Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, the FCFA, to appear before you today.
My name is Marie-France Kenny and I am the President of the FCFA. I am accompanied by our Executive Director, Ms. Suzanne Bossé.
The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has been in existence since 1975. Its mandate is to speak on behalf of the 2.5 million francophones who live in a minority situation in the nine provinces and three territories outside Quebec.
More specifically, the FCFA focuses on promoting linguistic duality, developing the capacity to live in French throughout the country, and fostering the participation of francophone citizens in Canada's development.
Our federation includes 21 member-organizations, including 12 associations representing francophones in each province and each territory, and 9 national francophone organizations that are active in areas such as early childhood, literacy, skills development, health and culture, and we work with clients such as young people, the elderly and women.
For the purpose of its mandate, the FCFA is particularly interested in the implementation of the Official Languages Act. I must admit that we are rather disappointed that the officials who spoke before this committee about labour market development agreements, LMDAs, made no mention of the commitments and language considerations that are included in these agreements, or that should be included. We are concerned about this. If the FCFA is here today, it is mainly to correct these shortcomings.
First, the LMDAs that were signed by the provinces and the territories between 1996 and 2008 all include language provisions. A language provision ensures that when money is transferred from the federal government to a provincial government, the province respects its obligations under the Official Languages Act. In fact, these obligations under the law must accompany devolution. These clauses deal specifically with part IV of the act, which requires that federal offices communicate and provide services in French and in English where the numbers justify it. Under the language clauses of the LMDAs, those obligations are devolved upon provincial and territorial governments.
Those very same language clauses contain two significant shortcomings.
On the one hand, as is the case in many federal-provincial-territorial agreements, the implementation of these clauses is imperfect and there are few accountability measures. Provinces basically do not account for how well they have met their obligations under the Official Languages Act.
I would like to point out that during the negotiations on the renewal of labour market agreements, the federal government showed leadership on the inclusion of firm and clear language clauses. We call on the government to be just as firm when the LMDAs are renewed.
That being said, the Official Languages Act is much more than part IV, that is the part dealing with services to the public and communication with the public. Part VII of the act requires that federal institutions take positive steps to support the development of official language minority communities.
The Official Languages Commissioner recently concluded an investigative report regarding a complaint about how the labour market agreement and labour market development agreement had been implemented in British Columbia. The commissioner confirmed that the federal government is responsible for ensuring that language obligations, not only those under part IV on services to the public, but also those under part VII on positive measures, are implemented when it signs funding transfer agreements with provinces and territories.
In the case of an LMDA, what would positive measures to support the development of our communities look like? At a minimum, in consultation with the communities, the provincial governments would have to craft action plans that meet their real needs, such as access to the kinds of training that francophones are looking for, support for job searches, or measures that focus on the specific needs of francophone immigrants looking for jobs.
Make no mistake: we are not talking about consulting communities in a vacuum. There is a much broader benefit for provincial and territorial governments, and for our communities, when the latter can participate in consultations that include various civil society groups for the purpose of developing LMDA-related action plans. When that happens, there is a much greater chance of the issues and concerns of our communities being fully integrated within these action plans.
Finally, in order to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the LMDAs and any related action plan, one must also ensure that all relevant stakeholders within our communities participate.
The other official languages issue I would like to speak to you about is that of data and research. Currently, the federal government's labour force surveys do not include a language component. It is therefore very difficult to have systematic information on how many francophones are employed, how many are unemployed, which age category is the most affected by underemployment and unemployment, and what kind of training is offered, in what language and where.
This is a major issue. It is a major issue for federal institutions and for provincial and territorial governments that may want to know more about the employment situation of francophones in order to take targeted positive steps for a specific francophone community. It is also an important issue for organizations like the FCFA and its members, that federal institutions and governments often turn to when they are trying to better fulfil their language obligations.
I will end my remarks with a few recommendations that sum up my comments.
First, your committee must recommend that the government insists on strong language clauses that include implementation and accountability measures for the purposes of both part IV of the Official Languages Act, that is service to the public and communications, and part VII, on positive measures to foster community development.
Second, these language clauses must include wording about consultation, cooperation and collaboration with all key stakeholders in francophone communities in order to ensure efficient and effective implementation of the LMDAs in a way that meets the real needs of these communities.
Third, the federal government must strengthen its capacity to collect language data on Canada's labour force in order to fill our knowledge gap on the employment profile of francophone communities.
Finally, we support the recommendation of the Institute for Research on Public Policy to adopt a standardized approach for information and data collection, which would allow for a better understanding of that information.
Thank you.
I would be happy to answer your questions.