CANADA
Public Servants in the Canadian Province of Manitoba are increasing bilingual but more needs to be done, the Francophone Affairs Secretariat says.
The Secretariat, the Provincial body that advises the Government on francophone services, said the number of Public Servants who offered bilingual services went up by 20 per cent in the past year to 1,459.
Minister for Francophone Affairs, Rochelle Squires (pictured) said the report, “gives us a roadmap to where we’re going”.
“We know what French language services offerings looks like in the Province of Manitoba, so we have a baseline from which to measure progress,” Ms Squires said.
The report emphasises the importance of improving French language services in Manitoba. One repeated issue was that of Active Offer — the ability for Public Servants to offer bilingual services quickly and easily, and to communicate that option to anyone who wanted it.
According to the data, less than half of all employees in public bodies took Active Offer training.
One of the 11 recommendations by the Secretariat suggested that the Civil Service Commission should make this online training mandatory.
“When people phone and they want to speak to a service representative in the language of their choice, they need to feel confident they will receive that support in a timely and accurate way as if they’re receiving that information in English,” Ms Squires said.
Other recommendations included ways to build stronger relationships with the Francophone community, making sure public bodies put in the effort to find bilingual candidates for vacant positions, and to ensure that all existing and new documents are in both official languages.
Winnipeg, 29 January 2020
