Official Languages Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages. I also want to welcome our witnesses. Some of them are absent, because of the traffic, I believe. I hope they'll be joining us soon.

We'll be hearing from two witnesses this morning. Jean-Paul Perreault will speak for a few minutes. Then we'll ask Ms. Epners to take the floor. Once the witnesses have spoken, we'll ask members to put questions to whomever they want.

Mr. Perreault, you may begin.

[Jean-Paul Perreault, President, Impératif français]

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, we are obviously very pleased to accept the invitation to come and talk about the vitality of the official language minority communities.

Today I have with me a document entitled Le financement des universités et la vitalité linguistique des communautés de langue officielle au Canada, which was written by Frédéric Lacroix and Patrick Sabourin.

Table 6 shows the revenues of the minority university institutions for 2002-2003. In 2002-2003, the total revenues of the Anglophone minority university institutions—those of Quebec—were $1,227,000,000, whereas the university institutions of the French minority community offering programs in French received only $342 million. It can therefore be said that every English-speaking Quebecker receives six times more funding than every Francophone outside Quebec out of total revenues. The share allocated to English in Quebec represents $1,227,000,000, nearly four times that allocated to French outside Quebec.

I also have with me a document that was published by Statistics Canada on December 19, 2006—it's very recent—that talks about the literacy of the official language minorities. I'll read you a few passages from that document.

Nationally, 42% of the adult population (16 to 65 years old) scored below Level 3 in prose literacy. Among Anglophones nationally, the proportion was 39%, but among Francophones, it was 56%. The gap was widest in New Brunswick.

I want to point out that Level 3 is the functional literacy threshold. At a lower level, we're talking about functional illiteracy.

I'd like to quote another passage from that same document:

The survey results indicate a challenge for Francophone minorities outside Quebec and New Brunswick: literacy in French. Outside Quebec, two-thirds of Francophones did the literacy test in English, compared with only 2% of their counterparts inside Quebec.

The same document issued by Statistics Canada contains a table. If you look at the figures for Canada, less Quebec, you see that the functional illiteracy rate is 39% among Anglophones and 56% among Francophones. These statistics, which come from an international adult literacy and skills survey conducted in 2003, are reported by Statistics Canada.

In light of this situation, we've developed some recommendations.

The first is put the issue of numbers on the table and throw a spotlight on it.

When the Dion Plan was published, Impératif français pleaded to have numbers made one of the Plan's assessment criteria. It seemed logical that a language policy designed to support the Francophone communities should result in an increase in their numbers over a specified period. But this criterion was not chosen. However, the most fundamental right of Canada's Francophone communities is dependent on demographics, so much so that the Canadian Constitution contains the expression “where numbers warrant”. Numbers should therefore become one of the principal criteria for judging the health of the French-speaking minority in Canada and in Canada outside Quebec.

Our second recommendation is the proposed development of reparations for the Francophones of Canada contained in Canada's Constitution and referenced by the Supreme Court of Canada.

If Francophone communities have reached such tenuous numbers, it is in particular because, for a century, all the majority Anglophone provinces denied them their right to French-language education. The government proposed reparative policies for the Japanese and the preceding government had a whole program worth an estimated billion dollars to support the Aboriginal communities. Why not think about doing the same for the Francophones of Canada? That the Government of Canada develop a language policy based on the preservation and promotion of French.

The federal government has mainly based its language policy on the promotion of bilingualism. You will readily admit that the minority official language in the greatest trouble in Canada is French. We're asking the government to rethink its language policy so that it grants special treatment for the situation of the French language and Francophones, since the demographic statistics that are now being projected on the screen clearly show that French, across Canada, is undergoing a very disturbing retreat.

We also recommend that the federal government harmonize its language policy in Quebec as much as possible with the Charte de la langue française in order to stop working to anglicize Quebec.

In one of its reports, for example, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages mentions that the federal public service in Quebec must work in English with federal headquarters in Ottawa and that this contravenes the right of Francophone public servants in Quebec to work in their language in Quebec, as provided by the French-language Charter.

That the federal and Quebec governments participate, as equal partners, in a Canadian strategy to safeguard and promote French in Canada, based on support for the Francophone communities in Canada.

It is unheard of that Canada, a majority Anglophone country, is incapable of allying itself with the only Francophone state in the Americas, Quebec, to develop and implement a coherent and well-funded policy to ensure the survival of the French language and culture in Canada. It is well past time, given that the demographics clearly illustrate the decline of French in Canada, that the two states cooperated to benefit French on Canadian soil.

