Official Languages Committee on Nov. 6th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

First of all, I would like to welcome you to this session of the Official Languages Committee held as part of our national tour. Perhaps I should be saying that you are welcoming us to Newfoundland, because we are in your region.

The Official Languages Committee has been in existence for about 25 years. This is the first time in its history that the committee has undertaken such a visit in order to meet people on the ground and find out what they are thinking about the Official Languages Act, as well as the services provided to them under this legislation.

We are very pleased to be here today. In the past, the Official Languages Committee was a joint parliamentary committee but, for the past few years, the House of Commons and the Senate have each had their own Official Languages Parliamentary Committee.

I will begin by introducing the committee clerks: Mr. Samy Agha—which is a far cry from for an Acadian name!—and Ms. Louise Thibault. I would also introduce you to our researcher, Mr. Jean-Rodrigue Paré.

The Conservatives members—the party in power—who are part of this committee are Sylvie Boucher, Daniel Petit and Pierre Lemieux. We also have Raymond Simard, from the Liberal party, and Guy André, from the Bloc Québécois.

As you know, a five-year plan was prepared two years ago. The purpose of our National tour is to find out, from the people on the ground, whether or not this plan is working and whether or not you are satisfied with it. We would also like to hear any advice or suggestions you may have.

At the start we decided to give every witness three minutes, but given the number of witnesses present, we can give you up to ten minutes. That will give each of you an opportunity to make a detailed presentation.

We will then go to questions. For the first round, every member will have seven minutes to ask questions and hear the answers from the witnesses. We will continue with rounds of questioning until we have used up all of the time we have set a side for this region.

My name is Yvon Godin and I am the member for the riding of Acadie—Bathurst, which is located in northeastern New Brunswick. I am proud that my riding contains the word “Acadie”, because it is very representative.

I hope that we will have an enriching meeting and that will be able to discuss the issues facing francophone minorities in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We will begin with Ms. Poirier. Please introduce yourself and state your title.

[Cyrilda Poirier, Interim Director General, La Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador]

Good morning. My name is Cyrilda Poirier. I am the Interim Director General, La Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador.

First and foremost. I would like to welcome to St. John's. Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Lemieux when I was in Ottawa with the Francophonie Team. Mr. Lemieux, I would like to thank you once again for your hospitality and attention.

We have a little time to tell you who we are, although my presentation will be ten minutes long. Nevertheless, I hope that by the end of the morning you will know exactly who we are and you will also have a better appreciation of our victories and challenges.

Before I get into the heart of the matter, I would like to state that I have been working at the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador for 20 years and that I have only been in the position of Interim Director General since April 1^st. Unfortunately, because of the scarcity of Human Resources in our office, files are often dealt with on a reactive rather than a proactive manner. I have a better handle on some files more than others, since I have spent more time on some issues, and there are some files that I am not as familiar with. I feel somewhat like a sponge, because over the past few months, with every opportunity that I am afforded, such as my participation in the Équipe francophonie last week, I have had a chance to learn more. So I wanted you to know at the outset that I will not necessarily be able to answer all the questions that you put to me. If I feel that one of the colleagues who are sitting around the table may be able to give a more accurate answer, I will turn the floor over to that individual.

To begin with, allow me to give an idea of the size of this province and the challenges that this may represent. In order to travel to the Port-au-Port Peninsula by car, it takes eight hours; by plane, a little more than an hour. It is a three hour plane ride to travel to Labrador City, if you do not have to go through Goose Bay. In order to travel to the nearest province by car, and that will be Nova Scotia, it takes you ten hours on the highway and six hours on the ferry. That gives you an idea of the size of our province and the challenges that travels represent. Moreover, that explains to some extent why our volunteers were enable to travel here today in order to meet with you.

Our federation speaks for the provincial organization, which is composed of five members: the Association communautaire francophone de Saint-Jean, the Association francophone du Labrador, the Association régionale de la côte ouest, the Fédération des parents francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador and Franco-Jeunes de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador. The three associations have a regional mandate whereas the two federations, the Fédération des parents francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador and Franco-Jeunes de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador have a provincial mandate.

