Official Languages Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[Nicole Drouin]

What we foresaw in our province, Prince Edward Island, was going to greatly improve the existing early childhood system; it was going to improve access to services for the youngest children; it was going to increase funding for early childhood services so that more children could receive them.

Right now there's a major deficiency: there's no service for children from zero to 22 months. According to the model developed in our province, during the five years of the program's lifetime, we were going to be able to add more services as we went along.

Consequently, these cuts have really hurt our development with regard to French-language services provided in early childhood. We've been greatly disappointed.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

It's now Mr. André's turn.

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

Good morning. My name is Guy André, and I'm originally from Quebec, where, as you know, the majority is Francophone.

By way of introduction, I must say how much I admire the way you've fought in Prince Edward Island in an attempt to maintain the vitality of the French language. That's a struggle that we are also carrying on in Quebec. Internationally and globally, there is still a struggle over the issue of cultural diversity. An attempt is being made to anglicize the entire planet somewhat, through Americanization and so on, and to make culture the subject of negotiations at the World Trade Organization.

We're also fighting that fight in Quebec, but you have to fight it even harder given the fact that you form a smaller minority.

We've heard about health, but we haven't heard about culture in Prince Edward Island. How do you experience Francophone culture, theatre, cinema, radio, television? Is it stimulated? Is there a certain amount of vitality? Do you need more support to promote that culture and to organize it together with the community centres? I'd like to hear some of your views on the subject.

[Lizanne Thorne]

I'll answer the question.

Cultural development is done somewhat like the development of all our other organizational structures in Prince Edward Island. The funding envelope for the major part of the organization of cultural development comes from the cooperation agreement with Canadian Heritage.

As you probably know, there has been no significant increase in that envelope in Prince Edward Island since 1992. So things are very hard for us. Since our communities are growing exponentially, demands are becoming greater and greater. We now have community school centres in certain regions, which add to the challenge of managing those bodies.

We don't have the necessary critical mass, like in other provinces, for cultural development to become self-sufficient. Our clientele isn't large enough to pay the inherent expenses of high-quality entertainment or trainers. Consequently, major investment is necessary in order to develop culture and stimulate cultural interest.

To really contribute to the development of our communities, you have to learn the language, of course, but you also have to adopt the culture. In that respect, we have an enormous lack of human and financial resources to achieve our goals and meet the needs of our clientele.

In spite of that—and you're no doubt aware of this—artists and cultural groups from Prince Edward Island, like Barachois, Angèle Arsenault and Clack'Azing have achieved considerable success. We have a lot of talented people. Our clientele show their interest and want culture and cultural development, but we haven't achieved the necessary level of support to meet these growing needs.

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

In my opinion, as a result of your assimilation rate,the Francophone community in Prince Edward Island will have to wake up and be vital so that people are stimulated and send their children to school. It has to be promoted. There has to be a comprehensive approach.

[Lizanne Thorne]

In addition, culture helps us make the other community aware of the value that our community adds in this province. Prince Edward Island relies a lot on tourism. Our Anglophone community increasingly recognizes the value our community adds and the need not only to promote folk culture, but also to provide tourists with a unique experience related to a culture different from their own.

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

Thank you. I have a little time left.

Ms. Gilman and Ms. Bernard, you talked about health. You said that there were problems related to the recruitment and training of health care personnel in Prince Edward Island.

What are your resource needs? We know there are currently similar problems virtually everywhere, particularly in the rural regions, where it's harder to recruit doctors and nurses. Since I've previously worked in that system, I know it very well.

What kind of training is being offered? What collaborative efforts are you making with the Francophone world outside Prince Edward Island? And what would the solutions be?

In two and a half minutes, that's not too bad! I'd simply like to know a little about the situation.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

A minute and a half.

[Jeannita Bernard]

Our problems aren't any different from yours: recruitment and retention. I can't say that the health care system is in full crisis, but there's nevertheless a deficiency in the health care system.

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

There's the aging of the population, and therefore too much pressure on the...

[Jeannita Bernard]

Exactly.

I belong to an organization that does training, but we can't do training alone because we aren't equipped to do so. On the island, we're very small.

Having said that, we'll need the Consortium national de formation en santé, the CNFS. So our membership in that organization is essential to us.

We've previously established partnerships with organizations such as the Cégep de Saint-Félicien, where early childhood training is offered. We've entered into other partnerships with the Collège communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick, where training related to health assistance is provided. We're planning other types of training.

We don't have the presence we need within the consortium. However, that could be a major lever for us in establishing more partnerships and making it known what's going on in health training at the national level.

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

Is that a recommendation?

[Jeannita Bernard]

Yes, that's a recommendation.

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

We'll take that into account. Thank you.

