered to
be surveys of public opinion and therefore do not require the
intervention of the Public Opinion Research Group of the
department of Supply and Services.
7. Departments and agencies so designated under
the Financial Administration Act must nevertheless comply
with the requirements of the above-mentioned policy, particularly
with regard to the need to describe and register their projects
in the Federal Register of Collected Information maintained by
Statistics Canada and to obtain a collection registration
number.
8. It should be noted that Statistics Canada is
informed of the requirements involved in projects for assessing
demand and institutions may avail themselves of its expertise in
the field on a cost-recovery basis.
9. Before carrying out surveys for assessing
demand, institutions must obtain OLEEB's comments on the methods
that will be used. To this end, institutions must provide a
description of these methods, sampling design and estimation
methods as well as the time frames of the surveys, for all
offices and facilities requiring an assessment of demand.
10. No later than the dates on which the
provisions discussed in this directive come into effect,
institutions will inform OLEEB of the survey results for the
offices that come under these provisions. The institutions will
also indicate the location of the offices that must provide their
services in both official languages.
11. Every ten years following the date on which
the provisions come into effect, institutions will again have to
determine if the offices covered by the provisions requiring an
assessment of demand in 1993 or 1994 are still required to
provide their services in both official languages.
References
Paragraph 32(1)(a) of the Official Languages
Act and paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Official Languages
(Communications with and Services to the Public)
Regulations.
Application
All institutions subject to the Official
Languages Act (including departments, agencies, Crown
corporations, and Air Canada pursuant to section 10 of the Air
Canada Public Participation Act).
1. The purpose of this directive is to assist
institutions in identifying which offices are subject to
paragraph 6(1)(a) of the above-mentioned Regulations.
2. Under paragraph 6(1)(a), institutions must
ensure that services that are intended specifically for a
restricted and identifiable clientele are offered
in English or French when, during a one-year period, demand by
that clientele in that language is at least 5%.
3. Paragraph 6(1)(a) is part of the provisions
set out under the specific circumstances for significant demand.
These provisions take precedence over those that relate to
general circumstances (section 5 of the Regulations).
4. The provisions of paragraph 6(1)(a) do not
apply in the following cases:
(a) services provided by a headquarters or
central office of an institution and by its offices that are
located in the National Capital Region (Official Languages
Act, s. 22);
(b) institutions reporting directly to Parliament
(Official Languages Act, s.s. 24(2));
(c) services and offices designated under the
provisions pertaining to other specific circumstances for
significant demand, nature of the office, and services provided
by contract to the travelling public (paragraphs 6(1)(b) to (e),
6(2)(a) to (d), and sections 7 to 12 of the Regulations).
5. The provisions on the restricted clientele
apply only if the following conditions exist:
(a) the services are intended specifically
for a restricted clientele
In general, the expression "restricted clientele"
means the clientele of an office that has been given the mandate
of providing certain services exclusively to a specific group or
category of clients. The services that are covered by the
restricted clientele provisions are services not available to the
general public since they are intended only for clients, or their
representatives, that make up a specific group that is defined in
a statutory document or a government policy. This would be the
case, for example, with businesses or entities carrying out
activities in a regulated sector that are registered or that must
secure a licence in accordance with federal legislation.
The institution must be able to show that the
services in question are intended for a stable clientele, whose
composition can be clearly specified. As a general rule, the
clientele of an office cannot be considered a restricted
clientele if the number of clients to whom an institution
provides the type of services described above corresponds to more
than 1% of the total population of Canada as defined in
subsection 4(2) of the Official Languages Regulations.
(b) the clientele is identifiable
For the purposes of these provisions, the term
"identifiable" means that it is possible to determine both the
name of each client and the official language in which the client
wishes to receive services. This information must be obtained
using the method described in paragraph 7 below.
6. To apply the provisions on restricted
clientele, institutions must establish a list of their clients
and their language preferences.
7. Institutions will, therefore, have to take a
census of the clientele of those offices that are subject to the
provisions regarding a restricted clientele in order to determine
the official language in which clients wish to receive their
services. To this end, institutions must:
(a) obtain the required information from each
client using appropriate data collection techniques. In addition,
when choosing the mode of communication to be used for this
purpose, consideration should be given to how the office normally
contacts its clientele (e.g., by mail, by telephone or in
person);
(b) ensure that the data collected from its
clients is collected by someone other than the person who
provides the service to these clients directly;
(c) clearly explain the purpose of the census to
its clients. Respondents must be told that the purpose of the
census is to determine whether, under the terms of the Act, the
office in question must offer its services in both official
languages;
(d) ensure that its clients may respond in the
official language of their choice. To this end, questionnaires
and interview guides must be in both official languages. All
interviewers must be bilingual when the census is conducted by
telephone or in person;
(e) make public, on request, the overall results
in a manner that protects the anonymity of its clients.
8. If an institution considers it appropriate to
alter the procedure set out in paragraph 7, it must first consult
the Official Languages and Employment Equity Branch (OLEEB) of
the Treasury Board Secretariat.
9. Institutions must keep on file the various
documents that are relevant to the census of clients carried out
by a given office (description of the methodology, raw data,
analytical documents). These supporting documents should be
maintained on file until such time as another review of language
preferences of the clientele is carried out.
10. Before beginning the data collection process,
institutions must transmit to OLEEB a list of the offices that
are subject to the restricted clientele provisions, and their
locations.
11. The provisions on the restricted clientele
take effect on December 16, 1993. By that date, institutions must
have provided OLEEB with the overall results of the language
preference census for each office subject to these provisions.
They must also provide the location of those offices that are
required to provide services in both official languages.
12. Every ten years, institutions will need to
ascertain anew whether the offices that were subject to the
restricted clientele provisions in 1993 are still required to
provide their services in both official languages.
We will use the census metropolitan area of
Sudbury as an example:
Total population:
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147,655
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Minority population:
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41,850
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Percentage:
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28.3
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Almost 90% of the French-speaking population of
the Sudbury CMA is found in three of the seven localities that
make up the CMA: 48% of the French-speaking population lives in
the city of Sudbury proper, 22% in Valley East and 20% in
Rayside-Balfour.
Under the principle of proportionality, if 10 of
the offices of a given institution offer the same services, the
number of these offices that have to provide their services in
both official languages should be calculated as follows: 10 x
28.3% = 2.8 or 3 offices. When the application of proportionality
results in a fraction (e.g., 2.8) rather than a whole number, the
figure has to be rounded to the next higher whole number. This is
because the regulatory provision requires that, in comparison to
the total number of the institution's offices in the area, the
number of offices offering their services in both official
languages must be at least equal to the proportion of the
total population that the minority represents. (If the result had
been 2.5 or 2.3 out of 10, the number of offices would likewise
be three.)
Since a large number of the members of the
minority population live outside the city of Sudbury proper, it
would be inappropriate to designate three offices in Sudbury as
the ones required to serve the public in both official
languages.
Thus, it would perhaps be more appropriate to
provide services in both official languages at two offices in
Sudbury and one in either Rayside-Balfour or Valley East, or to
offer services in both official languages at one office in each
of the three localities mentioned.
The final decision will also have to take into
account the function of the office and results of the
consultation with the minority population.
Note: The minority population is
established in accordance with Method I from: Population
Estimates by First Official Language Spoken, September 1989,
Statistics Canada. Source: 1986 Census
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