Commissioner questions Fredericton police force's capacity to serve in 2 languages

Fredericton police have to figure out how many bilingual officers they need to serve members of the public in the language of their choice, the New Brunswick language commissioner says.

Such an assessment has been required of all police forces in the province since 2002, Katherine d'Entremont, the commissioner of official languages, said Friday. 

D'Entremont has upheld two language complaints against the Fredericton Police Force from 2016, both involving a lack of service in French.

In her report  earlier this year, she said the Fredericton force never determined the measures required to serve the public at all times in both official languages. 

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"The key finding was that they acknowledged they had never set … to determine what they needed in terms of capacity," she said in an interview with Information Morning Fredericton.

Her investigation was prompted by two complaints, the first coming from a person protesting that all signs and commemorative plaques in the lobby of the police department were in English.

A second person complained that an officer who stopped him spoke exclusively in English while asking for identification and proof of insurance, even though the man wanted to deal with the officer in French.

Help with assessment

As part of her investigation, d'Entremont asked the police force 12 questions to help asses the level of language services offered by the department, including the number of overtime hours worked by unilingual officers and bilingual officers

"We wanted to find out whether the police force had determined the level of bilingualism or the number of officers they would need to provide service at all times in both official languages," she said.

"Secondly, what was the current complement of bilingual officers in order to determine the extent of the gap, the gap between what they need and what they currently have."       

It would be like saying, 'We're going to hire police officers and it may be a good idea if you graduated from a police academy.- Katherine d'Entremont

She said it's not reasonable for all officers to be bilingual, but it's up to both the police force and the city to meet the required obligations. 

"Police forces everywhere in New Brunswick have a clear obligation to offer and serve the public in both languages since 2002," said d'Entremont.

Between 2014 and 2016, the police department told d'Entrement, it didn't consider bilingualism "an essential hiring competency but an asset."  

During a 2½-year period, eight officers were hired, and none were bilingual, she said

"It would be like saying, 'We're going to hire police officers and it may be a good idea if you graduated from a police academy,'" she said. "Graduating from a police academy is a requirement."

Looking ahead

The level of bilingualism at the force isn't up to d'Entremont herself, so her recommendations are aimed at guiding the force in determining what it needs to provide equal service in English and French.

"They have to take their human resource information and figure out for themselves how many officers are they going to need, so that at all times they have the capacity that they require to fulfil their obligations under the Official Languages Act," she said.    

CBC News has asked the Fredericton force for an interview.