Official Languages Committee on Dec. 4th, 2006

[Pierre Senay]

If I had a magic formula, I'd be a rich man.

The next generation consists of young people who are under their families' influence for a certain time, but early childhood services definitely have a role to play. I'm going to let my colleagues talk to you about that subject. The availability of those services is definitely a contributing factor in fighting assimilation.

Young people can attend French schools all they want, but when they meet their friends in the street, when they play hockey or when they're in the school yard, they're no longer just under the family's influence, in a preschool or school setting. They're in the community. So they talk about what's part of their world.

We could also expand the subject. For example, if you go to a hotel in Whistler, the French Radio-Canada signal is probably the one from Montreal, with a three-hour time difference. No mention is made of the fact that there is a Francophone community in British Columbia. The Olympic Games will be broadcast in French on RDS, which is a pay TV service, or TQS, which isn't available in British Columbia. I know that the Olympic Committee is working on this issue, but, for the moment, there's nothing.

For someone who wants to talk to a friend, who wants to talk about music or culture, that's fine, but MusiquePlus is no longer part of the cable service in Vancouver. It will eventually be available on Telus, on Web TV, but that too will be a pay TV service combined with other television stations that aren't necessarily family-oriented. So it's not specifically available. The idea is to be able to benefit from things that are available.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Houle, we could make a connection with culture. I was very interested in your presentation. I was thinking that culture is obviously important and that it's intrinsically related to the vitality of Francophone communities. In my opinion, culture is always very important for the French language. It also creates beauty and happiness. I think that, beyond all the big speeches, it's the important central point in our lives.

What grants do you receive from the federal government for the Centre culturel francophone? What are the needs, if that indeed doesn't meet all the needs? I imagine so.

[Alexandre Houle]

The needs are always growing. We mentioned in the presentations this morning that funding has stagnated since 1999. There was an 11% increase last year, but that nevertheless didn't make up the gap between current expenses and available funding.

Most of the funding of the Centre culturel francophone comes from our funding agencies, in particular Canadian Heritage, as regards the linguistic communities. We also receive minimal supplementary funding from Quebec, from the Canadian intergovernmental affairs secretariat, SAIC. Various initiatives of the Government of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver provide supplementary funding, but ultimately it should be kept in mind that we never have enough. As you mentioned earlier, this city has the largest concentration of artists in Canada, and there's chronic under-funding. I believe it was Michel or Yseult who said this morning that just meeting the basic programming needs of our organizations was enough to wear us out. We need the support of government institutions to ensure adequate service to our communities, to represent Canada's linguistic duality and to promote culture.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Mr. Houle.

Ms. Boucher, go ahead, please.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure for me to meet you. I find it unusual to see people from nearly all sectors here today. We've met with the representatives of all the sectors, which gives us a very good overview.

I like culture very much, and I come from a cultural background. So, Mr. Houle, I think that what you said earlier is important. As parliamentary secretary for official languages, I've met with people from the Francophone cultural communities who told me it could be difficult to export la Francophonie elsewhere in Canada.

Why is that such a challenge? Is it because of a lack of communication, a lack of funding? What's your biggest achievement in the cultural area, the one you're most proud of and that could give us some potential solutions for other projects in the future?

[Alexandre Houle]

To answer the first part of your question, I believe that the challenges in exporting Francophone culture to the other provinces stem from the fact that we have to break through into the Anglophone majority.

In Quebec, culture is self-sufficient; that is to say that the market is self-sufficient. They have their star system, if I may use that expression; that is to say that Quebec's artists and crafts people can live from their art in that province.

We, on the other hand, have a kind of twofold challenge. We have to find the necessary funding to sponsor the arts, and at the same time we have to find niches in order to promote and distribute them. There, too, funding sources are always inadequate. I don't think it's a lack of will or poor public reception, because the comments and our interactions with the Anglophone majority are always or nearly always positive. We're taking advantage of a climate of openness here, in British Columbia. I don't exactly know all the statistics, but I think that most people in British Columbia come from elsewhere. This is a land of immigration, and that creates a favourable prejudice toward other cultures.

