Understanding the bill

A Francophone woman who was in a car crash in the Ottawa region received a bill from the Ministry of Transportation’s Highway Incident Claims Unit. She called and asked to speak to a bilingual employee, but was unable to receive services in French. In response to our inquiry, the Unit told us that the unilingual Anglophone employee who took the call was new and wasn’t familiar with the procedures.

Result: As a result of our intervention, the Unit improved its provision of services in French by:

• Reminding employees of procedures;
• Updating the French language service procedure in their handbook; and
• Asking two bilingual agents from two other departments to help them ensure they can always provide services in French.