Official Languages committee  No.

Official Languages committee  No.

Official Languages committee  No, not to my knowledge.

Official Languages committee  Being an optimist by nature, I would say we are making progress. More seriously, given the level of interest in bilingualism in the various regions, I would say we are progressing.

Official Languages committee  As we said in our opening presentation, the purpose of the "non-imperative" label is to allow for broader access to the federal public service. People may be perfectly able to acquire the language proficiency required for the position as defined by the manager responsible. We believe that it is important to retain the non-imperative option in terms of accessibility.

Official Languages committee  I would have to look at the statistics.

Official Languages committee  Last year, there were 80,000 appointments, which included both internal and external appointments. Of that total, nearly 28,000 were bilingual imperative positions.

Official Languages committee  Given the number of positions available, there are a lot.

Official Languages committee  I do not have the information I would need to tell you whether that is true or not. The question would have to be put to the school that handles language training.

Official Languages committee  No. As I said, in view of the new legislation, we no longer have responsibility for language training. That responsibility has been transferred to the School of Public Service. So we no longer handle it.

Official Languages committee  Yes. If I may, I am going to ask my colleague, Mr. Poznanski, to provide you with the details.

Official Languages committee  We are in the process of completing the evaluation for the last year of the five-year plan and we have begun preparations for evaluating the results of the part associated with the Public Service Commission, which related to awareness and demystification of the meaning of bilingualism in the federal public service.

Official Languages committee  I can't speak to the other components of the plan that are the responsibility of other agencies, but we are in the process of completing our own evaluation.

Official Languages committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before your Committee to discuss the Public Service Commission's role in Official Languages. The Public Service Commission was last before your committee in November 2004. I would like to introduce two of my colleagues who are with me today: Mr.

Government Operations committee  Those positions that are qualified as determinate positions, and that can be viewed as casual, are given the status of indeterminate positions after three years. Some casual positions are limited to a duration of exactly 90 days. Once this period is up, they are not renewable. There must be a break in service.