Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal
This bill has received Royal Assent and is, or will soon become, law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
Part 1 amends the Official Languages Act to, among other things,
(a) specify that all legal obligations related to the official languages apply at all times, including during emergencies;
(b) codify certain interpretative principles regarding language rights;
(c) provide that section 16 of that Act applies to the Supreme Court of Canada;
(d) provide that a final decision, order or judgment of a federal court that has precedential value is to be made available simultaneously in both official languages;
(e) provide for Government of Canada commitments to
(i) protect and promote French,
(ii) estimate the number of children whose parents are rights holders under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ,
(iii) advance formal, non-formal and informal opportunities for members of English and French linguistic minority communities to pursue quality learning in their own language throughout their lives, including from early childhood to post-secondary education, and
(iv) advance the use of English and French in the conduct of Canada’s external affairs;
(f) clarify the nature of the duty of federal institutions to take positive measures to implement certain Government of Canada commitments and the manner in which the duty is to be carried out;
(g) provide for certain positive measures that federal institutions may take to implement certain Government of Canada commitments, including measures to
(i) promote and support the learning of English and French in Canada, and
(ii) support sectors that are essential to enhancing the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities and protect and promote the presence of strong institutions serving those communities;
(h) provide for certain measures that the Minister of Canadian Heritage may take to advance the equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian society;
(i) provide that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is required to adopt a policy on francophone immigration and that the policy is to include, among other things, objectives, targets and indicators;
(j) provide that the Government of Canada recognizes the importance of cooperating with provincial and territorial governments;
(k) provide that the Treasury Board is required to establish policies to give effect to certain parts of that Act, monitor and audit federal institutions for their compliance with policies, directives and regulations relating to the official languages, evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of policies and programs of federal institutions relating to the official languages and provide certain information to the public and to employees of federal institutions;
(l) enable the Commissioner of Official Languages to enter into compliance agreements and, in certain cases, to make orders; and
(m) enable the Commissioner of Official Languages to impose administrative monetary penalties on certain entities for non-compliance with certain provisions of Part IV of that Act.
It also makes a related amendment to the Department of Canadian Heritage Act .
Part 2 enacts the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act , which, among other things, provides for rights and duties respecting the use of French as a language of service and a language of work in relation to federally regulated private businesses in Quebec and then, at a later date, in regions with a strong francophone presence. That Act also allows employees of federally regulated private businesses to make a complaint to the Commissioner of Official Languages with respect to rights and duties in relation to language of work and allows the Commissioner to refer the complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board in certain circumstances. It also provides that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is responsible for promoting those rights. Finally, Part 2 makes related amendments to the Canada Labour Code .
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Currently, Bill C‑13 does not include any requirement for linguistic provisions in its agreements, which is a mistake.
Bill C-13 must be amended to include a requirement for language provisions in federal–provincial–territorial agreements. Otherwise, nothing will change. Some agreements include language provisions, but all of them must take into account the needs of both francophone minorities and francophiles outside Québec.
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Thank you.
My next question is for you again, Ms. Kolodziej.
We’ve been trying to make the following argument: If the federal government were to negotiate language provisions in its agreements with the provinces, service offer would improve over the long term, particularly in education.
How could Bill C‑13 help sustain investment in French-language education for rights holders and francophiles?
In your opinion, how essential is it to include language provisions in the bill?
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you for your answer.
You said that only the Treasury Board should be responsible for implementing Bill C‑13. Why?
October 18th, 2022 / 12:15 p.m.
Canadian Francophonie Research Chair in Language Rights, Full Professor, Faculty of Law - Common Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Between Bill C‑32, the first version of the bill, and Bill C‑13, there was a change in the preamble.
In Bill C-13, there is now a sentence stating that the Official Languages Act applies “during emergencies“. I think it’s the very last sentence in the preamble. The pandemic taught us the importance of this reality. Legislation to protect official language minorities must apply in times of crisis.
We also saw the temporary and unfortunate suspension of rules for bilingual signage at the beginning of the pandemic. This was allowed under the interpretation of the Minister of Health’s regulatory powers. It seems to me, however, that this exercise of authority should not have been allowed. It would have been possible to allow the import of necessary health products, like disinfectants and medication, with bilingual labels. Once again, we saw that French and English are not on a level playing field, and that French can be disregarded in the name of other imperatives.
