Official Languages Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

We gathered sound bites to that effect when we did our cross-Canada tour. For example, some provinces, following the court challenges, recognized the right for Francophones to have their own schools in minority regions. The schools they got were those that the Anglophone community had closed in order to open new ones. The closed school was reopened in order to give it to Francophones. There wasn't even a gymnasium, absolutely nothing.

On Tuesday, we heard from the people from the Northwest Territories. They've been fighting for two years, despite the fact that they won the right, in court, to have their own French-language schools. They're still fighting to get a gymnasium.

That's not a very pretty situation. There's nothing to be proud of there. I'm a person, honestly, who promotes both languages. If we believe in the act that states that English and French are the two official languages of Canada, then both should be treated in the same way, whether in Quebec or in the rest of Canada. For my part, being a Francophone outside Quebec, I find it abnormal that we're still talking about this.

I don't know whether you know Antonine Maillet, who is originally from back home. I don't want to take up too much of my time; I just want to address this subject briefly. She said that, when the English left England and the French France, two great nations travelled across the water, fought when they left Europe until they arrived here and, 400 years later, one would say they're still fighting each other.

There are countries where people learn six languages and where there's no language problem. We only have two languages, and we're still fighting.

So I'd like to know, briefly, whether you'd like to make any specific recommendations, because that's what we want to put in the reports. For example, an illiteracy rate of 49% is unacceptable. A rate of 54% is unacceptable. What kind of programs do you think should be put in place to help our people?

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

You'll have to answer in about 20 seconds.

[Ilze Epners]

Twenty seconds?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

It's just as well to wait for the next round, madam. Please keep your answer until then.

[Ilze Epners]

I can do it quickly.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I think that—

[Ilze Epners]

I can do it very quickly. We have to have a national program where all the 10 provinces and the federal government sit down and have a national plan that is not underfunded, that is funded to the point where they can have results. In the last 10 years, 20 years, adult literacy has been very underfunded. It's been project, project, project, underfunded. So there's no national plan, funded. After 10 years of proper funding and having a national plan, I personally believe we would see results.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you. That was very brief.

The next question will be asked by Mr. Harvey.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I've had a little trouble following the discussion, until now, not because it's being conducted in English and French, but rather because first we talked about literacy, then about assimilation, and then it was mentioned that too much money was allocated to the English language universities in Quebec because the numbers ratios are different. I find it hard to include all these elements in a whole. I'm in a way looking for a common theme among our witnesses, and I'm trying to determine what problem or subject we're discussing today.

With regard to literacy, as far as I know, education is mandatory until the age of 16, at least here in Canada. Upon turning 16, a person will have attended school for 10 or 11 years before being able to drop out legally. So if we've wound up with an illiteracy rate of 49 %, perhaps you're speaking to the wrong people, because primary and secondary education are a provincial jurisdiction. If the failure rate is 49%, monitoring should have been done at the provincial level so that illiterates would not represent more than 10 or 15% of the population of Canada.

[Ilze Epners]

May I respond?

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Yes, please.

[Ilze Epners]

Yes, there is a problem, and I agree 100% that the school system somewhere isn't doing its job. That's a provincial jurisdiction, and I'm not going to go there because it's provincial.

But I also think we have to look at what happens to literacy. Literacy is an economic problem for all of Canada. Anything that is economic and that touches our workforce becomes a federal problem. Our children are not going to be able to learn to read if their parents do not learn to read, and that is where the issue comes. Parents have to be literate to be able to have a family that becomes literate. We can say, okay, it's now the problem of the schools, but the problem starts from a long time ago. It's a self-perpetuating problem.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Theoretically, parents shouldn't be more than 40 years of age. The vast majority of people who today have children attending primary and secondary schools are roughly perhaps 45 years old. Since education has been mandatory since 1970, if I'm not mistaken, that means that, if they started in 1970, some parents are 37 years old. The percentage of illiterate parents that you're telling us about should be very low compared to the children who do not have any support at home.

[Ilze Epners]

Look beyond that. Why are these 35-year-old parents illiterate? Because their parents were illiterate. This isn't a problem that will be solved in one or two generations. The same thing applies to people who are on welfare. The attitude doesn't change in one generation. It takes four or five generations to change attitudes and to be ready to go off welfare.

The same is true with illiteracy. This affects a number of generations. If a child sees neither of his parents reading at home, if there are no books in the house... It's very hard for you to understand that because you all know how to read. It's impossible for you to understand. It isn't simply a matter of picking up a book and reading it; it's a comprehensive approach.