The francophone and Acadian population in the province represent 0.5 per cent of the population. There are approximately 1,500 people in the Port-au-Port Peninsula region and some 750 in Labrador City and about 750 in St. John's in the surrounding towns. These are not exact figures; they are only very rough figures.

It is often said that the Port-au-Port community is the community of “real” Franco-Terre-Neuviens. They are entitled to this because, historically, this community, as well as some others, was founded in the Peninsula in 1504. Moreover, in 2004 we celebrated 500 years of francophone existence in Newfoundland. In Labrador City, ever since the mine opened, during the 1950's, we have had a francophone presence which came, for the most part, from the Gaspé and Acadie region. In St. John's, the population is a little bit more diversified, composed mainly of Québécois, Acadians, people from Saint-Pierrais as well as from France. We also have a few immigrants from francophone countries.

If my memory serves me correctly, since 1997, we have been responsible for the management of our schools. In addition, we have two schools and community centres, one located in Grand'Terre, which was the first one; and the other here in St. John's. Moreover, I think that I understood that you will be visiting it this afternoon. We also have a school in Labrador City and one is Goose Bay. I know that we are working on a fifth school project in the southern part of Labrador.

The Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve is currently piloting two projects that I would qualify as structured projects, mainly the Réseau du développement économique et d'employabilité—the coordinator for this project Josée Dalton, will be providing you with a more detailed presentation—, and the project called the Réseau Santé en français de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. I will be discussing this project a little bit later on in my presentation. In addition to these two projects, the federation is currently working on a few one-off projects, including a cultural position project which we are hoping will be part of our structured projects in April.

For your information, by “structured projects”, I mean projects that are managed autonomously by our coordinators. In the case of the Réseau du développement économique et d'employabilité, this project is supported by a team of employees.

The Réseau Santé en français is mandated to implement the recommendations found in the report Setting the stage, which was tabled with the Santé en français organization last April. By the way, I did bring you some copies of this report. I should point out that because of our limited logistic and financial resources, we had to prepare and table this report in English.

Out of the 13 recommendations found in this report, six are about improving the delivery of primary health care services; the other seven recommendations pertained to the principles for the model of primary health care delivery in our francophone communities. Phase II of this sweeping project, namely primary health care and action, is the beginning of the implementation phase for the health care models. By March 31^st, the network will be tabling, with the Santé en français organization, a clinical model that could be adapted to meet specific needs, depending on the community where such a clinic would be set up.

One word of caution. When I say the word “clinic”, I am not necessarily referring to bricks and mortar. Today a clinic might mean an existing health care centre with access to a videoconference unit or an adapted motorized vehicle.

A third project which we are hoping will come into being here by April 1^st is one pertaining to culture. Although culture has always been a priory in our development plans or in our annual programs, we have not always had full-time human and financial resources assigned to this file in particular. Culture, since this was my file before becoming the interim director general, was done through financial administration and this part of the infamous sentence “performs other duties at the request of management.”

Phase I of the cultural position project sponsored by the Fédération culturelle canadienne française made us realize that we have a relatively diverse and vibrant cultural and artistic life. We have musicians, story tellers, painters, writers, poets, gallery curators, as well as guardians of our history and heritage. We want to give them a voice, we want to give them tools and, in particular, we want to promote them.

You are not only, in my humble opinion, in the most beautiful province of Canada, but you are also in the province with the richest and most diversified cultural and artistic life. We are anxious for phase two of the project so that we continue making progress.

Immigration is the next file which is starting to become important. We have already submitted two initiatives. One, which is exploratory in nature, has already been accepted and should be carried out this winter. The other initiative, which pertains to welcoming services, has also been accepted and will be put into effect during the next fiscal year. The exodus of young people and the shortage of skilled labour — we could even add the aging population — are becoming more and more of a problem in our region.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, and this applies to the whole population, it is difficult to recruit and retain people. So you can just imagine the challenges facing the francophone and Acadian population. We are therefore counting a great deal on these two projects being successful.

I realize that I have gone beyond the three to five minutes that I was given for my presentation. I apologize both to you and to my colleagues. However, I do believe that it was important to give you this guided tour of our province, our organization, our reality and, finally, our projects. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Ms. Poirier.

I would now ask Ms. Dalton to give her presentation.

