Official Languages Committee on May 6th, 2014

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

It is a complex question.

[Michel Robillard]

That's right.

RESDAC and the provincial and territorial coalitions work on various matters. We are proposing interesting projects. In addition, we know that governments are interested in our projects, because they have invested in our projects in the past.

We are increasing our efforts to determine where we can save money. We also want to be more competitive. We are therefore setting up a whole internal mechanism to make sure that we can move forward a little. However, if we don't get the funding, we will actually have a hard time implementing our programs, which I think are very important.

The development of literacy and basic training means economic development for our small communities. We are looking at possibilities within our organization, but we need to receive the money at some stage.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Do you think there are other explanations for this situation? For instance, the government might want to keep the money for something else or even to balance the budget. Perhaps that has nothing to do with it either.

What do you think?

[Michel Robillard]

I am not an economist by training, and federal and provincial budgets are always very complex. If I give you an answer, I may well be walking on thin ice. I am not an expert in the issue. We are experts in literacy and basic training.

I will therefore let the current government and its officials worry about deciding what the best course of action is.

[Normand Lévesque]

Here is what I would answer. Organizations such as ours are in line with the federal government's skills development approach for both the roadmap and other funding programs. The organizations have adapted to this type of funding. This approach is very interesting from a number of angles. That's not the problem. The problem has more to do with the delays in the implementation.

For instance, there was a tender in May 2013 to set up a Canada-wide skills development network. That is a very interesting project in terms of innovation, information, relationships and research. An organization like RESDAC managed to mobilize about 30 organizations to submit a project to the department in question. However, there is no news about the matter.

Organizations understand the reality and are making efforts in that direction. They are well aware that they must develop job skills and they have made the necessary adjustments. However, we all have to go in the same direction and we need answers today. I would rather have a negative answer and know that we are not getting the funding because our project is not interesting or that it does not meet the objectives than no answer at all. It is unfortunate, because some programs are really interesting. Yet no progress has been made.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Okay.

Mr. Galbraith, you talked about the importance of the quality of economic structures for minorities. As we know, until recently, all the provinces had restrictive legislation that undermined the learning of French. It has not been too long since francophone boards have been set up in the various provinces.

Do those restrictive laws, whose goal was to assimilate francophone people, still foster negative attitudes and still have a negative impact on the quality of the economic structures of francophones?

[Dr. John Galbraith]

I will answer your question in two parts.

Of course, I am not an expert on francophone communities outside Quebec, but I can give you my general perception. My children, who are teenagers, are perfectly bilingual. I have the general impression that attitudes in Canada toward francophone communities have very clearly changed. It seems to me that this is much less of a problem than it was in the past. Even though there may still be some residual effects of this kind of thing, it seems to me that it is now to a lesser extent.

For example, Mr. Morrow spoke about the language skills of minorities. I have noticed that young anglophones in Quebec are now very competent, very capable of interacting in French, working in French and studying in French, and most of them already have. I have also noticed, based on the experience of a few Franco-Manitoban friends, that it is simply normal for people to integrate into the communities.

My general point of view is that the difficulties, barriers or prejudices of this type are much less prevalent in Canada than they were in the past. I'm not saying they aren't there. However, in terms of access to education or funding or capital markets, it seems to me that there are many fewer constraints now.

I would like to add something to the remarks of Mr. Robillard, Mr. Morrow and Mr. Lévesque. We spoke this morning about details, funding and budgets for certain programs that could help iron out some problems that affect official language minority communities somewhere in Canada. The Government of Canada and the professional sector have a lot of people with solid expertise in program evaluation. I think it would be a good idea to have independent evaluations conducted regularly by people who have no interest in those programs. They could therefore determine whether the funds attributed to a program are being used as effectively as possible, whether our programs still meet the intended purposes and whether they could be improved.

This is sort of related to what you just said. No doubt there are cases where some things that were constraints or real problems in the past have improved over time. If that is the case, perhaps it is less important to maintain programs aimed at eliminating those obstacles.

I think it would be a good idea to put in place an ongoing independent evaluation process for current programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

You have the floor, Ms. Bateman.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

To start, I would like to come back to Mr. Galbraith's comments.

