I invite you to go directly to slide 2 of our short presentation, which gives you an overview of the legislative framework governing official languages. The Treasury Board Secretariat has certain responsibilities regarding this legislative framework which gives life to the programs.

Let's move on to slide 3.

As you know, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives equal status to English and French in all institutions of the Government of Canada. This is, among other things, the cornerstone of federal employees' right to work in English or in French.

The charter also gives members of the public the right to receive services from their government in English and French depending on the location and nature of the office, and where there is a significant demand for the services. The charter rights are further developed and entrenched in the Official Languages Act.

Slide 4 presents part IV of the Official Languages Act, one of the three parts of this act that are the responsibility of Treasury Board and the President of the Treasury Board. This part of the act sets out federal institutions' obligations related to providing communications and services to the public in both official languages.

As of March 31, 2014, there were, across Canada and overseas, 11,469 federal offices; more than 5,000 of these were post offices and Service Canada local offices located throughout the country. This includes Air Canada routes, telephone lines and websites. Of these 11,469 federal offices, 3,931 were bilingual and 7,538 were unilingual, still as of March 31, 2014. This means that 1,371 offices offered unilingual French services, while 6,167 offices offered services in English only. As of March 31, 2014, 34.3% of federal offices were required to offer bilingual services to the public and communicate with it in both languages.

Based on the reports that federal institutions submit to the Treasury Board Secretariat to show that they are complying with the requirements of the act, a strong majority of institutions indicated that in offices designated bilingual for services to the public, oral and written communications are in the official language of the public's choice.

As noted in the 2013-2014 “Annual Report on Official Languages”, we continue to work with institutions to update linguistic designations based on the 2011 Census. This exercise will continue into 2016-2017.

That was a very brief overview of part IV.

Let us now move on to slide 5, which discusses part V of the Official Languages Act, the language of work.

This part of the act makes English and French the two languages or work in federal institutions. The act gives employees in designated bilingual regions the right to use their official language of choice; to be supervised, to receive personal and central services, and to have access to work instruments in the official language of their choice. In unilingual regions, the language of the majority is generally the language of work.

May I direct your attention to a few key indicators which show that federal institutions have created work environments that allow them to meet their obligations to the public and to their employees.

The first indicator is the proportion of bilingual positions in the core public administration, which has steadily increased from almost 25% in 1978 to over 43% in 2014. The second indicator points in the same direction: the proportion of employees in bilingual positions who meet the language requirements of their position has steadily increased, from 69.7% in 1978 to 95.6% in 2014.

I will now go on to slide 6, on part VI of the Official Languages Act, which speaks to the participation of English and French-speaking Canadians in federal institutions.

Anglophones and francophones are well represented across federal institutions subject to the act.

According to the 2011 Census, 23.2% of Canada's population is francophone. As of March 31, 2014, francophone representation in federal institutions was 26.5%, and 33% of executives in the core public administration were francophone.

I am coming to the end of my presentation.

Slide 7 sets out the responsibilities the Official Languages Act gives to Treasury Board and the President of the Treasury Board with regard to developing policies and regulations and tabling reports pursuant to parts IV, V and VI of the act.

The last slide presents a pie chart that provides a brief guide to the committee on understanding the numerous responsibilities of the various federal institutions with respect to official languages.

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