[Josée Dalton, Coordinator, Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador]

Good morning everyone. I am very moved by the fact that you have begun your tour here in Newfoundland and that you chose to make this your first stop in this province before all of the others. As I said earlier to a few of you, it is unfortunate that there are not more participants. We got organized at the last minute, because we found out about this a bit late. This will not, however, prevent us from providing you with a wonderful overview, so that you have a better idea of what is happening in our beautiful province.

I am the coordinator for the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité, the RDÉE. I do not know if you are all familiar with this project, but it is a project and our sponsoring organization is the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador.

There is an RDÉE in every province and territory of the country. This is an initiative of the National Committee for Canadian Francophonie Human Resources Development, the NCCFHRD — a very long acronym —, which was established in 1996. The NCCFHRD set up the RDÉE along with Human Resources and Development Canada, HRDC — which is now called Services Canada — in order to help minority communities. This was an effort to deal with employability and all of the problems Cyrilda mentioned earlier, such as the exodus of young people. Communities in minority situations required assistance. Each province and territory had its own RDÉE so that, using all of these measures, a little more vitality could be injected in places that already had some. Some of our communities already have a great deal of vitality.

The organization that oversees our RDÉE is the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. You will note that the sponsoring organization for most of the provinces and territories that have an RDÉE is an economic development agency. Moreover, this is why this is known as the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité. We are not focused solely on economic development, as some people may believe. We exist to help with employability measures and to facilitate development initiatives.

Our province and each of our francophone regions are very well represented as far as that is concerned. I also manage my own team. This is what the director referred to earlier. Working with me are four economic development officers who each focus on one sector in particular. We have a youth sector, which is a priority, an economy and knowledge sector, a tourism sector and a rural development sector. One officer works in our francophone community in Labrador City — Labrador City/Wabush is one of the three francophone regions in the province —, one officer works in the Port-au-Port Peninsula and two others are based here in St. John's. In addition, we have some administrative support. This team is there to assist communities and facilitate economic development initiatives. We do not work directly with the private sector, although the private sector can be a partner. We work a great deal with our francophone communities and organizations.

Earlier, during the question period, I may turn the tables on you and ask you what you know about the RDÉE. Indeed, this may be a difficult concept to grasp, because it is a relatively new organization.

To assist and support all of the RDÉEs in the country, there is an organization called RDÉE Canada, which oversees everything that is happening in the country. This organization also knocks on the big doors in Ottawa to try to find financing for other national projects. Indeed, provinces and territories can work together to initiate projects that have an impact on all of us. For example, the four RDÉEs in the Atlantic region tend to work together to initiate common projects, to try to find common links because, as you all know, even though we are all francophones working in francophone communities, there are at times certain differences. Demographics may, for instance, be different. However, we do have many points in common. Among other things, we may initiate projects in cooperation with the provinces, even though at times we do not believe that we necessarily have these things in common. Right now we have a project with Saskatchewan to set up an electronic business and support site for communities, in order to further entrepreneurship.

I believe that we really rely a great deal on the strength of the network. That is why there are organizations such as RDÉE Canada, which oversee all of that to some extent, but the fact remains that we are still, if we can call it that, independent from them. We are still attached to our organization, which I would call the delegate organization.

Here, since we do not have as many francophones as in other areas, as I was saying earlier, we are linked to the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. At present we do not have a francophone Chamber of commerce or economic council. We will be looking into this matter since it is becoming necessary, since there is a demand for it.

The enabling fund enables us to work with the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité, but it does impose some limitations on us. Nevertheless, the main priority is still — and God knows how high the unemployment rate is in our province — to help our communities living in minority situations.

I think that we have, in certain cases, moved on to the next phase. Some regions are growing. There was a time when we talked a great deal about the survival of our community. I sincerely believe, and I am saying this to you in all honesty, that we have moved on to the next step. I believe that we are really going through a time where we are aware of the projects and we are aware of our strengths, and we can in fact draw from this in order to develop. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done. I was pleased to hear, a little while ago, my boss giving you a bit of a description — albeit only a geographic one, of the province. You can see that we are facing challenges. You were all able to experience for yourselves what trasnportation, for instance, is like here and you say how difficult it is to get here. Another challenge we are up against is the threat of assimilation: in some regions, assimilation is not far from our doorstep whereas in other areas, the problem is greater. This is precisely why we have to remain united. We are a community — someone pointed this out earlier, which pleased me — which remains very active despite everything. We could use as an excuse the fact that we are so scattered, that there are three regions that are so far apart from each other and so we cannot do this or that. We are, however, strong and united.