You need to have a completely holistic approach.

When kids come from families where there is no reading at all, there is a complete difference in self-worth. It becomes holistic, and you can't say, “Okay, learn a, b, c, and d.” It is a holistic approach to teaching people to become literate.

That's from generation to generation. Don't expect it to be fixed in one generation.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

The problem is that the discussion could take a lot of time, but I only have seven minutes. We're trying to deal with this situation.

Mr. Perreault, you're trying to establish a relationship between a literacy problem and a lack of money at the universities. At what point should we learn to read and write in any school system?

[Jean-Paul Perreault]

What I'm going to say will probably enlighten you.

The 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey that Statistics Canada refers to was based on four tests, not study levels. Based on the results of those four tests, Levels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were established. Levels 3, 4 and 5 are equivalent to literacy. Below those levels, we're talking about functional illiteracy.

The four tests concern the following areas: comprehension of prose texts, comprehension of document texts, that is charts and tables, numeracy and proble-solving or analytical reasoning. The tests were administered to 23,000 Canadians—this is an international survey—and, in view of the fact that there are fewer Francophones, the Francophone sample was increased in order to establish comparative statistics.

It's not only the study level that determines this; it's the results based on the four tests administered by the International Literacy Survey.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

My question concerned the relationship between university funding and—

[Jean-Paul Perreault]

I'm getting there. If university prospects are non-existent or virtually impossible for a Francophone, if access to postsecondary education is limited, you'll agree with us that the Francophone results on these four tests will be inferior. Prospects, access to postsecondary education, are limited in many cases in Canada outside Quebec, and Quebec's Anglophone universities receive 25% of funding for a Francophone population of 8%.

This is so much the case in Quebec that there are higher levels of illiteracy among Quebec Francophones than there are among Quebec Anglophones, and the disproportionate figures in Canada outside Quebec are disturbing. When you do not have any postsecondary education prospects, and given the assimilation statistics such as those projected earlier, you'll agree with us that, in many cases, young people don't see themselves going—

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you, Mr. Perreault. You've gone way beyond the allotted time.

We'll continue our five-minute round.

Our next round is five minutes.

We have a special guest with us, Mr. Ken Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

My question will focus again on this literacy aspect, because I believe we have an opportunity here with your presentations to make the government understand how deep and severe the impacts of the cuts have been to people in all provinces and territories, and hopefully through your presentation today to actually help convince the government to restore those in the next budget.

In Ontario, even small cuts affected many organizations, because if it was $5,000 out of a $90,000 budget, it's essentially the same as $500,000 to a larger budget. A lot of federal funding depends on provincial support, and it is triggered and supported in such a way. Is it the same in the province of Quebec?

[Ilze Epners]

In the province of Quebec we had a special entente with the federal government. It was the interprovincial entente

for literacy.

All the money came and was distributed to the province's different literacy organizations. That was one way of being funded.

The other way we were funded was the Quebec English Literacy Alliance. It was directly funded by the old NLS. We wrote projects and got money for our projects, which were all short-term projects and could never be repeated.

Yes, it definitely did hurt us, because the Quebec English Literacy Alliance, now that they are directly funded by the NLS, are in jeopardy of being 100% cut. We do not know yet. We haven't been notified one way or the other, so we don't know. We're just living on a shoestring, hoping we will survive. The other organizations, the volunteer sector, still had funding for this year but had to cut back drastically.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Is it the umbrella or the parapluie organizations that would essentially speak for many different smaller groups throughout the province? When the umbrella organization is lost, then it means that the smaller groups, the community organizations, have to try to make the same pitch with much fewer resources, and there is a huge multiplicity of similar messages being sent, whereas the umbrella organizations could speak for everybody. Is that—?

[Ilze Epners]

That's exactly it, and remember that the umbrella organization does all the training. The training is huge, because a regular teacher cannot teach a literacy student; it requires special training. The umbrella organization is the one that does the training. The umbrella organization is the one that has the funding to write material so that we have materials, because there are no materials you can just go out and buy for teaching literacy.

That alone is a reason for the umbrella organization to exist. If the umbrella organization is no longer there, they will not be there to feed all of that to the little tiny organizations that are in the—

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I'm hoping that your presentation makes some sense to the reasonable members of the government side, so that they can carry this message to the Treasury Board and the Minister of Finance.

How much time is left, Monsieur?

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

You have a minute.