I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Centre francophone de Toronto. My colleague, Mr. Jean-Gilles Pelletier, is the Executive Director. Our presentation will be brief.
For approximately 30 years, the Centre francophone de Toronto has been offering a broad range of services to Franco-Torontonians: clinical health, mental health, health promotion, settlement services and employment services for newcomers, legal aid services, early childhood centres and cultural services. Our centre is a type of gateway for the Franco-Torontonians Community.
We will attempt to give you a overview not of the francophone community in Ontario, which is much larger, but rather of the Franco-Torontonians Community specifically.
Our clientele has evolved considerably over the past few years. It is now mainly made of newcomers from countries such as the Congo, Tunisia and others. Therefore, the centre's clientele is mainly made up of newcomers living in urban areas.
This change of our clientele has changed our centre. It is important to remember that the Franco-Torontonian community differs from other communities that you met in Moncton, St. John's and elsewhere.
I believe that you have a copy of the document we submitted in French and English. We would like to be constructive and to give you concrete recommendations. That is why this document contents specific recommendations for the federal government, that focus increasing our partnerships with the various federal departments, such as Services Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Heritage Canada, to name only a few.
Page 2 of our document lays out some principles that reflect the Official Language Action Plan and that the federal government should taken into account when it implements its own plan.
First, it is essential that services be set up in multi-disciplinary centres. I referred earlier to the concept of gateway or single window. This concept is very important in a city like Toronto, where the francophone community is spread over a rather vast territory where there is no francophone neighbourhood.
Services must be delivered by cohesive teams that have a critical mass of francophone stakeholders. The organizations must be well networked in the communities they serve and be linked to all the other smaller community organizations working in Toronto, so that they meet the needs of the community adequately. These organizations should be community governed, which is the case for the Centre francophone de Toronto. Our board of directors is a reflection of the francophone-Torontonian community.
I will now give the floor to my colleague, Jean-Gilles, who will speak to various issues in the health sector.