Evidence of meeting #34 for Official Languages in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cuts.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Centre culturel de Cornwall, Stormont, Dundas et Glengarry
Resources of $25,000 to ensure—
Liberal
Jean-Claude D'Amours Liberal Madawaska—Restigouche, NB
—you are speaking about funds from Canadian Heritage, but do you need student jobs in order to be able to give your summer camps?
Centre culturel de Cornwall, Stormont, Dundas et Glengarry
Yes, of course, but that is problematic as well because it depends on how the allocations are made in the cultural sector.
Liberal
Jean-Claude D'Amours Liberal Madawaska—Restigouche, NB
As we know, the Summer Career Placement Program was cut by 50%. Where will you find the money? It means not only that you don't have money for the programs, but you don't even have the money to provide services to young people or projects for students.
Centre culturel de Cornwall, Stormont, Dundas et Glengarry
It is important to understand that in the field, when you work in a cultural centre, you need to work regularly on projects. These are annual projects, and even if we plan to develop an annual project, no department will advance us the money we need. We need to divvy up the funds we receive. If one turns down our project and two accept it, how can we get our project under way? How can we make our project a reality? We are forced to review our funding plan and our programming and to start all over again.
Liberal
Jean-Claude D'Amours Liberal Madawaska—Restigouche, NB
If your organization were to disappear, what would happen?
Conservative
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here, even these touches that you have been adding to the portrait that the many witnesses have been painting for us make it even bleaker. It's truly discouraging. I would like to raise something a little different, given that so far , everyone has spoken to us about services that have been cut. Behind these services, there are people who are working. When a service is cut, there are so many workers—particularly women, where community sectors are involved—who lose their jobs, and total uncertainty is created. I would like you to tell us who is affected specifically in your communities. How would these lost jobs affect overall economic development in your regions?
President, Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario
It's not only the loss of jobs. In most of our community organizations, there are very few employees who are paid even the minimum wage. We can't give them much.
What happens is that we lose volunteers. Our organizations function because of full-time volunteers. These volunteers truly work full-time and work for nothing. Because we have no money to hire staff in the various community organizations, the volunteers pick up the slack. They can no longer do so, because they are exhausted. We are suffering from a syndrome that I always describe as the ASP syndrome: always the same people. At some point, people can no longer carry on. With no more volunteers to do the work and no employees to take over, some organizations are shutting down.
Recently, a number of regional organizations of the Association canadienne-française de l'Ontario, who work on behalf of community development, closed their doors, for example in Sault Ste. Marie. On weekends in Nipissing, we will also no doubt be required to close. We are currently on hold. In the Cochrane region and in several other areas, the ACFOs can no longer continue.
The exhaustion of volunteers is a fact. It is clear. People are tired. Sometimes the communities may not perceive their relevance, but there are no employees to do the work to ensure that the community is properly served. It thus becomes a vicious circle.
Jean Comtois Vice-President, Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario
Another dimension also needs to be added to this. Ontario is receiving an enormous number of immigrants and attempting to integrate them. When these people arrive in our communities, we need to be able to provide them with services in order to promote their development, integration, etc. It then becomes necessary to rely on departments like Immigration Canada to help us provide the resources that enable us to do this. It's not easy. We are told that inter-departmental cooperation needs to be promoted. We are trying to do this, but the response is not clear.
The other dimension is the devolution of federal services to the provincial level, to the provincial and municipal level and when I say municipal, we need to ask where? In the communities. And our community organizations need to provide services, and delivery services, for which funds are not available.
Volunteers are taking on added responsibilities. Mr. Godin, you were talking about volunteers with the previous group. As Mariette was saying, these volunteers are already exhausted and they are being asked to shoulder additional responsibilities because of these extra services.
In addition, we are being asked to meet this need, but the resources required to do it well, effectively and in a well-organized manner, are not always there. In fact, we don't have the resources to do it.
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
With respect to arts and culture, I would add that more and more cities and provinces want to become leaders who are more involved. In recent years, people have changed their tune and the arts and culture are no longer necessarily considered simply a form of recreation or like the Friday night show. People are now really understanding the contribution made by the arts and culture from various standpoints: social cohesion, economic development, job creation, the promotion of competition, etc.
This requires that our organizations do even more representational work. It becomes very complex at the federal level. Indeed, when you look at the complexity at the federal level, and try to find where all the arts and culture files are located, it's like a puzzle. However, when you add the complexities involved at the provincial and municipal government levels, and they are players now, it must be admitted that the organizations need tools to be able to do the representation work required.
For the municipalities, it is a double or triple challenge, because not all the municipalities consider official languages an obligation, but rather an area in which they must intervene.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Guy Lauzon
Thank you, Mr. Bourbeau.
It's now Mr. Godin's turn to ask the next question.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With arts and culture, if you compare it to Quebec, and if you take the francophone minorities into account, Ms. Barbot said it clearly, what is involved is really the two officially-recognized communities in Canada, the French and the English.
In Quebec for example, there is competition between the TVA, TQS and CBC television networks.
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
And now there are also the specialty channels.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I'm not familiar with those.
What do we have where we live? What do we offer to the minorities? How does the government support communities outside of Quebec in order to make them feel that they don't have to go to Montreal for national exposure?
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
On that subject, Mr. Godin, we are currently in discussion with the CBC. There are winds of change at the CBC, with the structures for television, radio and other media being merged.
We therefore recently met Messrs. Sylvain Lafrance, Louis Lalande and Richard Simmons, among others. One of the concepts we are currently trying to develop, or to do a better job of developing with the CBC, is the showcasing of regional talent. We are in fact arguing to the CBC that it remains the main television station viewed by Canadian francophones.
To be sure, with all of the satellite signals available now, it is possible to have access to more channels like TV5, TVA and some specialty channels, but they are not as accessible as the CBC.
At the moment, the CBC needs to clearly improve its visibility in the francophone and Acadian communities in its prime time network programming. There are indeed things happening at the regional level. For example, in New Brunswick, there are special programs that reflect the reality of Atlantic Acadians, but not much of this is seen at the national level in prime time.
As might be expected then, we are arguing, at least for arts and culture, that there might be golden opportunities, in variety shows, when there are programs that cover the arts and culture, to give some visibility to the Canadian francophonie elsewhere than in Quebec in order to put these talents on display. There is therefore a great deal of work to be done.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Mr. Bourbeau, I recall that the CBC once filmed the Caraquet Acadian Festival. It was Acadian day. They had televised the festival on the national network and we virtually had to salute them and thank them.
As was discussed earlier, I received an e-mail from people back home telling us that it was unfortunate, but that the government ought to stop giving money to the CBC and begin to give it to the communities because the CBC was not fulfilling its mandate.
Do you agree that the CBC is not fulfilling its cultural mandate?
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
We fully agree that there are many areas for improvement.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Improvement! They are not doing anything at all! You are being too kind. I have never seen such a polite person.
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
My apologies, Mr. Godin, but from one standpoint, I can't say that they are doing nothing, but they are not doing enough. There are many areas for improvement at the CBC. It is absolutely—
Director General, Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
Fifteen percent? No. I do not want to talk about percentages. On the other hand, there are certainly many things that could be improved in terms of visibility.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
In Ontario, there is the TFO network. They have another French-language radio station. But here and in the rest of Canada, there is only the CBC. It's all we have apart from Rogers, which gives us one hour—