Mr. Chair, we'll be pleased to answer questions, as far as that is possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you, Mr. Perreault. We'll no doubt have questions to ask you later.

Now I want to welcome Mr. MacLeod.

Mr. MacLeod, you'll be making your presentation a little bit later, right after Ms. Epners.

I want to welcome Ms. Epners from the Quebec English Literacy Alliance. Perhaps you would like to make your presentation for a few minutes.

After all the presentations have been made, then we'll go on to questions.

[Ilze Epners, President, Quebec English Literacy Alliance]

Thank you.

Mr. Lauzon, members of the committee, thank you for having me here this morning.

I represent the Quebec English Literacy Alliance, founded in 1997. The Quebec English Literacy Alliance is a coalition of English literacy service providers. I represent 300 active tutors and teachers from all corners of Quebec.

We know that almost 800 adult Quebeckers have less than a grade nine education, yet we have only approximately 800 students enrolled in literacy classes, either in the formal sector or with one-to-one tutoring in the non-formal sector. Far fewer adults participate in classes than those who need these services.

We know that one in five Quebeckers has difficulty reading and has few basic skills or strategies for decoding and working with text. Many parents at a level one cannot determine the correct dosage of medicine to administer to a sick child, read food safety tips, or read baby formula directions. 15% of Canadians have difficulty reading and have few basic skills. This is considered level one.

Unfortunately, parents with low literacy skills have difficulty helping their children with their homework. The literacy skills of parents directly affect the family's income, health, and overall quality of life. In my opinion, the most serious repercussion of having parents with low literacy skills is that their children are at far greater risk of having low literacy skills themselves, so the literacy problem self-perpetuates.

I was asked to share my thoughts on what could be done to improve the situation for the Quebec English Literacy Alliance. For years there has been an ongoing issue of core funding versus project funding. We know that project funding does not work. This was one of the conclusions of the report that the previous Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Claudette Bradshaw, concluded after her pan-Canadian round table consultations in 2005. Groups spend much time and energy trying to come up with new and innovative projects every year, when in reality they are already the experts. We all know what to do and how to do it, but we have been restricted by red tape, unrealistic guidelines, and timelines that are precarious at best. Each year we risk closing our doors, and we also risk losing quality resource people with years of experience each and every time we have to wait for funding, which we are not even sure we will get.

Another important point that needs to be mentioned is how a change of minister affects funding. Every time there is a new minister in charge of this dossier in the federal government, whether it is because of a change of government or just because of a switch in responsibilities, all grants come to a screeching halt and the process starts all over.

Funding was supposed to be confirmed and sent out last August 2006. But with the change in policy, obviously that delayed the issuing of funds. We then had a new minister who was unfamiliar with the English literacy situation in Quebec—a delay during the learning curve. Now we have yet another new minister, and again, another learning curve. Who knows when and if the funding will go through. So because of bureaucracy, many groups do not know whether they will exist or not.

But most important, we also risk losing students who will not come back if those doors are even temporarily closed.

The Quebec English Literacy Alliance needs financial stability in order to do what it does best: be the foundation for literacy efforts and initiatives in Quebec. Our initiatives are illiteracy prevention, family literacy, training of literacy trainers, and recruitment of individuals with weak literacy skills.

Core funding would allow the Quebec English Literacy Alliance to provide ongoing and much needed support to the learners most needing our services. 49% of our population needs literacy classes, yet there is no long-term plan in place to get them into training to acquire the nine essential skills defined by the HRSDC's research in 2005.

I must speak to you of how devastating the federal budget cuts have been to the Quebec English literacy community. We are a small community with huge needs, as we are spread far and wide in our province. It is all well, indeed, to say that literacy funding needs to get to the grassroots. But how would that happen in our English literacy community without a central organization to help recruit those who need those services? Many of our tutors and teachers are retiring. Who will be there to train new practitioners? Being a literacy teacher and tutor takes special training that is not available just anywhere. Some of the members of our organization have worked for a number of years to produce new materials to be used by our students. Such important work must continue.

A recent United Nations study showed that a 1% increase in adult literacy levels would generate a 1.5% permanent increase in the GDP per capita. In Canada, this would amount to about $18 billion a year that could be reinvested. Investing in the Quebec English Literacy Alliance is investing in Canada's workforce and its economic welfare, and as such it is a federal responsibility.