Moreover, I would like to take this opportunity if I may, Cyrilda, to mention that the AGA will be held soon. So if some of you would like to attend, you would be welcome, because, as part of our activities, we will be holding a community forum where there will be other participants aside from us three. All of the provincial organizations will be in attendance, as well as guests and government representatives. If you are interested, the AGA will be on November 17 and 18.

That is, in a nutshell, what I wanted to say to you about the national and provincial network. If you have any specific questions, we could discuss them later on.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Ms. Dalton.

We will now move on to Mr. Watt.

[Steven Watt, Editor and Director General, Le Gaboteur]

Good day. My name is Steven Watt. I am the Editor and Director General of Le Gaboteur newspaper, which is the only French-language newspaper — and almost the only francophone media channel — in Newfoundland and Labrador. Of course, there is a Radio-Canada radio and television journalist here, in St. Johns, but Radio-Canada tends to produce more news stories about what is happening in Newfoundland for the rest of Canada. For our part, we provide Newfoundlanders with true coverage of activities here in Newfoundland.

We are an independent organization, but we of course work in close partnership with regional community and provincial organizations. It is our mandate to support those organizations, particularly by covering their activities and projects.

Generally speaking, we have a two-pronged mission. We have to serve as a window on the francophonie of Newfoundland and Labrador. Over the past 23 years, Le Gaboteur has also compiled the most complete historical archive of Newfoundland's francophone community. The newspaper is therefore a major witness to the province's francophonie. The other component of our mission is to inform francophones and those who wish to receive part of the news in French.

It is not always easy to be the voice of and to inform this community, given its small size, but especially its diverseness and the fact it is so scattered. You have already heard about the three major concentrations of francophones in the province, which are very remote from one another. I especially want you to understand that there is not one francophone centre in Newfoundland, as if the majority of francophones were established in a same location. Rather, francophones are divided into three groups living mainly in three diverse regions that are remote from one another.

In fact, we are talking about a very rural population on the west coast; a rather urban, but very isolated group in Labrador; and more urban and cosmopolitan citizens in St. John's. Some live in regions where the economy is rather sound; others live in areas that are rather depressed. It is almost impossible for someone living in Labrador or on the west coast to travel to St. John's to attend events; it is just not feasible.

For a small organization with a limited budget and rather little flexibility in terms of human and financial resources, it is quite difficult to reflect the life of francophones in Newfoundland, whether in general or in detail, with a 12-page newspaper that is published every two weeks.

That is why the newspaper relies heavily on the Official Languages Act, particularly the part dealing with federal ads, i.e. the national publication of federal ads in both official languages. Based on what I had just said about the francophone communities, there is also a problem with regard to advertisers. It is very difficult, almost impossible, for us to develop a local advertising market.

Our distribution is already limited, owing to the small size of the francophone community. Consequently, an advertiser in Stephenville, in the Port-au-Port region, for instance, will not want to place an ad if only one third of our readership is in his area. The same thing goes for the City of St. John's, which also accounts for one third of our readers. As a provincial newspaper, it is very difficult to develop a local advertising market. We also do not have the necessary resources to publish a newspaper in each of the three regions.

The newspaper is the only means the government has to directly reach the provinces francophones, and we are basically the only professional representatives of the francophone press in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I spoke about the importance of the Official Language Act for the newspaper; I would now like to say how important the newspaper is for official languages. I just mentioned the services that the newspaper provides to the government, and this is something I firmly believe in. If we want the federal government to be a bilingual institution, it has to be able to reach francophones in their own language in a mostly anglophone province. The written press is a very effective tool to do so. Currently, in Newfoundland and Labrador, it is the only tool, given that we represent the only francophone media in the province.