It’s true that public health and safety are important, but so is upholding official languages. It must be included in the Official Languages Act. It must also be included in the Emergencies Act. The preamble in the Emergencies Act could include a reminder to this effect, meaning that the Official Languages Act also applies when the former act is invoked.
We must remind the minister responsible for public safety that implementing emergency plans in response to a crisis must be done in compliance with the Official Languages Act.
Ania Kolodziej President, French for the Future
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, good afternoon.
My name is Ania Kolodziej and I am president of French for the Future. I am accompanied by Emeline Leurent, who is the executive director.
Thank you for inviting us to speak on a topic that is of great interest to us and also to the young people we work for.
I would like to share with you part of my story. I am the poster child for Canadian bilingualism and the daughter of first generation immigrants. My parents wanted me to participate in Canadian bilingualism, so they enrolled me in French immersion school. I studied in French immersion in North Delta, a suburb of Vancouver, for all of my elementary and high school years.
I continued my studies in French at Simon Fraser University, in a program of the Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs that was new at the time and offered for the first time the opportunity to study social sciences in French, in British Columbia. I then studied common law and civil law at the University of Ottawa. I have now been a public law lawyer for 10 years and practice mostly in French, across Canada, including as a member of the bars of four provinces.
If my story reflects the success of Canadian bilingualism, it was only possible because of federal investments. Yet I am too often told that my story is exceptional when it should be normal. The opportunities I took advantage of to learn and perfect my French should be available to all youth.
French for the Future is a national non-profit organization that promotes bilingualism and the benefits of learning and communicating in French to high school students. Through its programs, French for the Future reaches more than 40,000 young people each year, who become increasingly confident in their French language skills.
In order to make it possible for more young people to become bilingual, certain amendments to Bill C‑13 are required. Today we want to talk to you about four improvements. In each case, these changes will have the effect of helping organizations like ours to further encourage the learning of French or, for francophones and francophiles, to maintain and increase opportunities to speak and live in French outside Quebec.
First, Bill C‑13 should codify the obligation to include mandatory language provisions in agreements between federal, provincial and territorial governments. The various levels of government must never forget language transmission and revitalization when negotiating agreements that have an impact on French-speaking communities.
Second, Bill C‑13 greatly improves part VII of the Official Languages Act with respect to positive measures, which promote, among other things, the learning of French. However, the wording of part VII must be further strengthened to ensure that federal institutions take the necessary positive measures, not just those they deem appropriate. The current wording gives federal institutions too much latitude and is not binding. The commitments and promises in Bill C‑13 to protect and promote French and to assist non-profit organizations in providing opportunities for all persons in Canada to learn French will only be achievable if part VII is further strengthened.
Third, we recognize the importance of francophone immigration in restoring francophone demographics and support initiatives that help newcomers and their youth live in French. Bill C‑13 should clarify that the objective of the francophone immigration policy is to restore and increase the demographic weight of francophone communities, not just maintain it.
Fourth, with respect to designating a central agency, the coordination of the act must be entrusted solely to the Treasury Board to ensure that only one federal institution is ultimately responsible for the implementation of the act. The Treasury Board should not be able to delegate this ultimate responsibility. This crucial change to the structure of Bill C‑13 will ensure strong accountability and effective implementation of the act.
For all intents and purposes, French for the Future believes that Bill C‑13 can and should go further to make the Official Languages Act a truly effective piece of legislation that has more teeth and protects the future of French across the country.
Thank you.
Dr. François Larocque Canadian Francophonie Research Chair in Language Rights, Full Professor, Faculty of Law - Common Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and honourable members, for the invitation.
It is a privilege for me to share the podium with the representatives of the French for the Future group, Ms. Kolodziej and Ms. Leurent.
We are here to discuss Bill C‑13. I hasten to point out at the outset that I think this is a very good bill that proposes important, indeed necessary, reforms to modernize the Official Languages Act.
I commend the leadership of the two successive ministers of Official Languages, ministers Joly and Petitpas‑Taylor, who have been able to steer the file of this modernization with aplomb and who have been able to propose serious and ambitious bills based on a premise that we can no longer afford to ignore: French is in decline everywhere in the country, even in Quebec.
