Official Languages Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Trottier.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

If it's all right, I'll pose my questions in English.

It's a treat to have you here today. I do find it a bit interesting. I come from Toronto, so I have a bit of a different perspective. I realize Quebec is certainly not a mirror image at all. It's a whole different set of circumstances. But you can imagine an English language school in Ontario where French immersion is seen as something very popular. It tends to be an upper middle class kind of thing. It goes along with the Louis Vuitton handbag; you put your kid in French immersion. So to hear about needing more money from the government, that's not necessarily viewed by people whose kids are not in French immersion as necessary.

That's just the reality. It's viewed as something very desirable, especially among new Canadians, who come to Canada and want to put their kids into French immersion and get that full experience. They really tend to drive their children much harder academically, and they view that as an extra challenge that they want to put in front of their children.

My question is in some ways similar to Monsieur Dion's in the sense that education is clearly a provincial responsibility, and I don't think anybody on this committee is proposing that we should federalize education, that the federal government should take over the responsibilities of the provincial government. You wouldn't want to get into a situation where a school board said, “We don't need to worry about French immersion. The feds are paying for it, so we can vacate that”. I don't think we want to get into that situation.

So the question is, what kinds of additional value can the federal government add to supplement education? We don't want to allow a province to shirk its responsibilities to provide the educational programs that it should provide, whether that's immersion or other conventional programs, but are there things? You mentioned research and support and evaluation and community learning centres.

Again, I'm not an expert on education, and maybe there are things we are currently doing with respect to the federal government's intervention. It's a pillar of that road map that we've identified based on feedback from stakeholder groups across the country. Education, immigration, community support are the three big pillars of the road map, but what is it in education that the federal government can really do to improve linguistic duality?

[Suanne Stein Day]

Obviously in Quebec things are a little bit different. On the moneys we receive, our schools are seen as much more of a community centre than one might think. We bring our communities in to support families, especially in

disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

We have our community learning centres in virtually every neighbourhood that contribute to tutorial programs, sports programs, anti-bullying programs, support programs, literacy programs that are helping the community—not only the students but their families, as David mentioned. We also support an organization called LEARN Quebec, which is a tutorial service in both official languages that is funded with these dollars, which helps contribute to our success rates.

But I think it is also important to talk about the economic and community advantages of a bilingual neighbourhood. I used to work in technical support, and Shell Canada used to have to outsource their technical support lines to us because they couldn't find French-speaking people in Calgary. I was in Toronto at the time. It was pretty hard to find some of that staff in Toronto. We had to bribe some of our Quebec young people to come to live in Toronto for a while.

As we said earlier, having two languages contributes so much to a community and to individuals. Bilingual people can go anywhere. They can contribute to the whole world, and the world is getting smaller. We all know that.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

There's no argument from this committee. We all embrace that notion. I guess I'm asking for some precision, though.

You mentioned a couple of things, including programs that are outside the classrooms themselves. We don't want to let a provincial government off the hook. If it's responsible for education, it should fund the classrooms properly, and teachers properly. All of the support infrastructure should do its job, really.

[Suanne Stein Day]

But when parents can support their children to reach those objectives, the children will succeed much better.

As David mentioned earlier, in very many of our neighbourhoods the parents are unable to help their children, especially in French. They never had the French immersion opportunity when they were students. I get complaints all the time from parents who say, “The teacher is francophone. She can't even talk to me in English to help me with my son's work.”

We want to be able to support the whole family and the whole structure to make those children succeed.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

If I can paraphrase, some of the community and parental infrastructure that surrounds the school—that's an area of intervention for the federal government that could be eminently useful and fruitful.

[Suanne Stein Day]

Very much so.

[David Birnbaum]

One other thing we would point to—one of the many where we insist that there's a mirror looking at both,

that is to say linguistic minorities in Canada, in the other provinces and in Quebec.

—is immigration. We understand that there are limits on who can come to our schools, but there are ways to make that work.

It should be seen as a normal part, we would think, of a federal government's overall strategy to remind potential immigrants that they can integrate into Canada in a minority language situation. I think it's vitally important to francophone communities in the rest of the country, and it's vitally important to us, that you can integrate into Quebec society as a non-francophone. With our help and that of other community institutions, you will learn the majority language.

But it's absolutely legitimate and vital in Canada to live in either official language and to have the infrastructure you need, much of it supported by the federal government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Trottier.

Mr. Chisu.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses and for the presentation we heard today.

I have a question regarding education in the languages. What education factors do you believe must be considered in promoting optimal second language learning? In this case, we are in a minority situation in Quebec. What are the tools you can use to implement the second language?

This is very important for me. I come from a thousand-year background between Hungary and Romania. We never lost our culture. I'm Hungarian by background. I studied the majority language and so on. For me, it's very important that we in Canada speak both official languages and that we promote that skill in a very positive way. It should not be seen as a hindrance, as an obstacle. It should be seen as a great advantage, an economic advantage, a social advantage, which gives access to culture.

In this scenario, then, I'm asking you how you can improve it, and how we can help as the federal government. By the Constitution, our hands are a little bit tied in terms of education, but we are here to do the best we can to have these two great languages, great skills, in our country.

[Christine Dénommée]

I get to talk about competencies, because that's my area of expertise.

I agree with you about the more languages we have. Research has shown that when students develop more than one language, it also brings them to increased sensitivity, openness, and communication, not only to their local community but to our beautiful nation and across the world.

You were asking if I had a wish, and I think it would be around ensuring students' success. We always talk about best practices. Students and parents are at the core of great learning. We want as a school board, as schools, to help our parents, but we also need to support teachers, not only across the province but also across our beautiful nation. You asked me if I had a wish. When we're talking about French second language instruction, we need to make sure that the teachers who are teaching these programs have the competencies in reading, writing, and oral communication that will best serve their students.

