Official Languages Committee on Dec. 6th, 2011

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

If the roadmap were to be continued, do you think the government should sit down with the agencies to come up with an action plan and establish the roadmap?

[Louise-Hélène Villeneuve]

We think cooperation between the departments themselves, as well as directly with the communities, is required.

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

Madame Williams, you were talking about that road map. If I got it right, you were talking about...here's the money going to our community; we have a project that works well, but there is only one allowed here and then it's gone. Then there's another one and it's gone. Then there's another one.

It seems to be that as long as you are doing work, it looks good for the government. Is that how you feel about it?

[Dorothy Williams]

I don't know about it looking good for the government because I don't think most people—

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

The government thinks it looks good for them.

[Dorothy Williams]

Okay, for them. I think they can certainly look at our record of BCRC and see that we are an organization that follows through with projects. We do proper reporting. We come through with the deliverables that we say we're going to do.

What I'm concerned about with that kind of funding model is that it really is a patchwork. It depends on the flavour of the month or the year.

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

Madame Williams, if we talk about the road map the government is going with, do you feel it should have a bigger dialogue with the community?

[Dorothy Williams]

I think there needs to be.

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

Do you feel that if you could prove to them that continuing with your project is better for the community than just dropping it and starting a new one...?

[Dorothy Williams]

To drop the road map?

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

Not the road map, your project.

[Dorothy Williams]

Okay. No, that's why I said there needs to be some kind of indicator, so that it's very clear this project is making inroads and that it should have sustained funding. It needs to continue, and that's what the road map should give us—the opportunity to continue with successful projects.

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

Mr. Racine, would you like to add something? I see your hand is raised.

[Jean-Luc Racine]

Yes. A good example is the youth fund. We received $35,000, and we realized an extraordinary project. But, once the funds were gone, it was over, and we had to find other sources of funding. It's a never-ending process. It gets a bit difficult.

It's also important to know that…

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

I'd like to ask you a question about that, Mr. Racine. You have a project to implement, you receive $35,000 for it, but then you have to find more funding?

[Jean-Luc Racine]

Exactly. Other avenues have to be found. We managed to build a capacity to develop, find the young people and the seniors. So once that's done, it has to start all over again. We need to think about other ways to do this, other avenues for funding. That's what's a little difficult.

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

I think the government's idea—the others may be in a better position to say—is not to always provide funding. You have to find a way to find the funding. Perhaps funding to cover one year isn't enough, and it would be better to give projects a chance to be implemented, to form teams.

[Jean-Luc Racine]

Funding to cover more than one year would already be a lot. It sometimes takes a year to break in a program. We want to build something, we want the projects to grow and, eventually, we want to find sources of funding elsewhere. One year isn't much and, sometimes, it's less than a year; it's nine months. It's very quick. I've seen large projects implemented in six months. Sometimes, this can be very difficult.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here this morning.

My first question is for Mr. Racine. You spoke a little earlier about measures intended for seniors to help them stay on the labour market. We understand that our seniors make a significant contribution to the Canadian economy. These people have a lot of experience but, when they are retirement age, they deserve a nice retirement. Some seniors take their retirement at age 58 or 59, it depends. If they still have years available, some of them want to continue to work to make a contribution to society. You spoke about significant measures to be put in place. I'd like to know your ideas about these measures.

[Jean-Luc Racine]

I see a lot of these people. I've met with teachers and public servants who can take the liberty of retiring at a fairly young age. They often feel a kind of euphoria for two or three years, but after that, they want to come back. We see that people no longer know how to reintegrate into the labour market. They also don't want a full-time job. So they need to be shown how to go about getting the job they want. Naturally, these people had one profession for a number of years, and most of them did not have to look for work because they held the same position for a long time. All the training is necessary.

The employers also need to be prepared. A lot of them still have prejudices about some older workers. So they need to be prepared for that and they need to be told what to expect. There is awareness work to be done with employers as well. So there is a lot of work to be done.

There are also mentoring opportunities, where we can see to it that an older person works with a younger person to help the older person find a job, to give him or her some practical advice, and so on. So there are all kinds of things that can be put in place to help this clientele stay in or return to the labour market.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

In general, do you think people want to change their area of work?

[Jean-Luc Racine]

That is very often the case. We're talking about the transferability of skills. A teacher does not necessarily want to return to the classroom, but wants to do something else. There's a lot of learning. It takes a lot of work, training and support for these people who want to return to the labour market.

But we have already started implementing a number of very interesting projects. Among others, we're thinking of a very good project in the Saguenay, which isn't a minority community. We also have projects in Ottawa. Very interesting things are being done in this area right now.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

In your presentation, you spoke about economic development with seniors. You didn't have time to finish your remarks, and I would like to hear what you have to say about that.

[Jean-Luc Racine]

Let's talk about the tourism industry. We have 300,000 francophone seniors among our members. We are increasingly working with our provincial federations and with the 16 regional FADOQs in Quebec. We are doing more and more travel and exchanges. We are trying to ensure that seniors are not only visiting the communities, but also have the opportunity to meet other seniors. We have gotten greatly involved in this area. More and more, we want to work in this area. We are also greatly involved in the senior rebate programs. We are working more and more with the private sector. We want to develop very interesting things.

I'd like to answer Mr. Godin's question. With respect to economic development, we tried to see whether we could obtain funding in that respect to create projects. It was very difficult. We didn't manage to find that funding. Breaking through is becoming very difficult. At the outset of the roadmap, the funding went to one sector in particular. The funding stayed there and we didn't really have access to funding that might be available.