Good morning.
As I have only three minutes, I will do without the acknowledgments and not bother with our organization's presentation. I nevertheless want to tell you that I am here on behalf of our President, René Cormier, who lives in New Brunswick. It is unfortunately impossible for him to be here today.
When the Action Plan for Official Languages was launched in 2003, we noted that the arts and culture sector for the Canadian francophonie was not mentioned. The FCCF therefore recommended to the federal government some changes designed to include the cultural component. In our view, these components are still relevant, and we will present them to you today in four parts.
First of all, to promote effective cultural action in the francophone and Acadian communities, with a view to cultural dissemination and the consolidation of the cultural and artistic network, the FCCF recommends that the federal government introduce two things.
The first is an Official Languages in Culture Program. This would be similar to something that already exists in the field of education, and which is called the OLEP, the Official Languages in Education Program. Alongside this program, the FCCF would like to initiate an intensive discussion process to determine the exact nature and scope of its mandate.
Then, we suggest the creation of a strategic arts and cultural industries fund. This supra-sectoral fund would make up for some of the flaws in existing programs. In concrete terms, it would mean that hybrid organizations and their initiatives—culture, arts and cultural industries—would have access to an additional source of funding to consolidate the cultural sector.
There have been significant impacts over the past few years in cultural dissemination and distribution. Challenges remain in terms of building infrastructures in the region—we have just seen a good example—and distribution networks that would be able to meet the special challenges of Canada's francophonie, and to deal with technological change.
This moves us to part two. Over the past year, French Canadian artistic creation and production has been able to establish national platforms to support artists and organizations, as well as businesses, in our communities.
The FCCF therefore recommends the implementation of an arts and culture framework agreement that would have a specific budget, based on the model used for funding national organizations over a period of five years; the establishment of strategic inter- and intra-departmental partnerships under the leadership of the DG-OLSP; the opportunity to encourage new IPOLS agreements, the inter-departmental partnership with official language communities, and to enhance existing agreements; greater equity and increased access to funding from federal cultural agencies and federal departments; and greater accountability from these bodies.
I now come to part three. Culture and education are the mainstay in promoting language and affirming identity. The education summit held in June 2005 confirmed this perception and identified a thrust that it called the "school identity and culture role". The FCCF recommends a significant investment to support the language-culture-education link initiative.
We come now to the fourth and final aspect. Several other community development sectors include initiatives that support the integration and recognition of culture in developing communities, for example economic development, immigration and early child care. The FCCF would like to see arts and culture included when federal-provincial agreements are negotiated or included in other agreements mentioned in the previous sections.
The FCCF recommends that the next formal mechanism for inter-departmental coordination in relation to official languages include an arts and culture component; that the fundamental nature of culture also be reflected in the other portions of the next mechanism; that it encourage the implementation of cultural projects and that the accountability framework be extended to federal institutions involved in the arts and culture.
We believe that the time has come for the federal government to perpetuate the current Action Plan for Official Languages and that it is now more than ever necessary to give proper recognition to the contribution of artists, cultural agencies and industries of the Canadian francophonie. The most recent recommendations made to the federal government by the Standing Committee on Finance in its report entitled "Canada: Competing to Win" are consistent with these recommendations, and we are pleased to see this.
Pierre de Coubertin said: "It is not enough to blaze the trails; we most often go back over them, over and over, to expand them and make them passable."