It is therefore incumbent upon the federal government to take note of this and to take major steps to turn the tide and achieve the real equality of French and English, as mandated by the Constitution of Canada.
It is in this spirit that I invite the committee to consider some amendments to Bill C‑13. These are amendments that I believe could further strengthen the bill and better equip the Canadian francophonie for the future. I have grouped my suggestions into four categories.
I also hasten to point out that I am endorsing here the representations of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, or FCFA, regarding the six amendments that should be made to Bill C‑13 to strengthen and finalize the act. I will not repeat them all here, except the one about the implementation of the act. That is, in fact, my first suggestion.
It must be recognized that the implementation of the Official Languages Act has remained its Achilles' heel for the past 50 years. Like the FCFA, I believe that Canadian Heritage can continue to play a role in the strategic development of official languages, as it has built up useful institutional expertise in this regard. However, I believe that the coordination of the implementation of the Official Languages Act should be entrusted to the Treasury Board for the entire act, not just parts IV, V, VI and the proposed new subsection 41(5). The power of the Treasury Board to subdelegate its obligations to another federal institution should also be removed in order to properly centralize and standardize the implementation of the Official Languages Act.
My second suggestion relates to the bilingual nature of the Constitution. Canada is an officially bilingual country, but most of the constitutional texts have force of law only in English. This is inconsistent and untenable. Section 55 of the Constitution Act, 1982, requires the adoption “as soon as possible” of the French version of the Constitution of Canada, which has still not been done. I therefore adopt the proposals of Senators Dalphond and Carignan to add a provision to Bill C‑13 that would require the Minister of Justice or another responsible minister, such as the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, to make best efforts to enter into discussions with the provinces and territories with a view to validating the French version of the constitutional texts, and to report periodically to Parliament until this is done. The work of patriation will not be completed as long as the Constitution remains primarily in English.
My third suggestion concerns the application of the Official Languages Act in times of crisis. My colleague Professor Cardinal and I have studied this issue in detail. I had the opportunity to speak with the office of the former minister of Official Languages to emphasize the importance of respecting official languages at all times, and especially in times of national emergency such as the COVID‑19 pandemic. The fact that Bill C‑13 contains a sentence in its preamble that recognizes this principle is fantastic. However, I also believe that a section should be added to the body of the bill to clarify the application of the act in Canada's emergency plans—a responsibility of the Minister of Public Safety—and to prohibit the suspension of bilingualism rules for signage, labelling, or communications in times of crisis, as the Minister of Health did at the beginning of the pandemic and as Conservative Health Critic Michael Barrett has recently proposed. This is regrettable. We must not allow this kind of slippage.
My fourth and final suggestion concerns access to justice in French. Bill C‑13 removes the exemption for the Supreme Court of Canada in section 16 of the Official Languages Act. This is an excellent start and I say bravo! However, I adopt the proposal of the Fédération des associations des juristes d'expression française de common law that the Official Languages Act must also require the Minister of Justice to take into account the language skills of federally appointed judges to ensure a proper distribution of bilingual judges across Canada.
That's a good question.
Albert Einstein said that the quintessence of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and thinking that it will produce different results.
Clearly, neither the content of the Official Languages Act nor what is proposed in this reform will stop the decline of French in Quebec or the rest of Canada. As Mr. Lepage said, we want more than to survive; we want to develop.
Requests have been made, not only by groups, but also by the Quebec state. We know that representatives of the Quebec government, who cannot however be labelled as “crypto-separatists”, met with Minister Petitpas Taylor. They sent her several representations and requests for amendments to Bill C‑13. Yet, despite these requests, we are still not seeing any uptake in this matter.
So what is the solution? I found it long ago. The opposite of the Quebec state's dependence on the Canadian and monarchical regime is, of course, political independence. But are we there?
What we want today is to improve a bill. Will Canadian parliamentarians listen to the groups that describe the reality and experience it on the ground? Unfortunately, if the past is any indication, the answer will be no, and Canadian parliamentarians will be unable to pass legislation on official languages that will help one of these two languages continue to survive and thrive.
