Official Languages Committee on Dec. 6th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Order, please.

My name is Yvon Godin and I am a member of Parliament for the northeast of New Brunswick. I am vice-chairman of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Other committee members will be joining us this morning. We will have Ms. Sylvie Boucher, parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister and Minister for the Francophonie and Official Languages, and Mr. Steven Blaney, a member of Parliament with the party in power. I'd like to introduce the Honourable Raymond Simard, a Liberal Party MP—they are the official opposition—and Mr. Brian Murphy, also a member of the Liberal Party.

We are pleased to be here this morning in Regina and to have this opportunity to meet you and discuss the 2003 action plan and official languages en general. As I said at the previous meetings, the Standing Committee on Official Languages has never travelled before. It has existed for 25 years, since the Official Languages Act came into effect. Pursuant to sections 41, 42 and 43 of part VII of this act, our mandate is to monitor the application of the official languages, to ensure compliance with the act, and to make recommendations to Parliament.

In 2003, an action plan was implemented to assist communities. If I'm not mistaken, it is a $750 million plan intended to help communities and to facilitate a working relationship with them when it comes to immigration, the health care network in French, and other areas which are important to community development. We asked Parliament for permission to go on a national tour in order to consult people in their communities, as other parliamentary committees do. We considered meeting people in their communities to be crucial. Previously, people always had to come to Ottawa. Not everybody had the opportunity to do so. We also wanted to see the work going on in communities. We wanted to see the institutions and the centres you have set up. Thus far, things have gone well. I won't spend any more time on the introduction.

So here is how this meeting will work. You'll each have five minutes to make your presentations. I understand that isn't much, but as parliamentarians, we have questions we'd like to ask you. We're familiar with the program and you'll have the opportunity to make your presentations. There will be a lot of questions. We're going to spend two hours asking you questions and if you were not able to say everything you wanted to say in your five-minute presentations, you'll have the opportunity to elaborate when it comes time to answer questions. After your five-minute presentation, every member will have five minutes to ask you questions. I'd ask you to stick to the five minutes because we have quite a large number of witnesses and we only have two hours.

I'd now like to hand the floor over to the representative from the University of Saskatchewan, Mr. Wilfrid Denis.

[Wilfrid Denis, Professor of Sociology, St-Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan]

Mr. Chairman, I thought I would be last.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

I had the impression you wanted to either be first or last. It does not matter to me. If you want to be last, you can be, it is as simple as that.

[Wilfrid Denis]

I would prefer that.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

All right, so we will start with Mr. Michel Dubé, President of l'Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise.

[Michel Dubé, President, Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Michel Dubé and I have been President of the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise since November 1.

First of, I would like to thank you for having taken the initiative to come and visit us in here in Saskatchewan. Your visit certainly is appreciated. We have a document which we will leave here in the room so that you may refer to it if you like. Unfortunately, we had neither the time nor the means to have it translated into English. From what I have been told, we cannot present it to you officially if it is not in both official languages. Our apologies, but we really did not have the time to have it translated into English.

For those who do not know how the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise works, I would say that in our community, we are a—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

I am sorry. If you have a document in French, you can give it to the clerk and you can have it translated in Ottawa to reduce costs.

[Michel Dubé]

We can get back to the issue of costs.

The Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise is a community-level governing entity. It is composed of 15 members, elected from each one of the communities, and a president elected by universal suffrage. I think we are the only community-based structure in a minority setting to operate this way. We are leading this movement or this way of operating outside Quebec, among francophones.

I am here with Mr. Denis Desgagné, Director General of the ACF. We will both be available to answer your questions.

Following the adoption of the Dion Plan, the Franco-Saskatchewanian community made great progress. We took on many projects which were successful. We work on a whole range of issues in several sectors, with target groups, to ensure community development in the global sense of the word. For instance, we work with the sectors of health care and immigration which are growing increasingly more important, early childhood, on the creation of bilingual companies and government services and at the provincial and federal levels. We also work on enhancing our community's image, marketing it and raising awareness of it with government and the anglophone community. Those are the sectors we are working on and within which we had success over the last few years.

We have also focused a great deal on new approaches to reach our goals. I am referring to the merging of services as well as to our work within community organizations in order to make them as effective as possible, reduce costs and make better use of very limited resources. The Coalition pour la promotion de la langue française et de la culture francophone en Saskatchewan, mainly, works on outreach.

