Official Languages Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You talked about ministerial turnover. Is there not some method whereby the public service at least provides some kind of continuity, or does it flip the waters every time?

[Ilze Epners]

It flips every time. If we have submitted a project for funding and we hear an election is coming, all we do is pray that our funding will come through before the election, because if there is a change in government, it takes far longer. If there is a change in minister, it takes a certain length of time. Right now, because nobody has had any funding since last summer, you can well imagine that people have been laid off, offices have been closed, and students have gone. To get those students back is going to be impossible, because once they're gone, they're disillusioned; they say, “You didn't really care anyway.” To get them back is impossible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

I think we'll stop you there. Thank you very much.

We'll ask Mr. Chong to ask the next question.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask Mr. Perreault two questions. My first question concerns your Table 7. You say there are only 2,000 bilingual Canadian government positions in Ontario. Where did you get that statistic? I don't think that's correct. I believe there are 2,000 bilingual persons on Parliament Hill alone.

To say that there are only 2,000 positions in the Government of Canada that require knowledge of both English and French in Ontario, out of the hundreds of thousands of public servants in this province employed by the Government of Canada, doesn't seem to me to be correct. I think there are probably on Parliament Hill alone 2,000 positions that require knowledge of both English and French.

So I don't know where these statistics are coming from.

The second thing I want to say concerns the statistics on Quebec's English-language universities.

My view is that your interpretation of those statistics is not entirely accurate either, in that a very similar situation exists in Nova Scotia. The fact is that in Nova Scotia we have King's College, we have Dalhousie University, we have St. Mary's University, we have Acadia University, we have a number of other universities and colleges in Nova Scotia—disproportionately far more in relation to the population in Nova Scotia, and they disproportionately educate graduates of high schools from the United States and from Ontario, and it's been a long-standing policy of the province to subsidize those students.

The same thing goes on in Quebec with Bishop's, with McGill, with other English universities where they receive a disproportionate number of graduates from the United States and from other Canadian provinces, and therefore the Government of Quebec, in a very similar fashion, has subsidized those universities.

It has nothing to do with the proportion of English-speaking graduates or anglophone graduates from English-speaking high schools in Quebec. It has to do with the fact that there is a disproportionate number of graduates from other provinces and from other countries who are attending those universities.

So I think your view on those statistics isn't entirely correct, and I'd be interested to see in this particular case where these statistics are coming from.

[Jean-Paul Perreault]

In response to your first question, the statistics in Table 7 come from the 2004-2005 annual report of Treasury Board Canada. They aren't figures that we made up; they're figures that we took from a report by the federal government, by the Treasury Board. I invite you to consult the 2004-2005 annual report; you'll find these figures there.

These figures are very clear, and they tell the truth. This is a statistical instrument for measuring language knowledge in the federal public service. It comes from the Canadian government.

62% of federal public service positions in Quebec — excluding those in the Quebec portion of the National Capital Region — require knowledge of English, for a population of 590,000 Anglophones.

Let's compare the situation to that prevailing on the other side of the river. In Ontario, 10% of federal positions — excluding those in the Ontario part of the National Capital Region — require knowledge of French, for a roughly identical Francophone population of 510,000 inhabitants.

These statistics are issued by Treasury Board Canada. They are not statistics that come from us or a federal agency.

In response to your question on university funding, if you compare funding received by Quebec's English-language universities with that received by university institutions outside Quebec offering programs in French, you'll see that English-speaking Quebeckers are funded and received seven times more university funding than Francophones outside Quebec. They receive seven times more!

Mr. Chong, I'm sure that, if you also compare the number of Anglophone students to the number of Francophone students, this won't change a great deal. You'll see that Francophones are at a disadvantage at the university level, whether it be in Quebec or outside Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

I have to stop you, Mr. Perreault, because the time is up. Mr. Malo will ask the next question.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

My first question is for Mr. MacLeod. A little earlier you said that there was a decline in the number of Anglophone students in Quebec schools. I wonder whether that's indeed a language-related problem, since, in other Francophone communities, we're seeing that we also have to close schools as a result of declining birth rates.

[Roderick MacLeod]

There is a demographic problem everywhere; that's not an issue. Part of the issue is that 40 or 50 years ago there were a large number of schools built across Quebec. A large number of them are now part of the English school system, more than the population can sustain clearly. That is true across the board, but it is particularly true in the English school systems, wherever they happen to be.