Mario Beaulieu Bloc La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Lepage, your comments are very useful and we support your demands.
Mr. Boucher, the Quebec government has asked to be in charge of language planning on its territory. It is also asking that Bill 101 apply to businesses under federal jurisdiction. Finally, it is demanding to have the last word on positive measures, given that Quebec is the only majority French-speaking state in North America.
However, almost none of these demands have been accepted by the federal government nor are they included in Bill C‑13. What are your thoughts on this? If the federal government continues to promote only English in Quebec, as it has done in the past, what is the solution for Quebec?
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
With respect to immigration and the federal government's role, do you have any suggestions or recommendations for us in relation to Bill C‑13?
We're talking about targets to be met or increased. What role do you think the federal government should play with the provinces and municipalities to ensure that there is more francophone immigration to Saskatchewan?
Yes, I think this helps justify that argument.
I see that it says in Bill C‑13 that this should be interpreted broadly and liberally to right the wrongs of the past. There is a real need for the federal government to engage in the implementation of section 23, even in provincial jurisdictions.
I understand that this may be problematic, but we see that the federal government has used its spending power in the past, even in areas of provincial jurisdiction, such as education and health.
Therefore, there is an absolute need for the federal government to make a greater commitment in this regard, to build francophone schools.
It has a few things, but not enough.
There absolutely needs to be a federal commitment in the part of the act that deals with positive measures, part VII. The federal government should have an obligation to fund the construction of local schools across the country, outside Quebec. That would give rise to a French-language school system, which has yet to emerge.
I don't see anything in Bill C-13 that would require the federal government to pay 50% of school construction costs.
British Columbia isn't the only province in need of French-language schools. That's the case in every province and territory.
I've been working in communities for 43 years, and I see the same thing happening everywhere. Communities become more and more assimilated when they don't have their own French-language schools and the ones that do exist are too far away.
Part VII of the Official Languages Act should contain a provision requiring the federal government to fund French-language schools.
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Thank you for your answer.
The last time you were here, you stressed the importance of federal support for the construction of French-language schools. You also said it was important for the federal government to come to an agreement with the provinces on a long-term investment plan.
Does Bill C-13 contain any provisions that would make it easier to put such an investment program in place?
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being with us.
Mr. Lepage, you shared some good news with us: a French-language school was built in Iqaluit. We heard you loud and clear, though. The school is already too small to accommodate all the students.
I'm speaking now as a mother who just found out that her children were accepted to a French-language school here, in Thompson, in northern Manitoba. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get a French-language school built in my area.
I want to recognize that progress and tell you that we fully understand the need to invest in more French-language schools and to support French-language education outside Quebec.
Mr. Lepage, you appeared before the committee back in February, and you talked about the importance of including language clauses in Bill C-13. It doesn't include them, not right now, anyways. Countless witnesses came before the committee to ask that language clauses be added to the bill.
What should those language clauses look like?
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
The measure relating to rights holders has been in place for a few years now. We realize just how important it is for French-language school boards.
You brought up the action plan, specifically, funding. You think it needs to be topped up. I got that loud and clear.
Now I want to circle back to Bill C‑13.
Do you have other amendments to the bill you want to recommend?
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Lepage and Mr. Boucher, for agreeing to appear before the committee.
Not only has Ontario's francophone community been waiting and waiting for Bill C‑13, but so have francophone communities all over the country.
Mr. Lepage, you were asked by Mr. Godin whether we should pass the bill. He also asked you specific questions about the central agency's role. As a lawyer, you know that the Treasury Board is responsible for the implementation of parts IV, V and VI, under Bill C‑13.
Previously, the Treasury Board was allowed to step in but never did. Under part IV of the new act, the Treasury Board is required to take action, as part of its responsibilities, and establish policies to give effect to parts IV, V and VI.
Clearly, questions exist around part VII and the positive measures component. The Treasury Board gives the Department of Canadian Heritage power over that. As you know, the Treasury Board is not an institution that deals with the public. It deals with the inner workings of government, the inside baseball, as they say.
I want to make sure I understand your position.
You're saying that we shouldn't pass Bill C‑13 if the Treasury Board is not the institution responsible for part VII. That's your recommendation.
Do I have that right?