Josée has just spoken about the strength and solidarity of the francophone community, but that does not remove the problems it faces. You always have to keep in mind that our community is very spread out and diversified. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador, in all its beauty, is a borderline case in terms of Canadian bilingualism. I believe it accounts for one of the smallest francophone minorities.

If Canada is to be a bilingualism country and if the Official Languages Act is to be implemented, then we must consider our case as the ultimate test of that policy. It is relatively easy to be a bilingual government in Eastern Ontario or Northeastern New Brunswick, for example. However, in our province, not only is bilingualism more difficult to achieve, it is also fundamentally different. We have to find alternative and creative solutions. “one size fits all” solutions, which are implemented across the country, should not be considered because a number of linguistic minority communities experience fundamentally different circumstances.

Developing programs and initiatives requires flexibility, so that they can be applied not only to a minority community that represents 20 per cent of the population, for example, but also to the community in Newfoundland and Labrador.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Watt.

Our three witnesses made their presentations in nine and half minutes. Thank you for your input.

We will begin with the first round of questions, starting with the honourable Raymond Simard.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to thank our guests for being here today.

I am a little embarrassed to say that this is the only province I had not yet visited. Last night, when I arrived, at 1:30 a.m. I saw the nice houses and said to myself that I had to come for a visit: It is wonderful. I am originally from Manitoba and I understand the challenges that you face as a linguistic minority.

During the first round of questions, I would like to focus on education. As you know, in the Action Plan on official languages, over 50% of funding was official languages earmarked for education. I was wondering whether you could provide us with a clear overview of the situation.

Ms. Poirier, you spoke about the management of your schools over the past few years. How have things worked out since you have obtained the right to manage your own schools? And what about the immersion programs? Is immersion as popular as it is elsewhere? I know that immersion programs are extremely successful in Manitoba and British Columbia. I would like to get a sense of what is happening here with regard to immersion. Do you have organizations like Canadian Parents for French? Do they exist here? Are they well organized and are they partners of yours? Elsewhere in Canada, we have seen that they are extremely resourceful and help support francophone communities.

I will speak a bit more about literacy in a few minutes.

[Cyrilda Poirier]

I will begin, but I may have some bits of information missing.

Yes, we did win the right to manage our own schools. As I said, I think that was in 1997 or thereabout. That was not an easy battle, as is always the case to establish any kind of institution of this type, but victory was greatly appreciated. Of course, that's one example of success that we obtained through the Court Challenges Program. Here in Newfoundland, this seems to work very well. They have control over five schools in the province. They too have a large territory to cover, much as we do.

I don't know exactly what information you want with regard to school administration. It is a parapublic organization.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Are the community school centres part of the school network?

[Cyrilda Poirier]

Absolutely.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

When you refer to the five schools, the two community school centres are included?

[Cyrilda Poirier]

Absolutely.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Where are they located?

[Cyrilda Poirier]

We have one community school centre in the Port-au-Port Peninsula, which is called the Centre scolaire communautaire Sainte-Anne, and we have the one in St. John's, which is called the Centre scolaire et communautaire des Grands-Vents.

Again, in the Port-au-Port Peninsula, there is another school, l'école Notre-Dame-du-Cap. So in fact there are two schools in the Port-au-Port Peninsula. There's a homogenous school in Labrador City and another in Goose Bay. I know there's a sixth school project in southern Labrador. I would have liked to have my colleague from the parents' federation to discuss this with you a bit, but it's my understanding that this case is currently before the Court Challenges Program.

[Steven Watt]

I think there's currently an agreement under which students in the l'Anse au Clair region go to a Quebec school in Blanc-Sablon.

[Cyrilda Poirier]

This gives you some idea of how this is managed and how it works.

Let's move on to immersion. Immersion has always been a very strong phenomenon here. I arrived here in 1984 and I remember that one had to line up every September to register children in immersion classes.

Immersion courses have served the francophone population, for better or for worse, before schools were established and before we had French-language education in our communities. We've lost contact with the immersion section to some extent because in the final analysis, that is not our clientele. Having said that, I want to open a parenthesis here, because before we had our schools, we lost many francophone students to immersion programs especially at the high school level.