Increasingly we work in partnerships. We have gone beyond simply asserting our rights and we are now attempting to establish partnerships with all community partners and those that affect our community, in order to be as effective as possible.

We find ourselves in a difficult position in all of these areas. We need to take action in new areas of interest and sometimes it can be difficult for us to take action in some areas because of a lack of capacity. Obviously, we have recently had to deal with some budget cuts. I am referring for instance to the Innovation Fund and to the Dion Plan.

These cuts and our increasing work load have put a serious strain on financial and human resources, and this is of great concern to us. We wonder about our capacity to respond to meet the needs and to establish partnerships with those who have the greatest impact on our community's development.

I wanted to mention this because it is something we all have to address over the coming years. There is still a great deal to be done, and a great deal of resources will be needed to do this.

We have also focused much of our energy on establishing community service centres. In the past, we worked to establish cultural centres in Saskatchewan and have moved towards community school centres. I was discussing the matter with Mr. Murphy from New Brunswick a moment ago. We have community school centres in Saskatchewan, but given the increase in our workload and the request for services from Franco-Saskatchewanians we have had to move towards what we refer to as service centres, which bring together government, community and association partners to do two things: first, meet the increased need for services; and second, meet the service delivery needs.

It goes both ways.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Your time is up.

[Michel Dubé]

That is essentially what I wanted to say.

Finally, if you allow me, I would like to take a moment to introduce Maria Lepage to you. She is the President of the Fédération provinciale des Fransaskoises and she also has heard about federal government cuts to women's programs. Ms. Lepage represents Franco-Saskatchewanian women.

I realize that I took up more time than I had, I thank you for that. If you have any questions, we would be pleased to answer them.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you very much.

We will now be hearing from Mr. Dominique Sarny, Director of the Institut français at the University of Regina .

[Dominique Sarny, Director, Institut français, University of Regina]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for having invited me to make a five-minute presentation on the Institut français of the University of Regina.

I would have liked to have an opportunity to explain to you how this new university institution enhances the vitality of the Franco-Saskatchewanian community and I hope we will be able to discuss that over the next two hours. But I will essentially focus on our achievements in this area since the inception of our institute in 2003.

A community's vitality is measured by its ability to innovate, to create and to provoke change. There are risks involved in doing that. We welcome this risk and it was part of the creation of our institute from the start. We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that a large majority of our students, or 80% of them, do not have French as their mother tongue. They are considered francophiles. Our challenge is to be able to confront uncertainty. We cannot count on historical progress, etc. We have to manage this uncertainty in a way, which I will get to momentarily.

What do we do and who are we? Our institute was created by the Franco-Saskatchewanian community in partnership with the University of Regina and both levels of government. It was created in 2003 within the University of Regina. It has faculty status. The director of the institute has the status of dean and sits on the council of deans. We are a full-fledged entity within the University of Regina. Our mandate is francophone community development through education, research and university services. We are the only university institution to have a provincial mandate in Saskatchewan.

How does all this work? We received five-year funding which began in 2003 and will end in 2008. We have benefited from and will continue to greatly benefit from the Dion Plan, its philosophy and its concrete actions. We participate in language training for public servants, a growing sector within the University of Regina. I referred to managing uncertainty. You have to understand that we exist within a majority that has a lot of difficulty understanding why we are here. We have a vision of education which is different from that of the anglophone majority.

To us, education is first and foremost a community development tool. You know that in other universities in a majority context, education is a commercial product competing with that of other universities. That is not our case. We are an actual community development tool and we need the support of the community and of our partners. We are partners with the Association des universités de la francophonie canadienne, as is the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, the Faculté de Saint-Jean, the Université d'Ottawa, the Université de Moncton and others.

We have six French education BA programs as well as a BA in francophone studies. We are currently setting up—and this is an innovation here in Canada—a professional community development program. We are a leader in the field of intercultural research in western Canada. In addition, and you may have heard of this—we contributed to re-establishing a dialogue between francophones and Metis, a dialogue which had been brought to a halt 120 years ago at the time of Louis Riel's hanging. Since then, many community initiatives with the university and the Metis were established, including a francophone-Metis discussion group and several research projects with the Metis.

As I said earlier, our funding will end in 2008. Obviously we have progressed very quickly over the last four years. We are counting on upcoming funding which we need for several reasons. First, we need funding to continue the programs which we have created. There are not many of them. They are targeted and they really meet the needs of our community. We also need funding for research and for our premises.