This is not only in their province. This is not only in Nova Scotia. Our kids will travel our nation. When they're coming together, as an example,

for the Page Program, on Parliament Hill,

they are, as required, bilingual.

We need competent teachers who are supported and who are also aware of the programs. If you're coming into Quebec, one of our special flavours is that we have the Quebec education program, or QEP. Our QEP has special competencies. Another challenge is to make sure that outside teachers who are coming in, who we're welcoming, are also made aware of QEP, and are QEP friendly and knowledgeable, to better serve our students.

[David Birnbaum]

Just very quickly, Mr. Chair, we're obviously quite conscious of where there are provincial jurisdictions. It's our understanding that, first of all, there are many aspects of education, as we've discussed, where it's the federal government's purview to take action.

Again, there are so many complementary areas, and I think we would point to one that's perhaps political and one that's a matter of infrastructure. A number of levers are available to the Department of Canadian Heritage and other government establishments with respect to economic development. Presumably, one of the economic levers that Canada has, and that other countries don't, is its bilingual capacity. Is that being reinforced? Are minority language communities being given every opportunity to use their second language expertise to create wealth, to build services, or to offer their state-of-the-art translation skills? Is there more that can be done on that score?

I guess we would just point to the political message, whatever government might be in power, which has to resonate with an English-speaking minority in Quebec, an education community in Quebec, and French in the rest of the country, and that is that this is not a frill and not an advantage but a fundamental characteristic of Canada. Also, if I might say so, it's not to be put under threat when one makes a very legitimate point that there are other third languages that are amazingly important. Of course they are, but that does not run counter to the very basic Canadian reality that this country functions in two languages. That's not just philosophical. It trickles down to how our schools operate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their presentation.

I am from Northern Ontario. The context there is quite different. The francophone community has a strong presence there. There is a good balance between francophone and anglophone communities. Probably around fifty-fifty.

However, each year in September, the competition for young students is quite high because we have four school boards. French public, French Catholic, English Catholic and English public. In my case, I attended an English Catholic school.

The issue of immersion is quite important.

As for the anglophone parents in the north, they know that if their children aren't bilingual, they're not staying, so we are competing now.... All our young people were going to the francophone schools because they knew they had a better future in the north. We offered immersion programs, but often we were not able to fill immersion programs because of the problem of getting qualified teachers and being able to offer core programs.

Is this an issue that you face in Quebec? Certainly, parents are sold on immersion. They don't know the details of it. They don't know how it works. They just want it. But delivering the programs is a lot more difficult than it seems.

[Suanne Stein Day]

Yes, absolutely. It is very difficult for us to attract competent teachers in both languages. To bring in those francophones, we are now doing most of our recruiting from French language universities around Quebec.

In our school board, it is absolutely required for all of my administration team to be fluently bilingual so that they can go out and do that recruitment in French. Nobody wants to do a job interview in the language that they're not 100% comfortable in, so we are doing the vast majority of our interviewing in French right now.

As for your community in northern Ontario, the English school board system in Quebec feels that we are the largest supporters and the largest contributors to the francization of Quebec. We are doing more for that than any other institution, public or private, and it's something that we take great pride in.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Across the various schools.... A number of your schools are going to be in isolated rural regions, probably, so how are you able—

[Suanne Stein Day]

A lot of them are in isolated rural regions.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Are you able to do the core programs in those areas or is it a little by hook and by crook, depending on whether you can actually staff it?

[David Birnbaum]

It's a real mixed bag, and not only with respect to staffing French immersion programs. To have a school in Val-d'Or fully staffed one way or the other is very difficult when the teachers sometimes are coming from 40 kilometres away each morning. The problems are not more intensified with respect to delivering teachers who can offer the French intensive program. It's simply staffing those schools and all of the challenges that go with that.

Again, because of the kinds of realities that my colleagues are mentioning, it's pretty much understood, even by the universities training the teachers, that it's so important that they have a full capacity to work in either language.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Let's take a community like Val-d'Or, for example. In the far north, many Cree students are leaving the Cree communities. Probably half the Algonquin communities speak English, the other half speak French. They're coming into Val-d'Or. If they're going into the English school boards, do you have percentages who are English-speaking first nations, whether it's in Montreal or Val-d'Or, and what issues are you dealing with in terms of shortfalls in educational background and special needs?

Are you able to accommodate them? Is it an issue?

[Suanne Stein Day]

It is an issue. It's a growing issue, both for budgetary purposes and also for general staffing purposes. It's not only a language issue. We have trouble staffing competent math teachers and science teachers.

We are fortunate in that we started immersion programs in Quebec in 1968, so the teachers who are graduating now have themselves been through our immersion programs and are very competent in two languages. Not every school board in the rural regions has the luxury of only hiring francophones, for instance, as we try to do in the city, but at least they are getting teachers who have been through immersion programs themselves and who are bilingual.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

With first nation youth coming in now—correct me if I'm wrong—I think the Grand Council of the Crees signed an education deal with the Province of Quebec, but others are under the various federal jurisdictions.

We find in Ontario, when students come into the provincial system, we have not just an education shortfall but a monetary shortfall—often to the tune of $4,000 or $5,000 per student—that has to be dealt with before the student can come into the school board. Do you have those same realities in Quebec?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Go ahead.

[David Birnbaum]

Not to a great extent. We don't have the numbers with us, but the percentage of first nation students in our collective system is not that high.

There are concentrations, some at our Western Quebec School Board and some at our Eastern Shores School Board, but the numbers are not that high. We're building relationships with, for instance, the Cree and Kativik school boards, but unlike the rest of the country, there are designated school boards for first nation students in Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Breitkreuz, would you like to ask a question?

Go ahead.