Economically this is an absolute emergency. Our Canadian demographic is aging, and in the future we will need every Canadian to be literate to fill the jobs of the next generation. A long-term financial commitment from our federal government and sustainable funding are vital if we are to make a significant dent in the low literacy statistics. Coalition core funding is an absolute must if we are to beat this serious problem together.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you very much, Ms. Epners.

I believe Mr. MacLeod has had the opportunity to gather his thoughts and is prepared for his presentation.

As I explained to the other presenters, Mr. MacLeod, we'll expect a four- or five-minute presentation, and then we'll have questions.

[Roderick MacLeod, Director, Quebec Protestant Education Research Project]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to speak about schooling in Quebec.

This is something I enjoy doing, after having spent some years researching the history of the Protestant school system and producing a book called, A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801 -1998, if you'd like further information.

As you can tell by the word “Protestant”, this research did not cover all of what is now considered English education in Quebec and does include French Protestant education. Nevertheless, for the past quarter century or more, Protestant school boards in many regions of Quebec functioned as English boards, running an English system.

As you know, the English-speaking people of Quebec, or people who identify at some level with the English language, have been an extremely diverse group in ethnic, religious, and even linguistic terms. Nowhere has this diversity been so marked as in the domain of education. Since the Quiet Revolution, this group has more or less come to accept itself as a linguistic minority, and the creation of English school boards in 1998 was the logical, but problematic, culmination of this process.

Why was this problematic? I say so because it seems that the anglophone population in Quebec has never really had a clear sense of what it wants out of its English school system. In my experience, when anglophones are asked what it is they want their schools to do, they say, teach our kids French. When they think a little harder, most will acknowledge that they want a degree of English and a degree of French. In essence, they want their children to be bilingual: at home in Quebec and at home in North America. For them, the English school system in Quebec is a guarantee of this bilingualism.

The problem is that this English school system is in decline, and there is no way to stop the decline other than to have another baby boom. As you know, the law in Quebec prevents newcomers from outside Canada, regardless of their familiarity with the English language, from sending their children to Quebec's English school system. Now given how sensitive the issue is, most anglophones in Quebec are unwilling to challenge Bill 101, recognizing its role in protecting the French language. Yet as school populations decline, even as there are students ready and willing to enroll, and as schools continue to close down, frustration rises.

Given the current situation, it is only a matter of time before Quebec's English school system declines to the point of being unworkable. As the tax revenue shrinks, the cost of operating a system over huge territories spirals, as schools cannot be maintained, and books and other materials disappear.

What can the federal government do to alleviate this situation? Here are some suggestions.

Number one, continue to develop and publicize federal programs that schools may take advantage of, for example, Industry Canada's SchoolNet, or any program aimed at enabling schools to acquire up-to-date computers, and especially technical instruction. A great many English schools in Quebec have very limited funds for such vital tools and expertise.

Any help securing textbooks or translations of textbooks—the lack of which often deprives children in English schools of popular textbooks—through subsidies to publishers or existing literacy organizations would be most useful, as would the removal of the GST on the sale of books.

Number two, develop programs to assist in the repair and maintenance of schools, possibly through the medium of community organizations that often undertake such tasks as volunteers.

Number three, provide funds for community or parents' groups to hire extracurricular instructors, for both remedial and enriched instruction. A number of home and school associations hire additional specialists as part of a parent-sponsored program. Also, schools offering core English programs tend to attract children with special learning difficulties and are sorely in need of help.

Number four, support the English community's efforts to clarify eligibility requirements for English education. I am thinking particularly of the need to classify French immersion programs in any part of Canada as education in English. These programs are run by and for English speakers, not by French language schools or school boards, either inside or outside of Quebec. Parents who opt for French immersion do so out of a deep commitment to bilingualism and should not be penalized by having their children's rights restricted in Quebec.

Number five, negotiate a slight broadening of the terms of Bill 101 to include children from English-speaking countries and those with particular learning disabilities as eligible for admission to English schools.

I thank you for your time and look forward to your response.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacLeod.

We were supposed to have a fourth presenter, Mr. Guy Rodgers from English Language Arts Network. Apparently the weather or the location of our meeting room prevented Mr. Rodgers from being here, so we'll just go to the questioning, and possibly, if he comes a little bit later, we can include him in the discussion.

One of the privileges that the chair of this committee has, probably about the only privilege, is that occasionally he gets to ask a question. It's not really a question, Ms. Epners, but I'd like to get some clarification. A statement that you made sort of surprised me, that 49% of the population needed literacy help. Did I hear that correctly?