Within the University of Regina, we are located in a building that is shared with other tenants. Despite initial reluctance from the university, we managed to get one francophone unit back, by cooperating closely with the university. There are three French units on campus—including a BA program in our building—and we wanted to add another French unit, the French department. We are looking to integrate these three units within one, the Institut français.

Obviously you must realize that five years is very little time to do all of this. We have managed quite a bit and cannot stop here. We need the support of our various partners, such as the federal government.

I would like to close by saying that the work we do at the institute not only serves francophones, but it extends to the national and international levels, because we now work with various international partners.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you very much.

We will now be hearing from Mr. Denis Ferré from the Conseil scolaire fransaskois.

[Denis Ferré, Director of Education, Division scolaire francophone no. 310, Conseil scolaire fransaskois]

Good morning, and thank you for having invited us here this morning. I'll be giving you the Reader's Digest version because I know that everyone wants an opportunity to speak. So I will get straight to the heart of the matter.

I'd like to introduce you to my colleague Bernard Roy, who is replacing the President this morning. He will be starting. We will give you a brief overview of our history, the current situation, the measures we have taken, our challenges, and of course our recommendations. We would not be here if we did not have recommendations to make to those in power.

Bernard.

[Bernard Roy, Superintendant of Education, Conseil scolaire fransaskois]

Good morning.

With respect to the history of school board management, you know that those involved in French-language education in Saskatchewan had to deal with several obstacles from the start. There were several political decisions which led, in 1931, to the complete abolition of French as a language of instruction for francophones in Saskatchewan. That was followed by a lengthy struggle to have our language rights recognized and 36 years later we finally managed to see some changes. In 1967, the Saskatchewan Education Act was amended to allow for French to be taught in schools and later, designated schools were established.

We know that in 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed official language minority education rights, but it wasn't until 1993 or 1994, in other words 12 years later—in the meantime, assimilation continued—that we were allowed to have our own schools and manage them.

Each time we wanted to claim our rights, we had to take legal action, for instance to correct the underfunding for our school facilities. We always had to fight in order to have our rights upheld.

I would now like to discuss the current situation. The Conseil scolaire fransaskois, which governs the Division scolaire francophone n^o 310 or DSF, includes some 1,132 students in 12 schools, from kindergarten to grade 12. They are spread out throughout the province. The schools that are most remote are six or seven hours away: that is a long trip. We also manage junior kindergarten classes. There are currently 131 JK students. Our JK students are 3 and 4 years old.

The DSF has a triple mandate: devising school curricula, cultural identity programing and fastening community involvement.

These are the measures we've taken. There is programming support. “Francisation” is something we focus on a great deal. It involves managing early childhood programs, language teaching assistants and socio-cultural facilitation programs in our schools.

Furthermore, we promote student exchange programs through various provincial activities. We are also working on developing a distance learning system. We were also involved in court cases, with grants from the Court Challenges Program, for the Ducharme school, which we just opened in Moose Jaw. We just announced the ECF, École canadienne-française, in Saskatoon. The Notre-Dame-des-Vertus school in Zenon Park required us having to go before the court to have our rights respected. We also had to go before the court to correct DSF underfunding.

Let us now move to the issue of identity and cultural development. We have a marketing budget of approximately $225,000 per year, and we work in partnership with the community. There is also three- and four-year-old junior kindergarten. Full-time kindergarten is not 100% funded.

It is our view that community partnerships are essential to the development of our community.

[Denis Ferré]

It is now up to me to tell you about our challenges. I will try to do that relatively quickly.

First of, political will is fragile and it has always been that way in Saskatchewan. Under the current government, we have experienced some success. But we know full well that there could soon be a change in government. What would that mean for our community and our schools? We don't know.

Second, there has been a decline in the francophone population. It has to do with a decrease in the birth rate, francophones are not having enough children. The survival of francophone culture and of our schools is at risk because of this. Love is not something we can control, but we can look to other options like immigration.

Third, we rely very much on technological infrastructure. In the past, the federal government offered a number of programs. Industry Canada, for one, set up very nice networks for us. However, networks get set up and all of a sudden funding dries up. By this we mean funding for networks, technology, and distance learning.

Fourth, let's address the issue of marketing and telecommunications. Currently, 80% of families whose children go to our schools are exogamous. How can we reach out to families that are still entitled to French-language education? In 80% of households the language that is spoken is probably English.

Fifth, there is the issue of funding. Thirteen per cent of our budget comes as a result of a federal-provincial agreement. If ever there were to be a change to that percentage, it would cause major problems.

