Agriculture Canada should improve delivery of information and programs in French, particularly on the Prairies, says the federal official languages commissioner.
Many positions designated bilingual are not filled with bilingual staff, Graham Fraser concluded after an audit of the department’s official languages performance.
He found the former Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, now part of Agriculture Canada’s agri-environment services branch, particularly wanting.
Fraser said the fact that the French-speaking population is small on the Prairies is not relevant.
“It is the law,” he said. “I think French-speaking producers on the Prairies have as much right to expect service from their federal government in their first language as do English-speaking farmers in Quebec.”
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The Prairies’ largest concentration of French-speaking producers is in Manitoba, where Statistics Canada estimates there are as many as 1,400.
However, the president of the provincial farm organization representing those producers said frustration with French-language services is not an issue his members have often raised.
“It really has been mentioned very little,” said Ian Wishart, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.
“There have been a few cases, but we have bilingual members who have been able to help when it was necessary. I would say almost all the francophone farmers in the province are bilingual so it hasn’t really been much of a problem.”
A particular point of contention between Fraser and Agriculture Canada was language services for programs originating in Ottawa but delivered by the province.
In its response to Fraser’s report, the department said the federal government encourages third-party deliverers to respect the Official Languages Act, “but it (the department) is not in a position to force them to do so.”
Fraser disagreed.
“Even in a shared area of jurisdiction between the federal government and the provinces, such as agriculture, it is the federal institution’s responsibility to impose the linguistic obligation on its provincial counterpart where the province is acting on its behalf,” he responded.
However, the bilateral agreements Ottawa negotiated with the provinces for delivering Growing Forward make it clear provincial delivery will follow provincial language laws. Only New Brunswick is officially bilingual.
“Where Canada is the administering party of a designated program, all communications related to the designated program are subject to the federal Official Languages Act,” said the agreement with Manitoba.
“Where Manitoba is the administering party of a designated program, the communications relating to the designated program shall be in the language(s) provided for by provincial law and/or policy.”
The federal languages commission highlighted the differences in Agriculture Canada performance on the Prairies and in Quebec.
Fraser said most of the PFRA offices on the Prairies that could not serve clients in French had no bilingual staff.
“We believe this situation needs to be corrected as soon as possible since these offices have been designated bilingual and their clients expect service in the official language of their choice.”
Fraser said managers of those offices should be educated about their responsibilities under the Official Languages Act.