Dr. Galbraith, when we get the Good Housekeeping seal of approval from the chair of the economics department at McGill in terms of being on the right track for economic growth and creating the right framework for economic growth...and I suspect that in talking about Canada's excellent record your reference was relative to the G-7 in particular.

I really want to pursue a couple of the things you've said. In particular, I think you know how to do a great presentation, because you left us all wanting a little more. You closed your remarks with the fact that evaluations of programs that have existed for a long period of time might very well be an opportunity for us to pursue to make sure

…that we maximize our investments.

I'd really like you to expand on that point, because so often in these committees, from our perspective we are very focused on allocating scarce resources in the most responsible manner possible for the taxpayers of Canada. Obviously, we want to achieve the best results possible with those investments. Sometimes people think you just have to build on previous investments. In regard to your comments about the evaluation of programs that have existed for a long time, if you would be kind enough to expand on those, it would be wonderful.

[Dr. John Galbraith]

Yes, certainly. Thank you.

First of all, let me say that I'm not here representing McGill, of course. I was asked to show up and participate. I'm obviously very happy to do that.

Secondly, let me say that program evaluation is a very substantial area of research in economics at the moment, and a lot of progress has been made in methods for providing much more credible evaluations. In a sense, what one would like to do in evaluating a program is to ask the following question. It's a counterfactual question: how are things, and how would things have been without this program?

Now, it's notorious that counterfactuals are very difficult to evaluate, but many people, particularly over the 15 or 20 years, have been working on ways of providing more credible answers to questions of this type. I think there is some expertise within the federal civil service in this area, and there are many people within the academic sphere who are specialized in this area. It's also employed a great deal in the area of health economics, for example, where people are interested in the impacts of programs and how scarce dollars can be well allocated in making expenditures in hospitals or what have you.

The day when one can simply guess whether a program is a good idea or not has passed, I think, and regular formal evaluations by people outside the interested groups should routinely be incorporated. It would be very easy.... I think you already have expertise within the federal civil service, both in the people who could do such things and in the people who know the relevant parties within, for example, the academic community.

But I think this should become the norm at this point: that on some schedule—I'm getting used to saying that word in the American way since my speech recognition software doesn't get my Canadian accent anymore—the government might want to routinely evaluate all programs of this type that come up. I could easily put you in touch with some good people that could do that, but again, there is expertise within the civil service. We should not, I think, at this point in time, simply be guessing about whether money is well spent or not.

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

Yes. Hear, hear.

I wanted to follow up on something else.

I believe it was Mr. Robillard who spoke about the importance of investing in the necessary programs. His comments were similar to yours. He said that the lack of funding jeopardizes the progress made in recent years, and prevents economic and government stakeholders from working with quality community partners.

Who are the quality community partners? Who, in your community, is not a quality partner? This is very interesting to me.

[Michel Robillard]

I'd like to answer by saying that when you look at RESDAC, as we just said a few minutes ago, you see that we have roughly 30 partners across Canada working with our team.

Interestingly enough, related to your question regarding program evaluation, last summer when we went back to the government for our project, what we did was a kind of program evaluation. We sat together and asked how we can do things better.

We came up with a new pan-Canadian partnership. RESDAC sat with all the partners, such as the CLQ, which is an anglophone community group in Quebec working with us on community literacy. We sat with the CDÉACF in Quebec as well, which is

…the Centre de documentation sur l'éducation des adultes et la condition féminine.

We sat with coalitions from Ontario and Saskatchewan and from across the country, and we said that we needed to look at innovation, at how we can have a better relationship with different partners, such as the industries, different community partners, and provincial, municipal, and federal government entities and departments and so on and so forth. What should we do in terms of research? How can we make sure that we are fully aligned with what the federal government wants to do in terms of developing competencies, for instance, the competencies that will support the creation of jobs and put Canadians back to work, and so on and so forth? As well, how can we inform Canadians of what we're doing?

