Pat Coghlan

And exactly how are anglophones supposed to keep their language skills when 80% of them never use the second language after returning to work??? Also, if they never have to use the second language, why was their position classified bilingual in the first place? You're defending a practice (2nd language required for a job) which, in reality, does not reflect what actually happens in the workplace - especially in Quebec. I'd like to hear your opinion regarding whether a manager should have to certify in writing that a second language will be required at least 10% of the time before he/she is allowed to classify it as bilingual. Would you be in favour of this requirement?

Adopting English as the language of work in ROC, the way French has been adopted as the language of work in Quebec. Save the bilingual requirement only for those jobs that actually provide services to the public or employees (e.g. compensation and staffing). This would save a TON of money, but of course would result in fewer jobs going to francophones in ROC.

It would be soooooooooooooo much easier if the government admitted that there is this thing called language of work, and that the language of work everywhere but Quebec is English, while in Quebec the language of work is French (except for the federal offices in Gatineau). I mean, this is what happens in reality anyhow.

There are only Treasury Board guidelines, and no auditing afterwards, so a manager (almost always a francophone) changes the classification, and it's virtually never challenged. I'd like to see Sheila Fraser do a value-for-money audit on this. I'm sure Canadians would be shocked.

I worked every summer in the public service, and I'm back working for a government agency again here in Ottawa. I also have many neighbours working in the federal government, including PWGSC (huge department) and the CRTC, both of which are headquartered in Gatineau. I can show you lots of positions that are bilingual, but almost no one who directly serves the public. Virtually all the work in the office is done in English. My own position is classified bilingual, as of the day after the anglophone that occupied it retired (it was English essential for the 10 years previous). As a result, I had to go on language training for 6 months. I'm now C-B-C, but haven't had to speak a word since I got back and none of my francophone collegues even bother to talk to me in French. It's the same story for all the anglophones that I know directly or indirectly. BTW, you will be asked to pay for all this training. Kindly explain my personal experience then, plus that of the roughly 80% of anlglophones that I know of that spent up to 2 years on language training only to return to work and never use their 2nd language. Can you acknowledge that perhaps there's a problem with the number of jobs being classified bilingual?

Actually, no. There are something like 240,000 federal public servants. Most of them never deal directly with the public. Do they deal with other employees? Well, they work with other employees, and a small percentage of the total provide HR and compensation-type services. These are the only ones that really need to be bilingual. Not much justification is required. I'd like to see Sheila Fraser do an audit to see what language is actually used 99% of the time for so-called bilingual positions in Ottawa. The incentive is the billions of dollars spent annually to train anglophone employees to speak French so that 80% of them can go back to work and speak English. Official should mean you can get served by the government in the language of your choice. It should not mean that both languages are interchangeable in the workplace, because I have yet to see a workplace where that is the case. You cannot have meetings etc. in both languages. No, I mean company representatives. A friend of mine is a lawyer who spent a year in France working for a firm there. While contracts between companies in the same country were written up in the language of that country, all contracts between companies from different countries were written in English. A manager can very easily make a position bilingual. Very little justification is required. Like I said, if the postion provides a service to the public or other employees, fine. Otherwise, making a position bilingual only ensures that more and more jobs go to francophones. You cannot justify this trend when the fact of the matter is that 80% of the employees in bilingual positions in Ottawa conduct their work exclusively in English.

That's the problem. It shouldn't be an issue for anglophones in Ontario (or francophones in Quebec) unless providing service to the public or employees (e.g. HR or compensation). Taxpayers receive zero benefit from trying to get anglophones to talk French to their francophone collegues in the performance of their jobs in, say Ottawa. We are spending billions on this useless training. When people finish language school (possibly after 2+ years), 80% of them go back to their jobs and speak English. Bilignual requirement for services, fine. Bilingual requirement for jobs that just end up speaking the language of the majority, assinine (unless you're a francophone, so blocking anglophones from thousands of positions in ROC makes perfect sense to you). Yeah, and when officials from, say Italy, get together with officials from, say Germany, they write up the contracts in English. You say requiring bilingualism isn't discriminatory. What do you call it then, when a position in Ottawa is classified bilingual, yet the employee speaks English virtually 100% of the time? Please explain why we should spend billions of dollars on language training for people to go back to their jobs and speak only English? Is Sheila Fraser listening???

Indeed, they do. I am presently involved with Revenue Quebec and service is provided in English at my request. I think most would agree that this makes sense. If an anglophone in Quebec needs government services, they should be provided. However, French is used pretty much exclusively as the language of work by the various levels of government everywhere in the province except perhaps in federal government buildings in Gatineau. It makes no sense to try to give equal status to both languages in the workplace in Ontario, except to provide services to the public or employees (e.g. HR and compensation services), especially when you consider that Quebec is doing exactly the opposite.

...who, for the most part, live in predominantly English or French regions. The problem is that the ROC is not following Quebec's example and establishing one language of work, while providing services in both languages. The goal of using either language in the workplace hasn't succeeded - and never will.

