Annual Public Meeting

Vancouver Airport Authority hosted its Annual Public Meeting on Monday, May 8, 2023 to present the Airport Authority’s 2022 Annual & Sustainability Report and financial statements.

If you have specific questions about YVR's Annual & Sustainability Report, you are welcome to submit your questions to [email protected]

The 2022 Annual & Sustainability Report is available to view at YVR.ca/ASR  

Vancouver Airport Authority operates Vancouver International Airport (YVR) in service of the community and economy that supports it.

View YVR's 2022 Annual Public Meeting here

  

Participants had the opportunity to ask questions at the meeting in-person and from online. Below are responses to outstanding questions from the meeting. 

1. Why are you challenging Thibodeau's lawsuit on official languages in court? Thank you for this question in regards with the lawsuit that is currently ongoing on official languages compliance. At YVR, we continue to remain committed to ensuring our services are compliant with all applicable legislation including the Official Languages Act. As this matter is before the courts, we are unable to provide further comments at this time.
   
   
2. Why are you refusing to compensate the plaintiffs and challenging this in court? Thank you for this question in regards with the lawsuit that is currently ongoing on official languages compliance. As this matter is before the courts, we are unable to provide further comments at this time.
   
   
3. Is it possible to meet personally with the CEO to discuss official languages? We are always happy to engage with our communities. Please email us your request at [email protected] and our team will be in touch to support you accordingly.
   
   
4. Why do reports from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages show that there are so many violations of language rights? Vancouver Airport Authority works with many business partners across the airport and Sea Island to serve the public every day. We continue to work diligently to ensure our compliance with all applicable legislation, including the Official Languages Act, and where we discover instances of non-compliance, we act promptly to remedy the issue, whether it means remedying the issue ourselves or working with our business partners to assist with their remediation. Vancouver Airport Authority exists to serve the community and the economy that supports it. As outlined in our action plan that was released following the December travel disruption in 2022, we are committed to enhancing our communication and support on resources available to passengers. We always welcome feedback and continue working towards meeting and exceeding all compliance and regulatory requirements.
   
   
5. What have you done to recruit bilingual employees. (specifically bilingual)? At YVR, we are always working to provide an inclusive travel and work experience for passengers, partners and employees. We have advanced our efforts through actions including recruiting Green Coat volunteers with French language skills over the past several years, and are pleased to report that we have significantly increased our contingent of French-speaking Green Coat volunteers. We provide French language training to our employees and engage in targeted recruiting efforts to maintain a sufficient number of French speakers, and currently 10% of our Guest Experience Representatives are French-speaking. We have successfully recruited bilingual persons for key public-facing positions in our organization and continue to establish objective language requirements for positions across the organization. We have a number of job postings that identify fluency in French as an asset and we are further exploring how to enhance our approach to staffing public-facing roles within our organization with a view to increasing our capacity to provide services in both official languages.