What we've done is exactly that. When we say that we work with partners of quality, we don't mean that other partners are not of quality. We mean quality in terms of our field of expertise, which is literacy and basic skills. Some organizations have developed a very good expertise, for instance, in competency development, in training people in the work environment, in making sure that they have the right level of literacy and basic skills to embrace the 21st century in terms of new technology, new job development, and so forth. That's what we mean by this.

Again, when we say “quality partnership”, it means working with the real experts in the field and making sure that for what we do, we do it the right way, and that we're using our funding in an efficient and effective way to make sure that where we spend a dollar, that dollar is well spent and serves as a lever for other investment and so on and so forth.

As I said, if you go with the integrated model, that's exactly what we're trying to do. We've done a lot of research on that. Now we're working with enterprises, with firms and so forth, and it has a real impact for them as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Chisu, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentations.

I was impressed by your presentation, Mr. Robillard. You've illustrated very grim pictures about literacy in Canada generally and in the francophone community. In one of your last appearances before this committee, it was said that 55% of the adult francophones aged 16 to 65 have a reading level that does not allow them to be fully productive in society and to meet existing labour market needs. Also, you explained this in your presentation regarding the OECD comparisons and so on.

This is a very grim picture. The federal government does not have the responsibility for education. It belongs to the provinces to give the basic literacy skills to people. Obviously, the issue of literacy has a great impact on labour productivity and also in regard to keeping Canada as one of the G-7 countries.

I would like to have more information about what the literacy rate is for anglophones and francophones living in the minority language communities in Canada. I don't know if you can elaborate on that. Also, has this literacy improved over the years? Is there a significant difference between the literacy rates for anglophones and francophones in Canada?

[Michel Robillard]

The evaluation in 2003 and that in 2013 used different methods. What we're seeing is that we still have a big challenges. With respect to literacy, we are under the OECD average. I think we are also under the OECD average for numeracy. With respect to problem-solving in technology-rich environments, we are at the average of the OECD, if not a little above.

The challenge we have is that, in our francophone community, literacy and basic skills are important. You are right that the provinces are working a lot and investing a lot of money. They are delivering literacy and basic skills training to Canadians. What a pan-Canadian coalition such as RESDAC does to our different provincial and territorial coalitions, however, is bring together all of these people. We share best practices, and the programs' differences are shared as well. So we can adjust and adapt, we get access to innovation and research, and because we are delivering in the provinces, when we have a pan-Canadian group such as RESDAC we can piggyback on the research they are doing, their innovations, the information they have. We can share with other provinces and learn from other provinces.

The impact is that we have much better programs and are more efficient and effective in delivering the best programs for our people. That's what RESDAC does as a pan-Canadian community in which we have roughly 30 partnerships with different communities across Canada, including the CLQ in Quebec, Pluri-elles in Manitoba, and l'Association franco-yukonnaise. We get together and share our practices. We're getting much better in terms of delivering a good literacy and basic skills program to our students.

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

What tools are you using to measure the success of your programs?

[Michel Robillard]

I'll speak for my own province, Ontario.

We have the COFA, the Coalition ontarienne de formation des adultes.

Last year—and these are data that are shared with the public—we had 2,500 francophones going through our 20-some learning centres across Canada, and we developed an e-learning program to reach out to remote locations. We have put a performance management system in place. We know how many learners we have. There's a big system of performance measurement and program evaluation behind the delivery of literacy and basic skills—or LBS—in Ontario, for instance, and it's the same for other provinces.

So we have in place right now a program management system, as well as a risk management system, and we are measured on all sides. We are told whether our program is performing or not, and we have to make adjustments and so on. These things are in place as we speak.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, do I have more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

No. We're going to go to Mr. Nicholls now.

Thank you very much.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Galbraith, thank you for being with us. As an economist you have a great name, following in the footsteps of another great Galbraith.

I want to address the situation of the anglophone minority in Quebec. Past witnesses have come to committee and said that there's under-representation of anglophones in certain sectors of Quebec's economy. We have also heard that many anglophones turn to self-employment.

At a certain point we have to rely on local knowledge, which might belie a centralized economic model for the country. You may be familiar with Hayek's argument, whereby knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place are important—the expertise of place and special knowledge. Quebec really is a distinct place in Canada, just as much as the west is.