In the news again today re: same-sex spouses: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/s...74-fed2ac51d056

It is an issue for anyone outside of Quebec hoping to land a job in the public service. While it's reasonable to expect HR or payroll employees to be bilingual, no one is willing to address the issue of "language of work". No manager should be able to classify a job as bilingual unless he/she is willing to certify that a second language will be used at least 10% of the time. Otherwise, we end up with the current situation in which something like 80% of people who go on language training return to their jobs (after up to 2 years) without ever needing to speak the newly-learned second language. It's also an issue for taxpayers who have to fork out billions of dollars to be wasted as described above.

Alimony continues to be deductible so, yes, divorced couples can income-split. You are referring to the non-deductibility of child support payments. There is a formula used to calculate these payments and they are loosely based on the needs of the child. Since I receive no deductions for amounts I spend to take care of my own children's needs, I don't have a problem with this recent change. In addition, all divorced parents with the same income and the same number of children are taxed the same - which does not happen with families with identical aggregate incomes. Perhaps you are familiar with the equivalent-to-spouse deduction which was created out of thin air to give single custodial parents similar tax treatment to parents which have a spouse. I mean, how hokey is that???

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/02/news/econo...sion=2007050216

I dispute that liability is the basis or justification for pooled income. The most common scenario for persons pooling income is when they have shared costs. Two spouses is the most common example, but it is not the only one. You have cited the example of when spouses separate, that the higher-income spouse has a financial obligation to share income and wealth with the other spouse. You have also said that parents have a finiancial obligations to support kids. How is it then when kids move away from home, that they should not expect to take their share of accumulated family wealth with them?? They are not the head of the household, I suppose. Marriage and children have a special status in society, and you can find references to this status pretty much everywhere in our laws etc. This status supercedes any other relationship that you feel should be used as a basis for income pooling etc. IMHO, it will always be so. Again, please show me some evidience that the Finance Dept/CRA uses liability as the basis for determining whether income is considered pooled or not. I am just saying that they are parallel situtations. Where this liability exists, you will find that things like income pooling/sharing can exist...but not in any other arbitrary relationship.

Personally, I understand that definition but I do not think it is right. Can you not just accept the fact that some people might want the taxation laws to change? Yes, but I'm waiting to see the basis for such a change. I've pointed out the financial liability that a person has towards his/her spouse and dependent children, and that this is why only spouses should be able to split income. On what basis should two siblings or an adult child and his/her parent split their income for tax/benefit purposes? They can move out tomorrow, with zero liability. I'm saying that unless such a liability exists (i.e. as with the definition used by Finance/CRA) there is really no basis or precedent.

<lots of stuff deleted from Renegade> Can you not just accept the fact that Finance's definition of a family mirrors the financial obligations that I explained exist between spouses and dependent children? Way back, you started arguing that perhaps co-habitating siblings etc. should be treated as a family for tax/benefit purposes, but at the end of the day CRA recognizes spouses and their dependent children as a "family". There is no other definition. You don't agree with it perhaps, but you at least recognize this as the definition, don't you??? While there are some deductions for relatives being cared for, they don't factor into family income whatsoever, nor will you find any Dept of Finance or CRA document describing such relatives as being part of a family. So, like it or not, any potential changes to income-splitting will only involve spouses. Not their children. Not their relatives being cared for. Nada.

The above is the definition of family income. ...and regardless of the amount, a child's income is consistently not considered family income. For tax purposes, they are obligated to share/pool. Try omitting your spouse's income from your tax return some time to see what I mean. If the marriage breaks down, you will find that the lower-income spouse will have a right to be supported (alimony). Ditto for the children (child support payments). Clearly, a spouse cannot simply hoard his/her income indefinitely. Sure, I can refuse to put my paycheque in a joint account for my wife to have access and, instead, pile up $100K in an investment account in my own name, but legally my wife will have access to a full 50% of that amount once we legally separate. I can assure your family is legally entitled to any money that you don't feel has to be shared. Anyway, the point is that the definition of family is pretty much in line with one's support obligations, namely spouse and dependent children. See the definition of family income above. It is in line with the obligations I described above. Children have no legal obligation to pay any kind of support to parents/siblings, so not treating a child's income as family income adhere's to this principle. Having said that, if a parent puts $1M in an investment account in the child's name, the interest/dividends might be taxed in the hands of the parent because of attribution rules.

Yes, that's right. But then, unless your child is a movie star or has a $1M trust fund from the grandparents, when is that going to happen? Even when it does, the child is not obligated to share that income with other family members, the way his/her parents are (with spouse and children). BTW, the family could still be eligible for benefits even if the child earned $100,000 as an actor etc., but this is the child's money, not the family's.