To answer your second question, one of the greatest successes of the Centre culturel francophone is the Vancouver Francophone summer festival. It's the biggest street festival west of Ontario. There's massive participation by the people of the Francophone community and all the communities of Vancouver. Music, among other things, and the performing arts are a unifying message, a message of openness to all other cultures. The culminating point is the Olympic Games, where we want to present Canada's linguistic duality to the rest of the world and enjoy the benefits it produces.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much. If you had a solution to propose to the government to advance the French fact in your community, in the cultural community, what would it be?

[Alexandre Houle]

The easiest thing would be to adapt...

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Adapt funding.

[Alexandre Houle]

...funding to the day-to-day situations our organizations face.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right. Thank you very much.

I'm going to ask Brian Conway a question on health.

Is it easier now to get services in French than it used to be? Do you constantly have to work in the field to get access to services?

[Dr. Brian Conway]

There's clearly still work to be done, but it's much easier than three years ago. Our first studies showed that people wanted French-language services. We surveyed the population of 70,000 Francophones, of 250,000 persons who can speak French. We asked them, if they had the choice, whether they'd like to receive services in French and whether they would use those services if they were available. The answer was a clear yes. We surveyed health professionals to determine whether they spoke French, whether they could provide services in French, and a very large number of them said they could.

So the job was to link supply and demand. Health authorities supported us at the outset in developing projects for this purpose, and a clinic will be opening shortly where French-language services will be provided.

So progress has been made, but a great deal remains to be done. I'm thinking, for example, of orthophonic services, which are still provided through an interpreter. When we tr toy correct language problems by translation, it's neither easy nor useful. So, apart from primary services that have to be extended outside the areas where they're currently available, the idea is to try to make all other health services more accessible.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Ms. Boucher.

I'd like to put my question to the Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie-Britannique. I'd like to have your opinion on what the government member said this morning, that the government was focusing on the family and that certain funds will be invested in child care centres. He said that the government will be creating child care spaces. That remains to be seen.

I'd like to have your comments on the $1,200 amount that's allocated to parents, to the family, since you represent the Fédération des parents francophones. When we say parents, we're talking about families and the welfare of children. So I'd like to have your opinion on the direction the government's currently taking.

[Pauline Gobeil]

I'm going to ask Marc to answer that.

[Marc Gignac, Director of Strategic Development, Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie-Britannique]

We're not opposed to a subsidy made directly to families to help them pay child care expenses. However, the problem here in British Columbia is that there aren't any Francophone child care centres. There's one in Vancouver: there's space for 15 children, and 60 more are on a waiting list. Right now, there are four institutional child care centres in the province providing service to Francophones. That's not a lot.

If we can't afford to put our own structure in place, the subsidies will be used by Francophone families to put their children in Anglophone child care. That's the greatest tool for assimilation. When children are in an Anglophone environment at the preschool stage, in the vast majority of cases, they remain in that situation until they enter English school, because they've already begun to develop a network of friends and so on.

The memoranda of understanding that were signed last winter or fall, a year ago, for learning and early childhood care services were really focused on the development of programs and services in that sector, because that's where the need is.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

You told us you couldn't disagree on payments to parents to help them pay child care expenses.

Do you think that money will really be used for that? The comments made by the government representative earlier were that parents should be encouraged to stay at home rather than put their children in child care. When we talk about child care centres, it's more for the purpose of getting parents to stay at home than to give them $1,200 a year.

You're right in your other comments: if children don't start living in a Francophone community or living with Francophones very young, they'll definitely lose their French. If the caregiver sees the children more than their mothers, that's a problem, particularly if the caregiver is an Anglophone or the child care is Anglophone.

What would your recommendations on that subject be?

[Marc Gignac]

It's hard to strike the right balance.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Is there one?

[Marc Gignac]

That's a good question. What we know after doing a provincial survey on the subject is that the priority of families is the creation of spaces in junior kindergartens and child care centres.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

People have made comments in New Brunswick. From the moment the child care people learned that parents would be receiving additional money, they increased child care expenses. Ultimately, spaces weren't created; they merely increased rates.

[Marc Gignac]

That's why we think the resources should be invested on a priority basis in creating spaces, not in the form of family subsidies. That's obvious.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

But you were talking about striking a balance. I'd like to know more on that subject.

[Marc Gignac]

We have to know whether children will be in child care or with their families.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Do you think financial assistance of $1,200 a year will encourage people to stay at home?