Official Languages Committee on April 3rd, 2014

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses. I know how important their work is. Their reality sometimes seems very complex.

First, thank you, Ms. Campbell. In your presentation, you explained your recent commitment to work with RDEE Canada and CEDEC in preparing the first economic development plan for official language minority communities. As far as I know, Employment and Social Development Canada supports your system. It is good to work together like that.

During this study, we have heard from community groups such as FCFA, economic development groups such as RDEE, but also many leaders from business communities. At our last meeting, one of the witnesses made a list of 60 different sources of funding available for francophone entrepreneurs in Ontario.

How do you ensure that economic diversification agencies from across Canada are not doing the same job as other organizations and, as a result, placing excessive burden on entrepreneurs, meaning your clients? That is very important.

Since I come from the west, we will start with Ms. Guimond.

[France Guimond]

Thank you, Ms. Bateman. That is a very good question.

We are working closely with the departments to ensure that our clients are not doubling up on the same jobs. That is very important. When we initiate or change programs, we make sure that we exchange information and that we communicate it to our clients. Communication is very important. We hold information sessions for clients about the programs.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Does WD take part in developing the plan Ms. Campbell talked about? I think it is the first economic development plan for official language minority communities.

[France Guimond]

We have a group in our department that meets and shares information on a daily basis.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Are each of you participating in that study?

Ms. Anzolin, would you like to answer?

[Susan Anzolin]

I would like to answer the first part of your question regarding the exchange of information among all the organizations.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Go ahead.

[Susan Anzolin]

In Ontario we are working with the Province of Ontario, because we know that just trying to navigate all of these government programs and services is an issue among a number of organizations.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Well, it certainly sounded difficult to us, last meeting. It's tough enough to be an entrepreneur, and then to have 60 funding sources—

[Susan Anzolin]

—exactly, and especially for a small business....

We are working with the province and a number of our local organizations that are not-for-profit organizations, such as the Community Futures Development organizations or the Small Business Enterprise Centres that provide services to small businesses. We're working together so that when a small business or an entrepreneur is looking for information, they just go to one point, to a single contact. We work behind the scenes to try to make sure that they get the information.

We're not there yet, but we're working towards it. I think all of us recognize that we're here to serve Canadians. Canadians don't often distinguish between orders of government, so we need to find a way to work together, and we are doing so.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay, that's great.

Krista?

[Krista Campbell]

It is definitely one of the frustrations we hear from businesses most often, speaking to the point that was just made—

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

We hear it too.

[Krista Campbell]

—that entrepreneurs don't distinguish between the levels of government and don't really care who's asking you to fill out what form or where your regulations are or what your permits are. “Just tell us what the rules are and tell us once; coordinate among yourselves and make it easier. Stop putting up so many roadblocks to my getting my business started.”

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Absolutely.

[Krista Campbell]

I would say a couple of things.

One is that Industry Canada has a number of initiatives that we have worked on with other federal departments, the regional development agencies, the provinces and territories, or municipalities, to simplify some of the information that's available to businesses.

One good example is a product called BizPaL. BizPaL covers all the permits and licences you need to start a business, and it's in one spot. It looks at federal, provincial, municipal permits and licences. You can type in, “I want to start a hair salon in downtown Toronto” and it will spit back the information on what you need across the board.

That interface, BizPaL, is taken up by other departments and agencies, provincial organizations, the regional development agencies. They put it up on their site, and it is integrated with some of the other things that are done, so that when businesses go there it's a sort of a one-stop shop, because you don't want to know just about permits and licences, but might want to know about regulations or might need to know how to get help with a business plan or might think you need help with financing.

Trying to integrate all of those types of programs and services together is one of the things Industry Canada coordinates, working with, for example, the regional development agencies to say to businesses that here is a concierge-type suite of information.

It's a continuous work in progress, but it is one of which we can say that such things as BizPaL, the Canada Business Network, the CommunAction website on Industry Canada, which tries to be a single portal—things like these—are really making a difference for businesses in terms of being able to—

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

[Inaudible--Editor] ...on your website. I know you serve all of Canada, but for Ontario, there were—I'm going back to my notes—just for francophone businesses 60 organizations funding them, just in Ontario.