May I continue, Mr. Godin?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

No, you're finished, Mr. André. You'll be entitled to another round. The researcher was distracting me. It's his fault, and only his fault!

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Good morning. Thank you for being here today. I'm a member from Eastern Ontario. There are 65,000 Franco-Ontarians in my riding.

I'd like to start by making a comment. Unfortunately, my colleague Mr. D'Amours started by making a brief political presentation on the Court Challenges Program. I'd like to add that his commens were not entirely accurate.

What's really important is that Francophone associations and individuals have access to the courts. And that's the case, whether it be directly or through the Commissioner of Official Languages. That's guaranteed by the Official Languages Act. It's access that's really important, and you have it directly or through the Commissioner.

I'd also like to emphasize that we are incurring expenses to improve services and education in the minority linguistic communities. For example, we've announced a $1 billion education agreement. We're working with the provinces to improve education services. As regards services to Francophones, an agreement has been reached under the Official Languages Act with $64 million, a 25 percent increase; and there's $120 million for our communities. The money is there to help communities and improve services.

I'd like to know whether you have the mechanisms to determine which local associations receive money from the federal government because money is indeed allocated to local associations.

Do you have a system or a network for determining the total number of organizations in existence, whether it be 20, 25 or 50, and that share the money earmarked for improved services to Francophones?

[Rodrigue Landry]

I'd like to take the opportunity to talk about this subject. Indeed, I believe this is one of the harmful effects of the current action plan, an effect that I don't think is intentional. The wish was to make each of the departments accountable. So the money is distributed very widely.

It's entirely normal for organizations seeking to know where the money is for their needs and their organizations. This has created a certain amount of fragmentation. We see it. I sit on a lot of committees in Ottawa with all kinds of groups and organizations. I find that there's very little cooperation. The officers of the organizations before this committee may have a different point of view. I think it's quite obvious that this aspect of the plan somewhat forces communities to become one of the small enterprises trying to survive and keep what they have. I've even heard people use the term “neocorporatism”. People are looking for money, but aren't concerned with the total needs of the community. It's not because they don't want to, it's because they can't. There's no central agency to do the planning and to establish the plan's major priorities.

I started my presentation by talking about early childhood. Let's look at the funding allocated to early childhood compared to that earmarked for health. I don't want to compare funding, but early childhood is crucial. If half the children don't go to French schools, obviously, at the end of their lives, Francophone hospitals won't be of much use to them since they haven't first been able to live in French.

I think that's unfortunate because the action plan is lacking a communications plan. Do the rounds. Here you're mainly talking to organizations. Make some random calls and ask the public if they know there's a plan. I've previously made the following analogy. It's somewhat as though someone had wanted to plan a party for the community. The government organizes the party and works with the community. Through some form of horizontal governance, the community has taken part in organizing the party. A mid-term evaluation is conducted. An evaluation is done on how the party is being organized. But perhaps you have to realize that everyone forgot one important thing: the community wasn't invited to the party. No one was responsible for sending out invitations. The public doesn't know the action plan.

That's where our research becomes important. For example, when we conduct surveys of the parents of exogamous families—an Anglophone parent and a Francophone parent—they're asked what the best solution would be for their children to become bilingual. The vast majority of parents answer simply that it's half and half, that immersion or something similar is required. They forget that a society exists. They only think about school, an equal division of time between English and French will solve the problem. The term “social naiveté” has previously been used. That's what this is. They don't understand that, in a North American society where English is very strong, school has to compensate for that.

If there was a good communications plan, parents would know that the children of exogamous minority families who continue their education until grade 12 don't just become good bilingual students, but rather the best bilingual individuals in the country. Our research shows that they are equivalent to Francophones. Statistically, they can't be distinguished from Francophones who have two Francophone parents, and they are as good in English as Anglophones. So they're excellent bilinguals. However, parents still think that the best solution is half and half. They're not sociolinguists and they don't do research in the field. This sort of information should be known. The plan shouldn't simply exist. First, parents don't even know they have rights. A lot of people don't even know what it means when someone talks about section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Pardon me for interrupting you, but your speaking time is up.

Now it's the NDP's turn. Since Yvon Godin normally sits here, I'm going to take the floor.

I don't really agree with Mr. Lemieux when he flares up against those who ask political questions. If they're political questions, they're welcome in politics. Since we're all politicians, some are going to ask political questions. We often say we shouldn't mix politics with our remarks, but we're a group of politicians. Let's not be hypocrites: we're engaged in politics.

Having said that, I'd like to talk about the question that was asked concerning the Court Challenges Program.

First, we have to shoulder our responsibilities in this regard. The government has decided—and that's its choice—to cancel the Court Challenges Program. We mustn't say that they're now engaging in politics. The government has decided to eliminate the program. It has to shoulder its responsibilities and accept the arguments that come with them.