[Ilze Epners]

Yes, you did. They're unfortunate statistics that are hard to swallow, but that is the truth, that 49% have literacy problems. There are different levels of literacy problems, but 49% of our population today has problems.

I don't know if you've read or heard of any of the statistics that just came out last week by the president of the Canadian Council on Learning. He actually found that 55% of Canadian adults misunderstood medical instructions, which is even more serious. We're finding now that senior citizens have a great deal of difficulty understanding their medication, all the things they need to do to maintain their health, understanding doctors. So the literacy issue goes much further than just 49%.

The really severe level ones, those who are total non-readers, for all intents and purposes—that's a level one—are at approximately 15% throughout Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

That's shocking as well.

[Ilze Epners]

But 39% to 40%, which is one out of four, if you think of it, is the number of people who have absolutely no literacy skills, up to grade nine. Up to grade nine is not really efficient enough to be able to get a job, maintain it, teach your children, do all the things you need to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

We have some challenges.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

Now we'll start with our regular questioning. Our first round, incidentally, is for seven minutes. The way we proceed here is that the member asks you questions and the total time is seven minutes. I'm very rigorous about the seven minutes, so I might even stop you in mid-sentence.

We try to be fair to all members. I therefore ask Mr. Simard to begin the first round of seven minutes.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and welcome to all our guests this morning.

Ms. Epners, along with the chair, I also was actually flabbergasted by some of these statistics. One of my first responsibilities when I came to Parliament four and a half years ago, as I sat on the human resources committee, was to do a four or five month study on literacy. When these numbers came up, 42%, it was almost unbelievable, but every witness who came forward did tell us that those were the statistics.

So I'd like to talk to you briefly about this. Literacy is something that is very interesting to me, that I've follow very closely and that I've supported in Manitoba. I know that in the small francophone communities of Manitoba, nine centres have closed lately under the auspices of Pluri-elles, a francophone group out there. We know how difficult it is to get people involved in the first place. There's a lot of shame involved with this. To get people out and even admit that there are some literacy problems is a big thing, so I wonder if you're going through the same thing.

Number one, people must be extremely disappointed. Are you losing staff? Are you losing counsellors, as we are in Manitoba, for instance, because of these funding cuts?

[Ilze Epners]

We definitely are. One person in particular, the coordinator of the Quebec Literacy Working Group, has spent her whole life in literacy. As of this week, her job expires and she has nothing. She has so much valued experience that she cannot be replaced. We can't expect her to wait until funding comes through. She's a single mother with two children, so she has to go on.

Yes, we're losing a lot of good, trained people because of the instability. It's not because they don't want to do it. It becomes a mission; it becomes a vocation when you become involved in adult literacy. But they just, for economic reasons, have to move on.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Is your organization Quebec-wide? Do you have regional organizations as well?

[Ilze Epners]

Yes. We completely serve the whole province through all of the school boards and all of the literacy councils. We have members who are from the Gaspé, from Hull, from the north shore. We have members who participate in the Quebec English Literacy Alliance throughout the province, which is why it would be so difficult, if funding were cut, for us to serve. It's very easy to serve the urban area of Montreal, because everybody can take their own transportation. But if we have to serve and train people throughout the province, there is no way we can do it without some sustained funding.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

In the study we did a few years ago, there was talk of a national literacy strategy. It's not one size fits all. We found, for instance, that francophones outside Quebec had different challenges, actually more important challenges sometimes than in other communities.

I think Ms. Bradshaw was on the right path, actually. Everything we've heard about the National Literacy Secretariat has been extremely positive. It's rare that you get witnesses coming here speaking almost 100% positively about a government agency.

We've found that their role has been put aside a little bit. Have you noticed that as well, or are they still very active?

[Ilze Epners]

The National Literacy Secretariat no longer exists.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

But it exists under a different name.

[Ilze Epners]

A different name?

Right now, they're trying to catch up with all of the information that's coming, and they're trying to teach the new minister coming in—“teach”; that's my teacher coming in. They're trying to make him familiar with the whole dossier. Because of all of that, everything keeps coming to a dead halt. Once the minister understands the whole dossier and the purpose of it, then he can go through each and every one of the projects that have been submitted and decide whether it's going to happen or not.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Perreault, I noted the very interesting statistics on the assimilation rates of the communities outside Quebec, and I can assure you that we're very much aware of the situation. As you live in French-speaking Manitoba, you recognize it as well.

However, for some time now, we've seen a new reality: immersion schools. Moreover, you or someone else talked about that. You said that there were 45,000 Francophones in Manitoba, but there were 110,000 persons there who spoke French. Outside Quebec, there are currently 2.6 million persons who speak French.