There are still people who have the following perception. I'm thinking particularly of Quebec parents who arrive in Newfoundland. They settle here and they decide that they want their children to be bilingual. So instead of sending them to a francophone school system, they send their children to an immersion program. So in this way we lose part of our clientele, and I find that unfortunate.

We do have school planning councils, the SPC. Once again, we have established some partnerships with them, but they operate autonomously. They mostly help us to organize cultural or extracurricular events. This is when we are in contact with them.

I'll put on the hat that I wore when I was in charge of cultural issues for the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. What hurt us to some extent, was the redistribution of school boards particularly when immersion programs were amalgamated. They put them in the mainstream of anglophone schools. So we more or less lost track of the schools where children were going because they were absorbed into the English-language system. To my mind, this is one of the weaknesses of our system.

Having said that, as we speak, we are trying to re-establish contact with immersion schools. Moreover, I know that a show is in the works for December. The person responsible, Xavier Georges of the Association communautaire francophone de Saint-Jean, has contacted them, and over 400 students will attend that show. It's far more pleasant for an artist to perform for a student audience of 400 rather than 20 or 50 as is the case at our school.

In essence, that's what I can tell you regarding education.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Mr. André, you have the floor.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Good morning, Ms. Poirier, Ms. Dalton and Mr. Watt. It's a pleasure to be here today.

This is a bit like déjà-vu for me, since I used to sit on the Standing Committee on Official Languages. But I am now a member of the Standing Committee on International Trade. On that committee, in Ottawa, I realized that if you are not bilingual, you cannot understand what is going on. There is the Canada-US Parliamentary Association where everyone speaks English. I say this to point out the fact that assimilation happens everywhere. The reach of the English language is growing and it is being promoted in most institutions. I therefore understand how important the fight for our cultural diversity is.

I have several questions for you. To begin, Ms. Poirier, you referred to ways to promote culture. Of course, if we want more people to speak French, an excellent way of doing that is through culture. Under existing programs, is enough being done to disseminate this culture throughout Newfoundland and even in the rest of Canada?

I also want to connect this subject to something Ms. Dalton said. As far as I can see, you work in the local economic development sector. Are there any social economy projects, or other ones, which provide an opportunity for francophone artists to promote this culture?

I'll leave it at that for now.

[Cyrilda Poirier]

Is enough being done to promote French culture? The answer is no, at least for now. I said earlier in my presentation that we would like to have enough financial and human resources to make progress. People are increasingly realizing that to survive, they have to work together, and that includes artists. In fact, our francophone artists cannot live from their art alone. That's unfortunate. They need to also be in another line of work, such as fishing, teaching or consulting.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

They are part-time artists.

[Cyrilda Poirier]

Indeed. That's too bad, but they can't dedicate themselves entirely to their art, and I mean that in the broadest sense of the term.

As I said during my presentation, we need financial and human resources to bolster the project. By this we don't mean an independent organizational structure, but rather simply having one person in charge.

Phase 1 of the cultural positioning project helped us realize that there was a need out there. As an example, I mentioned Mr. Georges, who surveyed every school and immersion class, and then contacted them all via an e-mail link to announce upcoming shows. He did this on his own time and on part of his association's time as well. But this wasn't fair to the association's members. When I was working on this file, I also worked on it when I could find a moment between my administrative duties. But that's not how you get the job done.

Here is another example. We have always taken part in the Dictée des Amériques. Our students always did extremely well. Even though we live in a small province and manage our own schools, and are being assimilated at an alarming rate, as is the case in other provinces, two of our students won the Dictée des Amériques: one in the junior category and the other in the senior category. I am extremely proud of that.

Again, this event requires an enormous amount of time. We need to organize regional qualification rounds by letting people know about them; we need to send out documents and make sure that everything is ready, and that the community does its job. This all takes time. But if two people were hired for this type of work, we could save at least two weeks worth of work. You might say that two weeks out of 52 is not a lot, but it is if you have other work to do. So these are more concrete examples of what we are accomplishing in the area of culture.

You mentioned creating a link with the economy. Josée could speak to that more at length. We have something called the Francoboutique. I am not an Internet surfer, and I apologize for that. It is not my preferred way of communicating or of getting information.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Talk to your kids about it.

[Cyrilda Poirier]

I don't have any.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Young people will help you.