Sixth, there is the issue of integrated services in the schools. By this we mean health care, justice, social services and the recruitment of specialists. In Saskatchewan, our schools are probably the only recognized institutions not flowing from an associations which receive serious funding. We are points of service for justice, health care and social services.

What do we have to recommend and what are we asking for? First off, we absolutely must reconsider the issue of the national child care strategy. This program must matter to all, including all parliamentarians. I do not want to play political games, but I would say that it is an important and essential program. Why is that? Because our culture is at risk. Our youth are not necessarily hungry, but our culture is at risk.

Second, we ask for support in the field of immigration. One hundred years ago, my family came here from Europe. Everybody in Canada comes from somewhere else. We absolutely must encourage francophone immigration to western Canada, specifically Saskatchewan, because we need that.

Third, with respect to technology, we need programs to support the implementation and maintenance of technological networks and infrastructure.

Our fourth recommendation has to do with a national marketing campaign. This is something we've discussed at the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones. I would like to ask you please to carefully consider this matter. It is important.

Fifth, we would call for the reinstatement of the Court Challenges Program. Our network would not exist today had we not received money under this program. As I've said: political will is fragile.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you.

I'd now like to turn the floor over to Ms. Soraya Côté, Director of the Réseau santé en français de la Saskatchewan.

[Soraya Côté, Director, Réseau santé en français de la Saskatchewan]

I would like to start by thanking you for having invited the Réseau santé en français de la Saskatchewan to make a presentation on the reality we face here in Saskatchewan. Our presentation will be brief and I will be sharing my time with Roger Gauthier, an elected member. We will try to address French-language primary health care issues in Saskatchewan as well as the future of the Réseau santé en français de la Saskatchewan.

[Roger Gauthier, Elected Member and Treasurer, Réseau santé en français de la Saskatchewan]

Our network has been in existence for a little over three years. So it is quite young. We are members of the Société Santé en français, our national counterpart. This provincial organization is an action network active in the field of well-being, service organization, training and French-language health care research. Our partners are political decision-makers, research and training institutions, regional authorities, professional associations, health care delivery institutions and Franco-Saskatchewan community representatives. We bring together the five pillars recognized by the World Health Organization, as do all the networks under the Société Santé en français.

At first, our network had identified few French-language health care services provided to Franco-Saskatchewanians and little consistency between health care services provided by the various providers. We have come a long way in three years' time.

First off, we identified health care professionals who could offer French-language services. Our research was fruitful because our repertory now includes—and you can see this in your handouts—close to 150 names. Having checked, I can tell you that we now have 180 names on this list.

[Soraya Côté]

Also, we've just completed a provincial consultative report entitled “Préparer le terrain”. This national initiative of the Société Santé en français was funded by Health Canada under the Health Transition Fund. The goal was to draw up a primary health care services plan which would provide health care decision-makers with a set of relevant data to make informed decisions as to the best ways to provide primary health care services to francophones in all regions of Canada.

The project enabled us to set out possible avenues with respect to primary health care services. We are currently working on implementing part of the measures identified in this process. Given the success of this initiative, we believe it is essential for the province to continue this work with all other Franco-Saskatchewanian communities and their respective regional health authorities.

[Roger Gauthier]

In addition, we set up an innovative primary health care community intervention process for vulnerable groups in our community, seniors and children. With one common point of coordination managed by the Réseau santé en français, four partners worked together to develop health care promotion services. There is the ACF, which created health care kiosks, the Association des parents fransaskois, which worked to set up child and family service centres, the Division scolaire francophone, which worked on the implementation of integrated services in schools and the Fédération des aînés fransaskois, which focused on senior support centres. In your handouts, you will find the acronyms CAFE, CASA, SIMS and the term Coin santé, with a definition of what these programs are.

The approach we've taken focuses on all health determinants and Saskatchewan's priority in terms of primary health care. This project has had great success and positive results. The work done with children and seniors led to capacity building the likes of which had never before existed in French-speaking Saskatchewan. It led to significant positive effects, namely integrated service initiatives for early childhood, which involve the Division scolaire francophone and Franco-Saskatchewanian parents, supported by all early childhood stakeholders. There were several other positive effects, for instance, the holding of a first-ever children's screening clinic in northern Saskatchewan, in May 2006. Over the next year, there will be two more clinics for children and seniors in northern and southern Saskatchewan. We have come a long way. The most positive effect of this project is certainly that francophones and the province are now speaking in terms of francophone health care, and that the province is now more sensitive to the needs and expectations of francophones.

