Official Languages Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Commr Michael Duheme]

I believe that there is certainly a way within the organization to expedite the translation process when we have to issue an emergency notice.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Are you going to allocate more resources to make sure it is done?

[Commr Michael Duheme]

We allocate our resources based on the priorities. For example, finding bilingual people for the Northwest Territories is sometimes a challenge. However, that service could be provided remotely. Our Montreal office or our Ottawa office, for example, could offer immediate assistance when a notice has to be issued to the public.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Solutions do have to be found, because extreme weather events will be happening more and more often, as I said before.

I would like to come back to the question of...

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

You have less than ten seconds left, Ms. Ashton.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

In that case, I will conclude by saying that we look forward to receiving the answers to the questions we have asked for which you did not have the figures needed to answer immediately. We also look forward to seeing the concrete actions and incentives you will be implementing to solve the problems with recruiting and with bilingual services for francophones.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Ms. Ashton.

Mr. Duheme, Ms. Huggins, we are going to wait for the information in writing that you will be sending to our clerk. If possible, we would like to know the percentage of senior management positions that are designated bilingual, as compared to the ones in the police force on the ground, and the percentage of those positions that are filled by bilingual individuals.

Thank you very much. I am sorry about the little storm we experienced, if I may put it that way. Those are the joys of parliamentary committees. In any event, thank you for being here. We are eager to receive the information requested.

With that said, I am going to quickly suspend the meeting to bring in the new witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

I am now calling the meeting back to order.

Thank you for your patience, witnesses.

The second hour of the meeting will be a bit shortened. We can continue for 15 minutes longer than scheduled, until 1:20, if the committee consents.

In this second hour, we have, first, John Buck, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation. We also have two representatives from the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité du Canada: Yan Plante, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Roukya Abdi Aden, Manager, National Consultation on Economic Development and Employability.

You have five minutes to make your presentation, and then we will move on to questions. I will be strict about time.

We will start with you, Mr. Buck.

The floor is yours for five minutes.

[John Buck, President and Chief Executive Officer, Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation thanks the committee for the opportunity to share highlights of its brief with you, which was submitted on October 6, 2023.

In terms of introduction, I would simply like to remind committee members that CEDEC is the federally designated and financed organization responsible for the economic development of the official-language minority community in Quebec. Economic development includes business and social enterprise development, as well as labour market and employment service development.

During my remarks today, I will make five points.

Number one, individual and community well-being across Quebec and Canada is fully dependent upon an economy that maximizes the possibilities for exchanging value. To succeed today, a small bed and breakfast in Blanc-Sablon on Quebec's lower north shore must connect with and offer its services to customers from across the province, across the country and around the world. Understanding that we are all part of a common economy with its local, regional, provincial, national and global dimensions is fundamental to determining how best to position official-language minority communities to contribute to and benefit from economic development.

Number two, English speakers are strengthening their contribution to growing Quebec's economy and focusing on the opportunity and wealth this contribution creates. Growing businesses and social enterprises, generating jobs, placing English speakers in vacant positions and attracting investment across the province are some of the ways English speakers contribute to the economy shared by all Quebeckers. Additionally, this economic development contribution enables the community to address the distressing economic situation it has experienced for more than a decade. A summary of 2021 data reconfirming this situation was provided to the committee in our brief.

Number three, the English-speaking community of Quebec has created an ambitious, actionable, achievable and, most importantly, necessary 10-year economic development plan. The ESCQ created a 2023-33 economic development plan that lays out bold and targeted results to further strengthen the contribution of English speakers to growing and developing Quebec's economy while leveraging these efforts to reduce the disparities limiting its contribution. The plan provides a long-term playbook to continue to enhance the well-being of English speakers and the vitality of the community, positioning it to effectively navigate the economic, social and political dynamics of its environment.

Number four, the key to success in achieving the economic outcomes of our 10-year plan is unprecedented collaboration and coordination. To achieve success, the execution of the 10-year plan requires unprecedented collaboration and coordination across the English-speaking communities of Quebec, between the English-speaking communities of Quebec and the francophone majority, especially Quebec's public, private and civil society sectors, and between the English-speaking communities of Quebec and federal departments and agencies with official languages economic development responsibilities for the community.

