Official Languages Committee on June 7th, 2007

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Enter that in the record.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

That was very good because you managed to limit your remarks to the time allotted to you.

Now we're going to begin our third round and, without delay, I turn the floor over to Mr. Brian Murphy.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Fraser, and your team, for being with us today.

I'm originally from Acadia, and I of course think that the issues we have discussed are very important. We are concerned by a few matters, the Court Challenges Program, among others, which, I repeat, is very important for us.

However, you emphasized something in your report and your presentation. You started by applauding the positions' of Mr. Harper and Ms. Verner, but you said this:

While these are positive messages, they are marred by actions that significantly diminish their impact.

I count six important points that are not positive with regard to the action plan or the act. They are related to cuts in some cases, but two points are of great interest to me. Perhaps you'll have the time to give me an explanation so that I can clearly understand what is going on. They are the fifth and sixth points. You say this:

Another important change was the transfer of the Official Languages Secretariat from the Privy Council Office to the Department of Canadian Heritage.

In what way is that negative with regard to the plan and the acts? I ask myself the same question with regard to the following sentence:

Finally, the Committee of Deputy Ministers on Official Languages was disbanded.

Furthermore, we see on page 41 that, according to the performance report cards, the service to the public results are not good. I have children, and that's a concern for me. They say that's the main purpose of the acts. I wonder why management gets higher marks than those for service to the public.

Lastly, I see on page 65 that, back home in New Brunswick, more than 24% or 25% of complaints concern language of work. That's 14% more than the national average. I wonder why complaints concerning language of work are more frequent in New Brunswick and here in Ottawa than in the rest of the country.

[Graham Fraser]

First, I'm going to address the issue of governance.

Since I took up my position, I have seen that, in a hierarchy like the federal government, messages coming from above have more importance than those coming from next door. When the Privy Council had a responsibility for official languages coordination, I got the impression that action plan successes were due in part to the fact that it was the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's Office, that asked the departments questions. The people from the office asked them what they had done and whether progress had been made. That required a faster and more careful response than if it came from a colleague department, if I may put it that way.

I think it's like in life or in any office: you give a faster answer to a question that comes from the office upstairs than to one from an office on the same floor. It's somewhat the same thing for the Committee of Deputy Ministers. When it's the deputy ministers heading the departments who handle the official languages issue, they see that their department complies with the act and makes progress, whereas, if the decisions are not made at that level, it's less effective, and the response is not as fast. In short, the issue is not taken as seriously as if the directives were coming from above.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you.

[Graham Fraser]

Perhaps we can answer the other questions later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Very well. Thank you very much, Commissioner.

Now we'll go to the Bloc québécois representative, Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Sauvageau, Benoît, made a request that the Office of the Commissioner examine the issue of official languages compliance at National Defence. We conducted a follow-up on the matter, that is to say that we asked that the studies continue. Other persons, organizations or political parties may have done so as well.

Can you tell us where that study stands?

[Graham Fraser]

We're doing a follow-up report on the report that was previously prepared in response to Mr. Sauvageau's complaint. I'm going to ask Mr. Dussault to answer in greater detail.

[Renald Dussault, Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Assurance Branch, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages]

I believe that follow-up will begin in the fall.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

So it's a process that will continue.

[Renald Dussault]

After we've issued a final report, we always allow the institutions a certain amount of time to react to it and take measures to act on our recommendations. Then we conduct a follow-up. So I think a proper follow-up will be started in the fall.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

That's good. Thank you.

Commissioner, I would like to hear what you have to say on the following subject. I may be talking about an area that is not directly your responsibility, or not at all, but over which you may have some influence. I come from the education world. I taught French to Francophones in Quebec, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

I'm thinking, for example, of Saskatchewan, where only 18% of Fransaskois students attend Fransaskois schools. Consequently, 82% of those students wind up in other schools, some in immersion, others in English as a first language.

Efforts have been made to recruit students—which is unfortunate—because a student is worth a certain amount of money. A school board will not let students whose mother tongue is French leave to go to a school they are entitled to attend or encourage them to do so through their parents and so on.

Do you make speeches or take steps to tell the people from Canadian Parents for French, for example, that immersion and the fact that Anglophones are learning French is very good, but that... I don't want to use harsh words, but that's nevertheless where we find a lot of our youths, and assimilation is very signigficant in the communities of very vulnerable areas. I would like to know whether you make approaches, whether you give talks or whether you have discussions with the people from Canadian Parents for French—I'm thinking of that organization because it exists, does promotion and tries to recruit young people from back home—to make some distinctions and see whether there isn't a way to come to an agreement to help us recover the largest possible number of students from the minorities. I know that education is a provincial jurisdiction.

[Graham Fraser]

I have observed that, contrary to the situation 15 years ago, there is now very friendly cooperation between Canadian Parents for French, on the one hand, and the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada and the Commission nationale des parents francophones Inc., on the other. I was struck by the fact that Jim Shea, of Canadian Parents for French, sat on the steering committee preparing for the Sommet des communautés francophones et acadiennes, which was held last weekend. People for Canadian Parents for French attended the conference of the Commission nationale des parents francophones Inc. So there is a communication network.

