Public Service Commission of Canada. Language Training Program : Since the middle of the twentieth century, Training Programs of the Public Service Commission have constituted de facto or de jure, a major supplementary business line to the Commission's central purpose as the steward of the merit principle in securing a competent, effective, non-partisan and representative federal Public Service. Since at least 1964, training programs have divided into two major foci, technical, professional, and management training programs on the one hand and language training programs on the other. Gradually by the 1990s, the Language Training program has become the dominant portion of the business line as defined by resources and broader program significance. Throughout their history, training programs have usually been grouped within a single organizational unit of the Public Service Commission under various names and organizational reporting structures, though the details over half a century are inevitably complex. (For two periods 1967-1973 and 1978-1988, the programs were organizationally distinct and separate). The exception to this continuity is found in the management category or executive group development programs, which are not technically training programs per se and which have been associated since 1967 as a distinct sub-component of the staffing function. Pure executive or senior manager training courses per se ceased to be a part of Public Service Commission activity in 1991 when a separate and distinct Canadian Centre for Management Development agency was formally created, leaving only a limited overlap in (delegated) jurisdiction for senior management development involving the PSC. Since 1990 each of the two main foci of the training programs, professional and language courses, has functioned with the status of a Special Operating Agency under an umbrella operational branch, with executive group development programs being administratively linked to the training programs in 2000 (for the first time). Since at least 1951 and in particular since the late 1970's all training programs have operated in an administrative environment where Treasury Board Secretary has the statutory mandate to develop and regulate training policy and human resources development for the federal Public Service as a whole. Since 1972 the Treasury Board has also had the mandate for developing and administering Official Language Policy within the federal Public Service.
The technical, professional and managerial dimension of training programs was the original focus of PSC training activity. It originated with an embryonic program for management training in 1938 and war-time expedients in 1942. These preliminary initiatives evolved into a comprehensive and pro-active Staff Development Program after 1966 and then shrank gradually into a program of more limited scope as Treasury Board executed its broad policy prerogatives to ensure greater decentralized departmental flexibility and delegated authority and to exploit options of alternative service delivery through private sector providers. By 1990 the residual technical, professional and middle management training programs were administered through a special operating agency called Training and Development Canada (TDC). Unlike Language Training Canada, which delivers a program in many ways unique to the Canadian State and derived from the Official Languages Policy based on statute (1969 and 1988) and the constitution (1982), the activities of Training and Development Canada are more generic and in the main associated with activities performed by other jurisdictions and the private sector. TDC designs, develops, delivers and evaluates middle management, supervisory, professional and technical training courses for departmental clients in direct competition with private sector providers. Increasingly it focuses on courses that explain the application of complex federal government procedures in relation to human, financial and material management. In more recent years TDC has cultivated the status as a centre of excellence and has marketed its expertise successfully outside the federal government and even to an international public sector clientele, usually but not exclusively with developing countries.
Since 1990, the Language Training Program has been delivered through a special operating agency, Language Training Canada. This activity is an integral part of the Official Languages Program of the federal government and it constitutes a significant and distinct function of the modern Public Service Commission. The Broader mandate of the PSC in relation to Official Languages inherited by Language Training Canada includes second language aptitude testing, proficiency testing, provision of training courses, advice to departments and agencies on language training strategies and career counselling. The Public Service Commission has administered the language training component continuously since 1964, even before the Official Languages Act and Policy (1969) were adopted. The program was adopted initially as a pilot project in November 1963 with the first 42 public servants enrolled for training by five instructors in January 1964. Like all training policy, the Commission administers and develops its language training program as a delegated authority from the Treasury Board. Since it assumed responsibility for administering the program in 1972, Treasury Board activities related to Official Languages have always focussed on the administration of the program within the Public Service, the component of the Official Languages Policy that has come to be denoted as "institutional bilingualism."
The Act of 1969 set out two simple principles -- that there was equality of status of English and French as official languages of Canada in all Federal institutions and that all citizens had the right to be served in the official language of their choice. As anticipated by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Official Languages Policy required a radical and rapid reconstruction of the Federal Public Service. The language training program and other aspects of PSC activity in relation to official languages policy are logical and necessary corollaries to the equitable administration of any such program to ensure objectivity, consistency, and fairness in recruitment, staffing and designation of bilingual positions. The simplicity of the principles of the Act had to be reconciled with conflicting rights and practical difficulties of implementation, for example, a public service made up largely of monolingual Anglophone incumbents who had rights in the workplace as employees and career expectations of their own and the rights of Francophones to equitable participation and promotion and to use their language in the workplace. The Official Languages Act was supplemented by a Parliamentary resolution in 1973, affirming Parliament's support of Official Languages Policy but adding the additional principles of the right of employees to work in the language of their choice, work environments conducive to the use of both official languages, full (equitable) participation of both linguistic groups in the public service consistent with the merit principle and the goal of increasing use of French as a working language in the National Capital Region. The evolving Language Training program was just one of many administrative adjustments to achieve equitable implementation of the Act and the revised principles of 1973. Revised legislation of 1988 codified Treasury Board policy of the previous 15 years in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), clarified the legislative basis of the Board's primacy in applying the Act to the Public Service and affirmed the supporting role of the PSC in applying the Act to the staffing function, language proficiency testing and language aptitude testing. Language training per se remains a supplementary service delivery function performed on a delegated basis under Treasury Board authority and delivered under PSC administration through a central training centre in the National Capital Region and up to six regional offices.
