Highlights
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The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages conducted an audit to examine the official languages program of the Halifax International Airport Authority between September 2007 and March 2008. The organization had the opportunity to respond to the preliminary report, and their work plan is included with our comments.
The audit dealt mainly with the management of the official languages program, including senior management’s leadership as well as infrastructure and monitoring to support linguistic duality within the airport.
During the audit, we assessed the commitment of the Halifax International Airport Authority’s Board of Directors and senior management to comply with their obligations under the Official Languages Act, and we verified whether the Airport Authority’s organizational culture reflected linguistic duality. We also evaluated if the management framework and the mechanisms in place allow the Airport Authority to fulfil its obligations pertaining to service in both official languages to the travelling public. We examined how the Airport Authority communicated requirements related to official languages to various stakeholders at the airport. We also verified whether the institution had the structure to effectively monitor the availability and quality of bilingual services provided by specific contracted service providers.
We found that the Airport Authority has made progress since the audit began, and that, in some respects, it is heading in the right direction. It has developed an accountability framework and an action plan in relation to its official languages obligations. It has modified its structure to better manage its official languages program and has appointed an official languages champion. It also conducts some monitoring and it scored well on our observations on the presence of bilingual signage throughout the airport.
Nonetheless, our audit enabled us to identify a number of areas where the Airport Authority can do more to improve the overall management of its official languages program. Consequently, the Commissioner is issuing nine recommendations to the Halifax International Airport Authority to address the gaps mentioned in this report.
On the leadership front, the Commissioner is calling upon the Airport Authority to strengthen its accountability framework and action plan for official languages; develop a policy on service to the public in both official languages and a communications strategy to better disseminate official languages requirements to stakeholders throughout the airport; modify its contracts with specific service providers; and create a joint working group with other federal institutions at the airport to look at finding solutions to common challenges.
With respect to infrastructure and monitoring, the Commissioner is expecting the Airport Authority to review the language designation of its positions to ensure that it has a sufficient number of bilingual staff to meet its obligations as well as establish and implement formal mechanisms for the effective and efficient monitoring of compliance with the Official Languages Act. In addition, the Airport Authority needs to put innovative measures in place to encourage contracted service providers to meet their official languages obligations. The Airport Authority must also extend its community consultations and outreach to official language minority communities to address concerns related to official languages compliance at the airport.
Generally speaking, the approach and the work plan presented by the Airport Authority respond only partially to the Commissioner’s recommendations. We are encouraged by some of the measures identified in the Airport Authority’s work plan with the exception of its response to recommendations where the Airport Authority has placed emphasis on possible federal funding. We understand the challenges faced by the institution; however, we think the Airport Authority needs to consider innovative and proactive ways to serve the public in both official languages at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport to make any significant progress.
We maintain that complete implementation of our nine recommendations is necessary to ensure the Airport Authority fully meets its obligation to deliver services in both official languages and the highest quality customer service possible for travellers passing through the Halifax Stanfield International Airport. By moving forward on these recommendations, the Airport Authority will demonstrate commitment to fulfil its official languages obligations and its leadership in terms of horizontal collaboration. We also encourage the Halifax International Airport Authority to promote linguistic duality in its dealings with all its clients.
We are confident that this audit will contribute to increasing the institution’s commitment to official languages and ultimately to improving the services that it offers to the public in both official languages. We will conduct in due time a follow-up to this audit, to examine and report on the measures taken by the Airport Authority to implement our recommendations.