Do they actually define "family" in the context of a tax-return? I've only seen definitions of "dependants" and "spouse" and what constitutes an "arms-length" relationship. Even your proposal doesn't tax based upon family income, even by your definition of family. Let say the child earned the bulk of the income in one particular family. The child's income would be taxed individually and not part of the family pool. I've always advocated taxing family income vs individual income, especially since benefit eligibility is calculated based on family income. I found this on the Dept of Finance website: http://www.fin.gc.ca/gloss/gloss-f_e.html#fam-inc

They flood federal offices only after a francophone manager takes over a department and start classifying as many jobs as possible bilingual.

Many of these jobs are bilingual because to honor the Act, people can choose to report to those working such bilingual positions in their prefered domestic language, requiring those being reported to by other gov't employees to know both languages. It still seems to me that trends in Québec are independant of bilingualism in Ottawa. The Act may not be perfect, be we might as well honor it now that it's been legislated. Finally, we agree. It's all about The Act. At the beginning, at least there was a willingness to train people. More and more, managers don't want to lose (and pay for) employees on language training, so they opt to hire francophones (I'm talking about Ottawa here), often requiring proficiency in French to even start a job. Chretien did this for all EX-level positions in the 90s. In spite of the fact that most work is done in the language of the majority in any region (i.e. English in ROC, French in Que) we spend billions of dollars a year on language training which, I believe, for the most part gets wasted because employees return to using the dominant language...just like they did before going on language training. The next 5 years will be the make-or-break period for this language of work issue, due to the high number of public servants who retire during that period.

Language training for both domestic languages is provided, most likely even at no cost to recent immigrants. http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/pub/annual-re...6/section5.html Canadians can easily find themselves very affordable language training in adult high schools in any region where one may need both langauges for federal employment. Anyone interested in federal work yet not knowing both languages still have plenty of opportunities to work up their language skills. I still figure that anyone thinking of one day working for the government should figure that knowing both domestic languages would be really helpful if seeking work within the government of a country of two languages. It's helpful if you work in a area designated as bilingual (part of Montreal, national capital, parts of NB) and work in HR or compensation. It's not that helpful if you work anywhere west of Ottawa (last time I boarded a plane in Vancouver they announced the flight in two languages - English and Cantonese). What's the first thing that a manager says when addressing a large group of employees in Ottawa? Basically, that the meeting will be conducted in English. In Montreal, just replace English with French in the previous sentence. To me, this makes sense. If someone wants to live and work in Ottawa, it's reasonable to expect that person to work in English - unless working in one of the types of jobs I described above. I don't think you'll find much support for your position that "any job that isn't bilingual can be outsourced". Forty percent of the public service is going to retire by 2012. It's going to be awfully difficult (practically and politically) to fill all the bilingual positions. So why are these positions bilingual? IMHO, something like 80% of people who finish language training rarely - if ever - use their 2nd language at work. Quebec is slowly moving to one official language just about everywhere except when federal government service to the public is involved, so it's only a matter of time before we address this language of work in a similar fashion.

No, that's why it's easier to require bilingualism as opposed to providing training. Also, most government positions can be outsourced, especially the ones not making use of the minority language at least on average one hour per day, and outsourcing most government work would be even more efficient. If you're going to require bilingualism and not provide training, you're going to block a lot of non-francophones from government jobs, including many recent immigrants, who don't need French to function anywhere outside of Quebec - and even in many parts of Quebec. And, if you're going to do that, there are going to have to be a LOT fewer jobs classified bilingual, with the focus being on those jobs where a service is provided to the public or employees (e.g. staffing, compensation, tax queries etc.). You cannot require a job to be bilingual just to permit an employee to use the language of his/her choice at work. That choice must be removed, and the predominant language of the region enforced (hint, this is what happens for the most part anyway - just ask any EX that completed language training in the past few years).

In that case it should be possible to quantify - even approximately - the amount of time per day, on average, that the minority language would be required on the job each day. If the manager can't certify that, on average, the minority language would be used at least 60 minutes per day, in your opinion, does it ever justify spending $100K, $200K or even $300K (salary + language training)?

And yet, those same two neighbours have to work for a living, and the stay-at-home spouse does not. Real fair, that. Are these the same 2 neighbours that get a full tax deduction for their daycare or nanny expenses, courtesy of the $8,000 in additional taxes that *their* neighbours pay? Are they the same 2 neighbours that, when there's a teachers' strike, who ask the stay-at-home-mom if Johnny can be cared for in their home until the strike is over? Are they the same 2 neighbours who get a full deduction for their kids' daycamp (even if one parent is a teacher and at *home* for the summer), while the other family gets none? If I'm not getting through, then let me point out that the same problem exists in families in which BOTH spouses work, but one spouse earns, say a multiple of the lower-income spouse. Plus, at the end of the day, if both families have the same total income, they are eligible for exactly the same benefit payments. Even if there are pre-schoolage children? Is it your opinion that they should all be in daycare? For tax purposes, you will find that the definition that I use is the one accepted by the Department of Finance. Get it changed, and I'll accept the new definition. For now, mine is the only one that works on a tax return.