An access to information request submitted to the RCMP was often more likely to be processed quickly if it was written in English rather than French, according to a survey conducted by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Supporting statistics, the country’s bilingualism watchdog concluded that there was a violation of the Official Languages Act in a report arising from the filing of a complaint of The Press.
An analyst, whom we chose not to name, warned in a follow-up email in 2021 that requests formulated in the language of Molière took longer to be answered since “the number of employees in [le] desk is very limited”.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) notably defended itself by arguing that there had been “misunderstanding”, and that it dealt with “all requests in the order they were received, regardless of their language”.
The institution has also pointed to delays in access to information in general.
The Office of the Commissioner nevertheless determined that there was an imbalance in the administration of complaints in English and French – in 2019, the latter were “processed less efficiently”, and in 2020, “slightly less efficiently”.
The RCMP, on the other hand, had nothing to be ashamed of for the year 2021, underlined the agent of Parliament. And given the fact that “45% of all positions (filled and vacant) are identified as ‘bilingual'”, the bilingual capacity is “sufficient”, he judges.
Despite everything, “given the statistical discrepancies revealed by the investigation with regard to requests in French, the Commissioner of Official Languages encourages the RCMP to review its internal practices,” reads the final investigation report.
A larger problem that is getting worse
During the investigation, the RCMP pointed out that the language issue was not the crux of the problem: the list of culprits includes “insufficient resources”, “outdated software” and “ineffective internal policies” .
And those who rub shoulders with the mechanism of access to information are not at the end of their sentences, she warns: “The difficulties have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seriously undermined the ability to process requests and meet deadlines. »
Fortunately, the RCMP will have one less case to deal with: on December 23, 2022, The Press finally received documents – almost exclusively in English, as is usually the case – in response to a request made… on September 18, 2018.
– With the collaboration of William Leclerc, The Press