Official Languages Committee on May 27th, 2014

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question for you, Ms. Brown. Do you represent the World Trade Centre Winnipeg or—

[Marjie Brown, Manager, Immigration, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada]

I am from the FCFA.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay, thank you very much. That makes things a bit easier for me.

Mr. Thibault, Collège Boréal is one of your member colleges. It is in Sudbury, correct?

[Laurier Thibault]

Collège Boréal also has a very large campus in Toronto and many other centres in northern Ontario. It covers more than 75% of Ontario in various ways.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

It has a program under which the college promises to offer a second round of full-time post-secondary training to students who have not managed to find a job in their field 12 months after graduation.

Can you elaborate on the program? I find it remarkable. You are basically telling students to come study at your college and that, if they don't find jobs, you will train them for another job.

Does that cost you a lot of money? How does that work?

[Laurier Thibault]

I am sorry, Mr. Williamson, but I don't have that information. The president of Collège Boréal must have it. You can understand that there are various employment support programs at the 61 members of our network. So it is rather difficult to answer your question directly.

However, as I explained earlier to your colleague, Mr. Gourde, the employability issue is significant. Thanks to our support training, we receive a lot of young adults and adults who need to retrain. That is when the recognition of prior learning and skills plays an important role. That is also when our student service can provide support to students who return to school. It is not always easy. It takes motivation for someone to go back to school after being out of school for a few years. Colleges need to encourage and support those students, and that is what they do.

Let me give you another example of what we are actively doing to promote learning and success. We have funded a virtual assistance program for learning French. The program is offered online 18 hours a day, seven days a week. We are in the process of funding this program so that students struggling with their work can call the service centre. It used to be only for French. It will also be for math now. We are setting up these assistance centres to support students who need help. All the colleges are working hard on employability.

I was saying earlier that it is important to get people up to a certain level of education so that they can pursue post-secondary education. Clearly, our colleges in minority communities accept students who do not have a solid academic background to continue their studies. We therefore make sure to provide them with all the support they need to bring their knowledge up to date before we give them the technical or professional training to complete their diploma. That is part of the work that our colleges do.

I will ensure that the president of Collège Boréal, Pierre Riopel, receives your question so that he can provide you with a proper answer and with all the information you need on this.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Yes, if possible.

[Laurier Thibault]

I will see to that in the next few hours.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you very much.

How much time do I still have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

You have one minute.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Ms. Gionet, my name is John Williamson and I am a member of Parliament for a riding in New Brunswick.

You have huge challenges to overcome because of the arrival of many francophones.

Do you think provincial governments can do more to develop the economy of their own provinces? For instance, instead of sending young francophones and anglophones to Fort McMurray, could part of the solution be to find jobs for them in their communities?

Do you agree that Fort McMurray is not the solution to all our problems?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Ms. Gionet, go ahead.

[Angélina Gionet]

I agree with you, Mr. Williamson.

Take me for example. I have sought to preserve my culture my entire life. I left New Brunswick after living there for 50 years. When I arrived in Alberta, my husband and I had to work because we no longer had jobs. We also had to save for our retirement. If I had been able to stay in New Brunswick, I would have.

One year later, I sat down with my husband and told him that I didn't think I was able to get through the situation because it was too difficult. Nonetheless, I chose to stay to support those moving to Alberta the way I did.

If there were jobs in New Brunswick, trust me, francophones would quickly go back there. The same is true for Quebeckers and for all the people in the east.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Williamson and Ms. Gionet.

To wrap up, I will give the floor to Mr. Dionne Labelle.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone.

My first question is for Ms. Mulaire.

I have read the five things you discovered about the usefulness of French. I am particularly interested in your fifth point. You talked about the need to support the francophonie in all areas: culture, education, health and the media. Under media, you mentioned the newspaper La Liberté and Radio-Canada.

You must know that CBC/Radio-Canada has been experiencing cuts since 2012. French services specifically are absorbing half of all the cuts in full-time positions at the crown corporation. However, the francophones in Canada do not represent half of the population.

In your view, what impact will these cuts have on your community? How can we reconcile the promotion of the Canadian francophonie with the cuts to the lifeblood of Canadian information suffered by the Radio-Canada French network?

[Mariette Mulaire]

We are all friends here. We all care deeply about Canada's linguistic duality. And for that linguistic duality to exist, we need a strong francophone minority community, one whose members talk to one another, see one another and hear one another.

To your question, the cuts are why I included Radio-Canada in my list. Cuts are happening everywhere. I could have cited numerous examples, as this is just one of many. Indeed, they are much talked about, but to be perfectly frank, in this case, they are worrisome.

I hope the committee can convey the message that making such huge cuts to Radio-Canada's budget is really akin to undermining Canada's values. And conveying that message is paramount. We have no other French-language television. We have no other networks. This is the link that unites us, and we need that link all over the country. Radio-Canada plays an enormous role. We all grew up with its services. Without French-language TV and radio, we would have really lost a lot.

So I am asking everyone here to send that message. You all have a responsibility to do so. You at least care about Canada's linguistic duality. So we need a strong national broadcaster. We need to see one another, hear one another and, above all, to be able to communicate with one another.

Therefore, I urge you to do everything in your power to at least bolster that crown corporation's budget. Make sure Radio-Canada has a future. It is too important to our country's values.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you for your remarks, Ms. Mulaire. We entirely agree with you.

I wanted to come back to Mr. Thibault, of the Réseau des cégeps et des collèges francophones du Canada.

From your brief, I see that you represent 61 institutions across Canada. If you don't include the French-language CEGEPs in Quebec, how many of your institutions have trouble with recruitment? How many of them have problems of that nature, and could you please describe them?

You stress the importance of recruiting both foreign students and immersion students. Are you facing recruitment problems?

[Laurier Thibault]

We aren't necessarily experiencing problems with recruitment because the colleges are growing. The statistics do not show any problem in that regard. The reason we say we have needs is that, if we can't integrate francophiles with francophones, our communities will be dealt a direct blow in short order and suffer a demographic decline. So that is why our communities, colleges and institutions would do well to work with francophiles and interest them in our realities.

I said some programs were in trouble. Sometimes numbers and diversity are to blame. Programs are offered, but sometimes the cohort isn't sufficient. Generally speaking, recruitment isn't the problem. The problem lies in certain programs where a proportion of francophiles and immersion students could provide the cohort needed to be able to offer those programs. That could prevent a student from having to attend an English-language college or a French-language institution in another part of the country.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Chair, I think you're telling me my time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Yes, we're finished.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Very well.

I want to thank the witnesses for being with us today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Dionne Labelle.

Thank you, Mr. Thibault.

Thanks to all the witnesses.

We're going to adjourn here because our witnesses have flights to catch.

Thank you all.

This meeting is adjourned.