Those numbers are quite large. They're numbers that the FCFA gave us at the last meeting. Perhaps they should be checked.

Considering that there are some six million Francophones in Quebec and that we think our language is threatened, there are two options: we turn inward and protect what we have, or we create partnerships with other people who have the same objectives.

Is that something you're considering? For example, is Impératif français communicating with people outside Quebec for the purpose of creating alliances? In a North American context, it would make sense to add 50% to our numbers.

[Jean-Paul Perreault]

Thank you very much.

First, I'd like to clarify one point concerning functional illiteracy. Here I have statistics that were published by Statistics Canada following the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey.

In Quebec, 43% of Anglophones of that province scored below Level 3 in prose literacy, compared to 55% of Francophones in Quebec. At Levels 3, 4 and 5, we're talking about literacy, and at Levels 2 and 3, about functional illiteracy.

I'd also like to recall the important statistic I gave you at the start of my presentation concerning university funding. In 2002-2003, the English-language universities in Quebec received 27.7% of funding for all universities in Quebec, although the Anglophone population of Quebec represents only 8.4% of total population. On the other hand, the universities in English Canada, outside Quebec, that offer programs in French only received $342 million for their French-language programs. English-speaking Quebeckers receive seven times more funding than Francophones outside Quebec.

So it's not surprising, when we talk about literacy and illiteracy, that the statistics very clearly show—and I'm citing only one example, university education—that there is a much higher level of illiteracy among Francophones across Canada, including Quebec, than among our English-language friends and compatriots.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Mr. Perreault—

[Jean-Paul Perreault]

However, we still have to recognize that illiteracy is nevertheless unacceptable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Mr. Perreault, I have to stop you because the five minutes are already up.

I see our fourth presenter has arrived. I want to welcome Mr. Guy Rodgers, who's the executive director of the English Language Arts Network.

Mr. Rodgers, we're glad you've arrived.

We'll just have Mr. Rodgers make his presentation. We've only had one question so far. The way we're proceeding is this. We've had three presentations, so we'll have your presentation and then the members of Parliament will be posing questions to whomever.

If you can, give us a presentation of somewhere in the neighbourhood of four or five minutes.

[Guy Rodgers, Executive Director, English Language Arts Network]

It's a nice long drive to come here and speak to you folks.

I have a document here. I'm just going to summarize this because this would probably run on a little bit more than five minutes.

When we deal with people who work in the arts, there's often a lot of misunderstanding about the situation of the English language artist in Quebec. I just want to give you a little bit of historical context.

During the 1960s and 1970s, as you know, there was a lot of turmoil in Quebec, and people reacted to it in many different ways. It would be oversimplifying the situation to say that all the people who were unhappy with the change left, while all the people who stayed were totally ready to embrace the new situation. However, in the case of artists—because artists tend to be a lot more mobile than, say, factory workers—the artists who chose to stay in Quebec in general stayed there because they were very comfortable in the environment, they sought to become bilingual, they sought to fit into the environment, and they worked closely with their francophone colleagues.

In the early 1970s, you had the situation of this artist community trying to set down some roots and trying to establish itself in a completely different context from that of generations that had come before. You find a number of organizations coming together as these artists are trying to represent themselves, to express their new identity. In the document I list a number of different organizations that were founded. The theatre people founded first; in 1989 they formed the Quebec Drama Federation. One of the first things that the Quebec Drama Federation did was to establish a seat on the board of the

Conseil québécois du théâtre

so that there was a permanent dialogue between the anglophone and francophone artists.

Subsequently, you have the publishers form an organization, the writers form an organization, and then two years ago, all of the different artists who spoke English in Quebec came together to form what's called ELAN. ELAN is really a very new organization. Just by way of an anecdote, as we were trying to bring people together at a summit to see if there was an interest and a need to form an organization to represent artists, we encountered a great deal of friction. People were very, very disinclined to identify themselves as anglophones. Most people, like myself, work largely in French.

My wife is Francophone and my children are being raised in French.

A lot of people were very, very reluctant to identify themselves as anglophones.

As I was giving the keynote speech at the summit, where people were still uncomfortable about whether they should be there, whether they wanted to be there, I told an anecdote about working with different producers.

I often find myself surrounded by Francophone producers and colleagues, and, at some point, people start talking about the nasty English. After a few minutes, I say that I'm English, and I ask them whether they really think I'm like that. Then they always answer that I'm not really English.