Number five, and perhaps most importantly for you, your committee can be instrumental in making all of this happen by recognizing and endorsing, through your recommendations, the following.

Each OLMC in Canada must find a way to maximize its economic development in a manner that is tailored and suited to its particular economic, social and political circumstances. The “by and for” long-term collaborative economic development plan developed by the English-speaking communities of Quebec is the road map the federal government should be guided by to ensure the community's full participation in growing and sustaining Quebec's economy while simultaneously reducing the economic disparities limiting such participation.

The federal government should maximize its investment in the OL economic development space in Quebec by aligning and coordinating its funding to actively support the achievement of the economic outcomes outlined in the ESCQ's 10-year economic development plan. That includes supporting the ESCQ economic development ecosystem created to ensure required collaboration across the community. It includes supporting collaborative economic development as the optimal approach to ensure required collaboration between the English-speaking communities of Quebec and the francophone majority, especially Quebec's public, private and civil society sectors, and creating a $15-million five-year collaborative economic development leverage fund.

It also includes maximizing interdepartmental coordination in the OL economic development space in Quebec under the leadership of the Department of Canadian Heritage, with the active and sustained participation of Employment and Social Development Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions.

Finally, it includes working with already designated organizations such as CEDEC and enabling them to act as community hubs to receive and distribute federal transfers in a pooled, focused and coordinated manner.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Buck.

You can elaborate further if you want through the different questions that will be asked of you.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Plante or Ms. Abdi Aden for five minutes.

[Yan Plante, President and Chief Executive Officer, Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité du Canada]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, on behalf of the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité du Canada, RDEE Canada, I want to thank you for the invitation to come and speak with you today.

RDEE is composed of a national office that is responsible for coordinating and representing its members, who are located in all provinces and territories with the exception of Quebec. Our members are the experts on the ground. They offer services in entrepreneurship, employability and community economic development. We are talking about approximately 250 professionals with special expertise in economic development and employability in francophone communities in Canada. This is an existing structure that has the expertise and a presence throughout the country, a skilled network that almost always answers the call when the time comes to do more, as long as it is given the resources.

I have held this position only since June 8, but so far, I have had the chance to travel to seven provinces to gain a better understanding of the situation on the ground and meet with entrepreneurs or people who use our services. I am excited by what I see. From a veteran who has become a cheese maker in Alberta to the Bottle Houses of Prince Edward Island; from the village of Ste. Agathe in Manitoba, which has developed an industrial park, to Cielo Glamping in New Brunswick, which offers accommodation in open-air domes, I have met some inspiring people who show how dynamic, close-knit and full of potential our francophone communities are.

That brings me to the vision I want to present to you today: let's go on the offensive and see the economic Francophonie as an opportunity to be seized. I was a panelist at the Toronto Global Forum a few days ago, with three other organization heads, and that was the message we all brought, in English. Yes, it was in English, because it is important to also make our anglophone fellow Canadians understand that there is an ocean of mutually beneficial opportunities. Some projections say that there will be approximately 700 million francophones on Earth by mid century, or double today's figure. That represents an extraordinary market for Canada, both for trade and for recruiting workers or entrepreneurs.

We have to realize that not only do the francophone and bilingual immigrants we bring to Canada help to solve the labour shortage, but they also bring with them their own network of contacts in their country of origin. Their employers will be able to benefit from that if they want to do business abroad. For our small and medium-sized enterprises, there is also the potential to be included in multinational supply chains that are already here, as LMS Rail Equipment Services, for example, a francophone company based in Hearst, Ontario, is doing.

When it comes to the idea of mutual benefit for francophones and anglophones, I would like to refer to a study entitled "Two languages: It's good for business". That study, which was cosigned by Pierre-Marcel Desjardins and David Campbell, points to a series of benefits from economic bilingualism, including attracting businesses, immigrants, international students and tourists, and developing language industries or sectors like engineering and telecommunications.

