Grievance Case Summary - G-271

The grievance concerns the establishment of a bilingual language requirement for a sergeant's position of Instructor at the Canadian Police College in Ottawa. Until 1994, the position did not have a bilingual requirement. However, a need was identified at that time for the incumbent of the position to be able to provide instruction in both English and French and the position was accordingly given a new designation with a CCC/CCC linguistic profile. As the position was occupied at the time by a member who was not bilingual, the change in linguistic profile could not be given immediate effect as per Treasury Board's Official Languages Policy.

The same member was still in the position in October 1996 when he signed a form entitled "Linguistic Designation of a Position" which described his position as requiring knowledge of English only. When the position became vacant in December 1998, the official languages coordinator for the Force approved a decision by the position's manager to maintain a bilingual language requirement for the position. In January 1999, the position was advertised for competition and open to "qualified Sergeants and Corporals who successfully participated in the third Cycle Sergeant promotion process". The Grievor had been a successful candidate in that particular promotion process and would therefore have been eligible to be considered for the position but for the fact that he was not bilingual. The principal reason given by the Grievor as to why he was disputing the bilingual designation of the position is that this designation hindered his career advancement opportunities. In addition, he maintained that there had not been a proper review of the language requirements for the position in December 1998. The Grievor argued that the evidence established that the position had received a new designation of unilingual in October 1996, and that the information appears not to have been taken note of when the competition was held two years later.

On September 13, 2002, the ERC issued its findings and recommendations. In coming to its conclusions, the Committee did not support the Grievor's contention that the position's language requirements were changed in October 1996. This does not appear to be supported by the evidence and, even if that had been the case, the fact remains that the Force had an obligation to reassess the language requirements in December 1998 based on the circumstances that existed at that time. There continued to exist a significant demand for training courses in French which the incumbent of this position would be expected to teach. Accordingly, the Committee recommended that the grievance be dismissed.

On October 4, 2002, the Commissioner rendered his decision. The Commissioner accepted the recommendations of the Committee and dismissed the grievance.