Yes, it's very brief.
She said we hadn't had any support for ad hoc projects since the end of the stage this past September. That's true. Although it's not official, since the minister hasn't yet announced it, we're preparing to carry out two projects until March 2007. After that, there's nothing tangible yet.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the President of the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse, Mr. Désiré Boudreau, and its Executive Director, Jean Léger, both of whom are in Quebec City today, I thank you for this opportunity to provide you with the perspective of the Acadians and Francophones of Nova Scotia regarding their issues and the major challenges they must face as official language communities of Canada.
In addition to the group that is in Quebec City today, another group wanted to be here, but the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages is in Halifax, which was chosen as one of the four cities where our study is being conducted on the vitality of a minority community in an urban centre. We pass on the apologies of those individuals, who can't be here with us today.
Here are a few points. First, as you know, and as Ms. Saulnier said, our community consists of more than 35,000 Acadians whose mother tongue is French. We can't wait to see the figures from the last census, to determine where we stand in that regard. In addition, we have a large immigrant community whose mother tongue, which I often call a “second mother tongue”, is French, mainly in the Halifax-Dartmouth urban area.
FANE plays the role of mouthpiece of the Acadian and Francophone communities and has 23 member organizations representing most aspects of society. In addition to those organizations, FANE handles a number of issues, including the Community Access Program, CAP—until it stops—and immigration issues, in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia and Immigration Canada.
Our Acadian and Francophone communities are scattered over a number of regions across the province. If I have to travel from where I live, in West Pubnico, to Sydney in the far north of the province, I have to drive 10 hours. The Province of Nova Scotia is very small, but it's nevertheless quite big if you take into account the province's Acadian and Francophone communities. The challenge of distances is a significant one, as is community cooperation.
However, we manage with various tools to organize that cooperative effort and enable the community to develop and grow to a certain degree, as a result of our work using whatever resources are available. We nevertheless have very well organized and structured groups, which have a lot of development objectives, but often very little in the way of resources to achieve them.
We must still continue our efforts for the survival of our communities, as the status quo for our community currently means a step backward. It is important that the federal government support us throughout this development process with values of openness, innovation and respect.
As you know, in recent years, the federal government has been the key to this maintenance and survival, and it is thanks to funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, through the Canada-community agreements, that our regions have acquired a minimum level of community infrastructure. This federal effort and support must continue and be reinforced and improved.
The ultimate priority of our communities is to enter into framework agreements or collaborations with the Government of Canada to ensure implementation of our action plan and of our overall development action plan, which is the road map for development of our communities and is regularly validated by the communities. However, our communities have not yet renewed their agreement with the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Any uncertainty could kill the initiative of volunteers and employees, thus leaving our communities in a tenuous situation. In our view, the main reason for our situation is the government's lack of openness to the idea of developing new development approaches with the communities.
We therefore ask that these agreements be renewed as soon as possible in a manner consistent with the needs of the communities. The communities' priorities must be the priorities set out in those agreements, and the necessary resources to achieve them must be stated there.
These new agreements should therefore be based on the communities' priorities, not on those of government officials or, in certain cases, of politicians.
For a number of years now, we have had this overall development plan to develop our communities, but the government often finds reasons to fund only a small part of what can ensure the vitality of our communities.
We even want the federal government to sign with our communities—as it has done with the Aboriginal communities—specific sectoral agreements, as we've just seen in the case of the national health and economic sectors. This should also be done at the provincial level, in order to really give the communities the boost they need to encourage and monitor development.
In recent decades—Rodrigue Landry talked about this—French has lost ground in the Francophone communities outside Quebec. Why is that occurring, when the federal government says it is establishing programs and policies to support those communities? Aren't the communities the ones that know what they need?
Established policies and programs very often cannot ensure long-term development and do not receive adequate funding. They are always established on a temporary, virtually uncertain basis, which has a major impact on volunteers and employees. It exhausts those two groups. Some programs have also been cancelled. There was some discussion of that this morning, and I won't go back to that point for the moment.
We have to find a better way to ensure regular, constant and respectful dialogue between the two parties, in order to do what is good for the communities. We cannot pass over in silence the challenges related to the administrative requirements of the various programs. This is often a very slow and arduous process that differs from department to department. And yet they all receive directives from the Treasury Board. I see this in health and in other areas: the requirements are not always the same. In addition, decision-making is slow when it comes to announcing that a project has been approved.
Let's mention some other points. The Community Access Program has been cut. This is a major loss for the communities. In addition, we want to reiterate that it is important that an adequate community consultation process be established immediately so that there is no down time between plans, that is the Dion Plan or the Action Plan for Official Languages and the communities' plans.
In closing, we also want to publicly support our national organization, the FCFA, in the matter of the application for judicial review recently filed concerning the federal government's decision to cancel the Court Challenges Program. We join with all the other Canadian organizations in condemning the recent budget cuts affecting our communities, the Canadian Volunteerism Initiative, Status of Women Canada, literacy and so on.
With that, I thank you for listening to us.