I would like to highlight an example that is found in the study. A big corporation opened a call centre in New Brunswick. When you call the customer service department and hear that you have to press 1 for service in French or press 2 for service in English, it means that some of the employees who answer customer calls are unilingual and others are bilingual. What the study showed, in fact, is that 31% of the company's employees were francophone or bilingual, while 66% were unilingual anglophone. The company then continued to develop its information technology from its service centre and was able to create more jobs. That is an excellent example of how the importance of a business providing services to its customers in French also created jobs for the anglophone population.

In September 2022, RDEE Canada organized a summit on the francophone economy in Canada. Two hundred key actors came together to exchange findings and ideas, with the aim of promoting economic growth. Their discussions were compiled in a white paper published by RDEE Canada that we have submitted to the Committee and that we hope will contribute to your study.

The point that was most often noted in the discussions was the desire to see the creation of a government plan dedicated to the francophone economy in minority communities. In fact, the mandate letter for the former Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency dated December 16, 2021, gave us considerable hope in that regard.

In closing, I would like to reiterate my key message: let's go on the offensive when we talk about the economic Francophonie, and let's see the economic Francophonie and bilingualism as an opportunity to be seized.

Thank you. We will be happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Plante.

For the first round of questions, each of the various parties will have six minutes to ask questions and hear the answers.

We will start with the first vice-chair of the committee, Mr. Godin.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thanks to the witnesses for taking part in this exercise. As I often say, you help us to be better, so we are going to take advantage of the opportunity.

I am going to start with Mr. Buck from CEDEC.

As you know, the objective of the study we are doing is to learn about best practices, particularly from the economic point of view. I would first like to ask you whether the anglophone economic community in Quebec is prosperous.

[John Buck]

Thank you, Mr. Godin. I will be happy to answer.

I will start by providing some information that's much more articulated, I think, in the brief that was presented. I'll speak to the economic circumstances of the linguistic minority community in Quebec, the English-speaking community in Quebec.

I think, perhaps counterintuitively, that it's not as prosperous as many assume it is. In fact, when we look at some of the key indicators, some of the perhaps more relevant indicators, things like—

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Buck, I apologize for interrupting, but you will understand that we have limited speaking time.

You are telling me that the anglophone community is less prosperous than you would hope.

[John Buck]

That is absolutely right.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

What are you using for your comparison?

[John Buck]

That is by comparison with the population of Quebec in general.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Are you comparing it with OLMCs, official language minority communities, outside Quebec? In terms of prosperity, is your community's position better than the position of OLMCs outside Quebec, is it worse, or are your positions similar?

[John Buck]

The 2021 figures have not yet been completely compiled. According to the 2016 figures, we were in a less favourable position than francophones outside Quebec.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Could we say there is more solidarity, or it is easier to mobilize, in OLMCs?

[John Buck]

I think so. I think we work well together.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you for your answers.

I would now like to ask Mr. Plante some questions.

Mr. Plante, the objective of our study is to learn best practices. You named some in your presentation. Can you describe some good practices that can be exported to other regions of Canada? The goal is to create prosperity for OLMCs.

I know that for your members, there are regions that are much more active and have better results. Can you identify some measures that should be exported to other regions?

[Yan Plante]

Three come quickly to mind. If needed, my colleague will add to my answer.

For example, our Ontario member, the Société économique de l'Ontario, has established a virtual incubator for entrepreneurs. When the enterprise is ready to fly on its own, it does so. Our member created the program, which has had considerable success. Through national consultation, these ideas are exchanged. In fact, that is, in a way, what comprises the strength of a network: it brings people together. At present, other colleagues are looking at how that could be implemented in their locations.

I can give you another example. Our British Columbia member has set up what we call speed jobbing. This is an entire process, and I will spare you the details, where a connection is made between employers and job seekers. Screening is done among the two groups, so that when a candidate meets with an employer, they almost know in advance that it is a good match. We are in the process of implementing this system across the country. We are holding these kinds of events.

I have another example I can give. We also participate in targeted international recruiting. For example, our Manitoba member held an event called Destination Manitoba, where some of its representatives travelled to Côte d'Ivoire and met with 1,700 candidates who potentially wanted to come and work in Manitoba.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you. I see there are some good ideas.

Are the other communities receptive when your network contributes to making these best practices known?