[Soraya Côté]

These results were achieved thanks to the Réseau santé en français, but much work remains to be done. We would like to share with you some of the conditions we feel are essential to allow Franco-Saskatchewanians fair access to primary health care services in their own language: the reinforcement of the capacity of Franco-Saskatchewanian communities to plan primary health care services, and local, regional and provincial well-being; partnerships for well-being between governments and the community, along with a strategy on all health determinants; a substantial increase in collaborative agreements between various regional health authorities so as to consolidate and organize services intended for the Franco-Saskatchewanian community; conclusive data on the health of Franco-Saskatchewanians; stable and recurring funding from federal and provincial governments to fund consensus building and networking activities among the partners of the French health care system.

I would like to reiterate that our objective is to foster the conditions needed to ensure that health care users have access to good services and are served at the right time by the right care provider in the language of their choice. In order to do this, we need continued support from our main partner, the Société Santé en français, which cannot act without the cooperation and support of the Government of Canada.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the standing committee, thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Ms. Côté.

We will now hear from Mr. Denis from the University of Saskatchewan.

[Wilfrid Denis]

Thank you. It might be useful for the committee members if I gave a demographic and historical overview of the Franco-Saskatchewanian community; however, I would suggest a different kind of overview; over the next few minutes, I would like to give a broader historical context for the action plan.

Social change generally occurs over 20 years. I want to go back to 1947 to better show you where we started in order to better plan our future. You will see why I want to do this.

The first period runs from 1947 to 1967. In 1947, Canada passed the Canadian Citizenship Act, which defined for the very first time who was a Canadian citizen. Prior to 1947, we were British subjects. During the 1960s, we had the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and the adoption in 1964 of the Canadian flag, an essential symbol of the Canadian identity. Also during the 1960s, the first nations won the right to vote. During the period between 1947 and 1967, we laid the foundation for citizenship today, from the recognition of the rights of first nations, to linguistic duality and multiculturalism.

In the period between 1968 and 1988, the Official Languages Act, the Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were enacted.

During the period from 1989 to the present day, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was implemented with, in particular, school governance, the Dion Plan and the development of the Réseau santé en français.

During this 60-year period, the institutional basis of the notion of citizenship defined in the 1940s by people such as Popper, Tawney and Marshall was developed. You will no doubt recall that T.H. Marshall, in his fundamental article on citizenship and the social classes, had defined citizenship as having civil, political and social dimensions. But the fundamental rights associated with the notion of citizenship are constantly evolving. Increasingly, they are defined not in terms of legislation or actions which are discriminatory in their intent or in their impact, but rather through inaction or non-intervention, by way of legislation, programs and actions that failed to prevent negative and discriminatory effects, or by the absence of essential legislation or initiatives.

Furthermore, philosophers such as John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice in 1971, introduce a number of principles of social justice underlying the notion of citizenship. Among other things, John Rawls says that social and economic inequalities should be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

For francophone minority communities, this principle will translate, for example, into programs that, instead of trying to ensure pro-rata uniformity, will take into consideration the risks, degree of institutional atrophy, the costs of social and geographic dispersion and historical costs. In other words, there should be a kind of linguistic equalization formula to take into consideration variations, risk factors and the scope of the challenges faced by these communities.

In conclusion, we—and I'm including the individuals around this table, the federal government, provincial governments and the communities—are outlining and defining the substance of the notion of citizenship for the coming decades. This notion will be much more complex, variable and flexible than in 1947. The rights conferred by citizenship will force the various levels of government to address their inability, their hesitation and refusal to intervene when they should have. They will be more responsible for what they do not do than for what they do do.

It may be time to review various studies, including that done by Senator Simard, Bridging the Gap, published in 1999, in which we can find various subtitles such as these: “The Federal Government—Architect of weakening Communities”, “Decommitment and offloading by the Government of Canada”, and “Project-Funding Policy“, to name just a few.

We should remember that, just like the effects of Indian residential schools established from the 1840 to the 1960 will be judged not on good intentions from 1860 but rather on today's moral and legal standards, the Dion Plan will be judged not on the good intentions of governments from 2003 to 2008, but rather on the impact of the plan in 2023, 2033 and 2043. I would ask you to reflect on the principles of social justice that should guide both governments' and communities' actions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you. We will begin our round of questions with Mr. Simard.