The first argument concerns Minister Baird's remarks. He told the House that the government wouldn't be giving money to people so that they could fight it, that it wouldn't be giving money to people or groups so that they could challenge its laws, because he's perfect. When he passes an act, he complies with it. I'm not the one who said that; it was the minister. I asked the present government to get rid of courts, judges and lawyers because it's perfect.

As regards the Court Challenges Program, we've taken an enormous step back, or we are about to do so. There were two schools in Prince Edward Island; now there are six. In New Brunswick, when the Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act was passed, the government wanted to include the Francophone town in Miramichi, but the Francophones won their case thanks to the Court Challenges Program.

We are required to use the Court Challenges Program because the former government wanted to violate the act. It wasn't complying with the act, and, thanks to the Court Challenges Program, citizens as a group were able to challenge its decision.

Other cases have been won. You need only think of the Shippagan food inspectors that the government wanted to send to Dieppe or Shediac, of Montfort Hospital or the British Columbia schools.

Can you tell us about the harm that the cancellation of the Court Challenges Program, which you have used, will cause to Francophone minorities? What harm will it do if citizens are left to their own devices or the Commission of Official Languages alone is given responsibility for representing all minorities in Canada?

[Lizanne Thorne]

We don't violate laws and we don't challenge them. The laws exist for our protection. We took the provincial government to court. The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages offers us no protection from decisions made by our province. We had to take our province to court, not the federal government. The province couldn't build Francophone schools in Prince Edward Island or had chosen not to do so.

We always had access to justice, but the community didn't have the financial means to go to court. It cost thousands and thousands of dollars to appeal to the Supreme Court. The community of 6,100 Francophones in Prince Edward Island would never have been able to afford that. The court exists, but if you can't afford it, you don't get schools.

Without the Court Challenges Program, I very much doubt that we could have gotten our schools in Prince Edward Island. Yes, there's a commitment from the federal government, but if the province has no obligation to grant us funding, nothing's possible. When you transfer money to the province, there's no language clause or anything written stating that a particular amount must be used for the Acadian and Francophone community. Sometimes the province can't afford to allocate that money to us.

Prince Edward Island is the province with the largest deficit. It's not always a lack of will: it's inability. So we need federal government support in order to have the same rights as all other Canadians in the country.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Once again, let's look at the early childhood services component. For example, one couple sends their child to French school. The trend is toward child care centres in the schools, and parents are inclined to register their children at a school that has a day care.

The present government has decided to give parents $1,200 per child, money that the former government intended for child care centres.

In your opinion, can that decision affect development of the early childhood sector, particularly that of child care centres? Children first go to day care, a Francophone environment—since we're talking about the Francophone minorities of Prince Edward Island—then continue their education at a school or institute that they're encouraged to attend because of the place they come from.

[Nicole Drouin]

That's particularly important for the parents. The parents' federations agree that parents need funding enabling them to choose services.

However, it's very difficult to ensure that the services we're currently able to provide are of equal quality to those of the Anglophones.

For example, I live in Summerside. There's one Francophone day care and six or seven Anglophone day cares. Francophones only have one choice. Furthermore, there's a waiting list, and a number of factors do not facilitate access to that day care centre.

The early childhood sector is lacking certain elements, and I'm not convinced that the $1,200 per child will enable those elements to exist. It's very important to support parents. We agree on that principle, but we have to go further in order to be able to offer quality services that meet the needs of families and children.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Mr. Simard, over to you.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to welcome our guests.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

We'll now have a round of five minutes.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

I was going to ask a question on another subject, but I was very interested by Mr. Landry's remarks. I have three brief questions to ask him.

Mr. Landry, you spoke about the horizontal responsibilities of the departments. Personally, that intrigues me, and I'd like you to say more about that. I think the Department of Health, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the other departments have a specific responsibility toward minority communities. They too must comply with the Official Languages Act. In the past, Francophones have always depended on Canadian Heritage. If the person in the position was not sensitive to their problems, their communities suffered as a result. That's my first question.

As regards the mid-term report, you said that Francophones had not been invited to the table. Over the past three years, I've taken part in a number of events where Francophones were the leaders. The communities were invited once a year with the ministers responsible for those departments. As regards the mid-term report, there was a major event at the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa, where some 50 or more people were in attendance to talk about the deficiencies of the Action Plan for Official Languages. I'd like you to comment on that.

Lastly, the government began to include specific envelopes in the agreements it signed with the provinces. In my view, that's very important. For example, in early childhood, I know that Manitoba had a specific envelope intended for Francophones in the five-year agreement.

This committee's mandate is to determine whether the Action Plan for Official Languages has worked well. I hope that we'll be able to recommend that the government renew the plan, and improve it, and perhaps even amend it. No doubt some things have worked better than others. I'd also like to have your comments on that subject.