I know that the people from Canadian Parents for French are aware of the problem. I don't believe we should address this question from the standpoint of raiding. I don't believe they see it that way. However, they are trying to address the question in terms of sharing resources. By associating, they have more opportunities in terms of buying books, promoting artists' tours, organizing cultural events and so on. In my conversations with the people from Canadian Parents for French, I got the impression that they were doing that in the greatest respect for the needs of the schools of the French-speaking community. Perhaps you have more details than I do on that point, but that's my impression.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

It's already over, Mr. Chairman!

Thank you very much, Commissioner.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

We now move on to Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to discuss the future of the two official languages in Canada, because I believe we have a major problem in Canada.

I think statistics show that the number of unilingual francophones in Canada is declining as a percentage of the population. That's the broad trend.

[Graham Fraser]

Sure.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I'm talking in terms of the two official languages, not in terms of allophones and other Canadians whose first language is something other than those two official languages. The view in the country in terms of the two official languages and the broad trends is that French is in decline and English is on the rise.

That's been the broad trend over the last 100 years, and it is still going on. The number--optimistically, and giving us cause for hope--of bilingual speakers is also on the rise. However, we have a big, broad problem here, which is that the federal government, its institutions, its agencies, its crown corporations, its areas of direct administration are officially bilingual, but the reality on the ground in the country is that the vast majority of Canadians are not bilingual.

So there's a gap between the country's national institutions, which employ over 400,000 people, and the education system, which is not requiring students to be bilingual. So we're really creating a system of elites in this country who have access to bilingual education and who can speak the two languages, and a system for everybody else who can't speak the other official language. It's a huge problem in the long run, I think.

It's creating a situation that if you want to access the upper echelons of the public service, the crown corporations and the like, you can't, and that's the reality. I think we have a structural problem within our society that we, in the long run, have to address. In my view, the best way to address this is with the education system.

I believe in the preservation of the French fact in Canada. However, in my view, there is a big gap between the education system, which doesn't require students to know the other official language in order to obtain their diploma, and the country's national institutions. I don't understand why there isn't more of a consensus to address this gap.

If the education system were graduating students who couldn't read or write or who couldn't do mathematics or who the business community felt were not up to par, you'd hear a hue and cry from the business community that the country's universities and its high schools were simply not up to standard and we needed to improve this. But you don't hear the same hue and cry about the country's largest employer requiring someone to know both official languages to move up or to participate, and the fact that we're simply not doing that with our public education systems I think is a huge structural problem.

I'd be interested to hear if your office in the past or present has done any work on what it would cost, what it would take, to use the federal spending power to encourage provinces to require that both official languages be known as a requirement for graduation, and I think to accommodate the increasing diversity of this country, to do what the Europeans do, which is one plus two.

[Graham Fraser]

I've tried to look at language issues in terms of opportunities rather than obligations. But certainly I'm very aware of the fact that when I graduated from high school, a second language was required for entry into university. It was possible to replace maths and sciences with languages. That was one way you could.... And I've occasionally thought that if that had not been the case, and maths had been a requirement for graduation, I would still be in high school, but that's another issue.

I'm not sure whether it's possible--and certainly it's outside my mandate--to go back to that era of reimposing obligations. It certainly would be interesting to know what the costs would be.

Before we got there, though...what strikes me is the absence of opportunity, totally aside from the obligations. I spoke to a parliamentary intern from Manitoba who was obviously interested in public life and who was a parliamentary intern at the Manitoba legislature. She told me that in addition to her work she was a jazz musician, and that when she was in grade 9 she had to choose between music and French. She said, and I agree, that she shouldn't have had to make that choice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

I apologize, Mr. Fraser.

Now we'll go to Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Now it's Radio-Canada's turn. What is its mandate? You must know that the SNA, the Société nationale de l'Acadie, is preparing to challenge the CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate. The corporation is paid for by Canadian taxpayers. When I use the terms “national” or “federal”, I'm referring to Canada; it's not Quebec or Montreal.

The problem is that Radio-Canada really serves Montreal. I used to say that it was Radio-Québec, but I was corrected by my Quebec friends, who told me that it was not Radio-Québec, but rather Radio-Montréal. There's the same problem in the Gaspé, Lac-Saint-Jean and all those places.

Radio-Canada has programs that are really made for Montreal. The only thing we at least had at 11:00 p.m., New Brunswick or Atlantic time, was RDI. However, we complained so much to Radio-Canada that they finally withdrew RDI and scheduled it for some time during the day. They used to interrupt our programming, but they can't do that anymore, because it's they who decide on the programming.

I'm asking you a direct question: do you believe the government is justified in hiding behind the fact that Radio-Canada is responsible for its own programming? Isn't that shirking its obligations with regard to Radio-Canada?

[Graham Fraser]

First, we received the report that the Société nationale de l'Acadie published on Radio-Canada's programming. I had a meeting with the president, and we talked about it. I found that report very interesting.

We're currently thinking about how to address the situation. We also plan to conduct an audit of CBC/Radio-Canada, but the corporation is disputing our mandate with regard to its operations and everything pertaining to its programming. It also insists that it's governed solely by the CRTC.

So we are discussing that issue with CBC/Radio-Canada .