Do you gather that information to help all these people in the regional—?

[Krista Campbell]

More of the on-the-ground, in-community work is done by the regional development agencies at the federal level. Industry Canada helps with coordination, sharing information, best practices, pulling the groups together so that the relevant people who work on the ground in communities, who might be business advisers, get a chance to talk to each other and think about what some of the best practices are—“How can I take your good idea and implement it in my region?”

We tend not to host the site. Industry Canada isn't necessarily the place our businesses would think to go first; they would go to ServiceOntario or ACOA. Those are often the more front-line, in-the-community, very flexible service providers that are on the ground, whereas we're often the coordinator.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Tanguay, would you like to add anything?

[Serge Tanguay]

Maybe I could just add one practice that we've done that I mentioned in my opening notes, the dialogue day that's been organized in conjunction with Industry Canada. We grouped, obviously, all interested groups within the OLMCs, but also a whole array of federal departments. And that's actually proven to be a good forum to discuss different programs where we can reach our different clients.

So I think it's another good practice that tends to clear the air at least into this array of government programs. We're also working with the Government of Quebec, so we're obviously in very close contact with them to help potential entrepreneurs to find their way into this array of government programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay, thank you very much.

Now we'll go to Mr. Chisu.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

I have a question related to the free trade agreement with Europe. During your discussion with the communities, are you being asked about the free trade agreement in Europe? Are Canada's minority linguistic communities preparing themselves for the new economic opportunities that will be created by this agreement?

Why I'm saying this is because in the CanNor presentation I have seen you are saying that with CanNor's funding contributions, territorial francophone associations, together with their partners, are developing services and tools to support local employment, attracting investment from Quebec and France—but there are many other countries in Europe that speak French, and I just mention right away Switzerland, Belgium, and Monaco—as well as fostering the economic integration of newcomers, entrepreneurship, and community economic development.

So are you limiting yourself only to France? Or are you thinking about the greater input on 500 million people who can do business, and where the community can access that?

Second, when you were speaking about the exports, there were some maple syrup exports in New Brunswick. There were two companies that were exporting maple syrup. So how would this free trade agreement help the communities to export more?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay, why don't we begin with the second question with Monsieur Aucoin? And then we'll go to the first question with the rest of the witnesses.

[Wade Aucoin]

In response to the member's question, I don't have specific information on where these two companies have directed their exports. We've gotten positive reports that they are now exporting, but I think it's still a bit too early to tell exactly how the agreement in principle with the EU would help these two companies in particular. That said, I can find out and get back to you with a specific response.

In response to the member's first question, Mr. Chair, it's very interesting. There is a lot of interest across Atlantic Canada, but I'm seeing it especially within the francophone community in a number of ways. There are francophone economic development groups, such as the one that I just mentioned, le Conseil de développement économique de la Nouvelle-Écosse, that have organized workshops and information sessions with ACOA support to reach out to entrepreneurs to get them to start thinking about how they could be exporting to the European market in light of the agreement in principle.

However, I want to mention one example in particular that I find very interesting. It's a new project that we just launched, and it's in cooperation with the territory of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which is just off the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador. We've launched a joint economic observatory that has a Canadian component and a European component. The Canadian component is based out of the Université de Moncton, campus de Shippagan. We have a lady there who prepares economic information on the Canadian part, but we have a French component that looks at economic information, not just from France but from all of Europe. We put this together in a number of bulletins that come out regularly and are distributed through a network of chambers of commerce across Atlantic Canada and across France and the European Union. The next bulletin that's planned—in fact I think it might have come out last week—is to focus on opportunities around the new proposed trade agreement with the European Union, and we're planning to have a seminar with business people to talk about the information in that bulletin. This is a very unique arrangement where we're combining Canadian and European information and making it available to business people in Atlantic Canada and the European Union to see what kinds of opportunities there are out there. We're seeing quite a bit of interest in that respect.

[Serge Tanguay]

I have a very quick answer. Through our regular programming, we support the regional export promotions organizations throughout Quebec. Their main mandate is to help developers of small and medium-sized enterprises to develop their expertise. That's how it's being done in our organization.