I repeat the point I made, and that is that the French school system in Quebec can replenish itself quite apart from the natural evolution of numbers. As generations pass, it can replenish itself with immigrants and people coming from other parts of the world. If you want to look at it, that is a way that schooling in most parts of Canada, to a certain extent, and certainly in Quebec, relies on to keep going, but it's not an option open to the English schools in Quebec.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

As Mr. Godin and Mr. Nadeau pointed out earlier, we heard certain groups from other regions of Canada, people from the Francophone minority. They told us that they had to fight and go to court to get access to French-language schools. After long, hard court battles, they managed, in certain cases, but still not everywhere, to get often antiquated French-language schools. In the Atlantic region, I believe some children are going to school in a bar. I wonder whether the Quebec Anglophone community endures or has to conduct these kinds of battles to get schools.

[Roderick MacLeod]

The francophones outside of Quebec have worked extremely hard for a long period of time simply to create schools, let alone school systems. More or less, the anglophones in Quebec have had a school system for generations and generations. I hesitate because as I began speaking...there is the Protestant-Catholic distinction, which means we can't, technically speaking, talk about the English school system. Nevertheless, anglophones in Quebec have never had any problems having access to a schooling institution. We don't have to reinvent the wheel; no one is arguing that.

For various reasons, including, I'm sorry to say, a legal one, English speakers in Quebec are restrained in a school system that is getting progressively smaller. I would hope to find recourse not so much in ongoing legal struggles, which will get out of hand if they are undertaken—It will be very hard to focus such an issue specifically on the issue of the survival of schools.

I would much prefer to see money available through other programs, which is why I mentioned literacy and all kinds of community organizations, which now, more than ever, are working with the school systems and with their schools, literally to keep them alive. I'm not familiar with this elsewhere. Certainly many schools in Quebec in the English school system are surrounded by communities that are spending all kinds of time and effort, and even fundraising money, in order to keep their schools alive, to the point where they are picking up paint brushes and doing the work that school boards should be doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacLeod. I have to stop you there.

We're going to ask Mr. Godin to ask the next question.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't know what my colleague Luc Malo thinks when someone says that people in the Atlantic attend school in bars. Let's hope that doesn't increase the alcoholism problem.

My colleague Luc Harvey

was saying—maybe I got him wrong, and I hope I did—what really are you doing here because of literacy? What does it have to do with official languages? It's education and it is provincial jurisdiction.

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

That's not what he said.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Then I'm happy. That's not what you said.

It is federal jurisdiction, because part VII of the Official Languages Act is very clear in sections 41, 42, and 43 that it is the responsibility of the federal government to promote the two languages of our country. By doing that, they have the power to invest money in the provinces and then leave the provinces, through their law, to administer education.

When we look at literacy, I must say, I agree. I just cannot see how a student can go home where the parent has a grade six education and is trying to help the student. It takes generations and generations. There I could say that people go to school in church basements. There I say that students go to school in halls, as we have in New Brunswick, where they don't even have any heat and some teachers have to pay for toilet paper for the students and bring it to the school. We heard all of that, and it is a shame. It is a shame in our country that we don't have a program.

You have been invited here to talk to us about what types of recommendations there are, and, if I heard you right, you're saying there should be a serious national program for literacy and that we should stop the red tape, stop all of what we're doing and put money in for education. Is that what I heard from you?

[Ilze Epners]

Yes, sir. We absolutely need to have a pan-Canadian program, a plan that's not for one year, not for two, but for a minimum of ten years, which is properly funded, not project funded, because project funding doesn't work. It starts and stops; it starts and it stops. We need a core program nationally.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Then, if I hear you right, you're saying it's almost like building a solid institution that exists and not a project, because with projects--

[Ilze Epners]

They don't work.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

—you are losing more time trying to get the project on the go and wondering when are you going to get the money--always with incertitude—than in doing the real work.

[Ilze Epners]

The worst part with a project is that you start it and it's a six-month project and then it's over. Then you have to make up another project. In the meanwhile, it all has to do with something that helps literacy. You start a nice program, you get everything going, money runs out, and then what do you do? How can you sustain it?

We know that project funding doesn't work. We've proven that over and over again. There have been many studies done. We know it is a core program that is going to help, and it has to be pan-Canadian. It has to have a plan.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. MacLeod, are you a teacher?

[Roderick MacLeod]

Yes.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

What do you think about what was just said? If you're teaching students and they go back home, as we heard from the previous witnesses, and the parents just cannot give them a hand—do you see that first-hand?

[Roderick MacLeod]

I've taught at CEGEP and at university, and, yes, I do see it, and it is very discouraging even when you get to the level of university and there is still the low level of what we'd call literacy.

As a parent, though, I'm even more struck by this. If I may say, I teach at university, therefore I expect to be able to help my children with the kind of work they bring home. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing that. I can only imagine if I lacked those skills how difficult it would be.

I also know people who tutor, and they are often stunned by the level of difficulty children have. Some of it is learning disability, and we have to be very....

[Ilze Epners]

Careful.

[Roderick MacLeod]

Well, we have to be attentive to this as a global thing. It's not—