I lived out west. I can testify to the fact that unilingual francophones cannot get a job if they do not speak English.

For anglophones in Quebec, they have special needs as well.

You mentioned the importance of investments. My question would be, are investments made in organizations to help anglophones understand the special knowledge of the place worthy investments, according to you?

[Dr. John Galbraith]

First of all, I absolutely agree with you on the importance of local knowledge and more generally of knowing what you're talking about. Again, I don't want to represent myself as any sort of representative of or expert on the English community in Quebec. I simply live here, and I'm an anglophone.

Having said that, the English in Quebec have a number of advantages, I think, that make it less serious to be subject to some of the constraints, for example, with which we're familiar. It's a commonplace here, for example, that anglophones are under-represented in the Quebec civil service. Is that a serious problem? Perhaps not.

The fact is that the anglophone minority in Canada is free to move anywhere within this country, and those who find themselves heavily constrained have in many cases already gone. The younger generation of people is not constrained, in my experience—which is informal—by lack of language skills. I think it's possible to exaggerate the difficulties that the community faces. It's not obvious to me that a large number of special programs are necessary to alleviate some of these difficulties.

If someone were to mention a particular sphere in which the anglophone community is disadvantaged, I think it would make sense to look at programs that could deal with that. But it's not access to capital markets; it's not access to education. I think one could exaggerate the difficulties of being in a minority here as an anglophone.

The difficulties that I see here are of a more global nature and of course, I think, are much smaller now than they were just a few months ago. That has to do, as I indicated at the beginning—and this is not something specific to the English community either, but to all Quebeckers, francophone and anglophone—with the requirement that there be some stability and certainty in order to undertake investments. As that is solidified, I think the economic position of all communities in Quebec will be improved by increasing investments.

I don't know whether that answers your question or not.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Yes, I didn't want to imply that the anglophone community is undergoing hardship, but simply that under-representation in the civil service is still a barrier to entry to employment, and there are questions that have to be answered surrounding that. The economic behaviour of actors in the anglophone community would be different from what it would be in the country at large because of the language situation. It doesn't mean that they're experiencing undue hardship,

But we also heard witnesses at committee say that many young anglophones turn to self-employment and to arts and culture. Without an economic vision from the federal government that includes the creative economy, which according to the Conference Board makes up 7.8% of real GDP in 2008, these actors within Quebec—anglophone people employed in the arts and culture sector—will struggle, if there is not adequate funding. Obviously if you're an artist and you go to the bank to ask for a loan to create 50 paintings, the loan manager is going to smirk at you and say, “Good luck: show me a business plan.”

People in the creative economy do need help other than traditional capital markets. Would you not agree?

[Dr. John Galbraith]

I may have misinterpreted your earlier remark, but this is something that has been true throughout history as we know it. Again, it's a stereotype that artists struggle at first, and of course you don't just go to a bank and get a loan to produce paintings. However, this is not something specific to the anglophone community in Quebec.

Montreal has a large creative economy. It's something that people take pride in, with good reason. It's part of the Montreal brand, as we now say. The opportunities to participate in that sector of the economy are perhaps greater here than in many other places. But because there isn't a standard path to success in that business, the way there would be, for example, if you were to get an M.B.A. and go to work for a large corporation, it's always been more of a struggle.

Much of the work is contract. This is absolutely true. It's a legitimate question as to whether some programs to encourage investment in that sector could benefit both the Montreal economy and the Canadian economy more generally; however, I don't see that these are necessarily language specific. I think the same is true for francophones in Quebec. If we want to encourage an important sector of the economy that generates benefits for Montreal, I think we should look at whether we can productively do that. Many of the points you just touched on are true of other groups in Montreal.

Of course, Montreal is not just francophones and anglophones. There are many, many language groups there, and many of them are involved in the artistic community. All should have access to whatever support there is in order to let that industry thrive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Daniel.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

I'm going to follow up on what one of my colleagues, who has just left, has asked you, and that's about the level of literacy. I see the world in the way that water will level itself, and in that sense, there must be a need or enough jobs and economic value for people who don't have any literacy skills. Is that true?