Official Languages Committee on Feb. 7th, 2008

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

That was the case for many others as well, and that's appalling.

At the Public Service Alliance, you provide services directly to citizens. In that perspective, the official languages issue is very important, from what I was able to understand during your presentation. I'd like to know whether Mr. Lord sought your comments.

[Ed Cashman]

We didn't receive an invitation. We went looking for him, through his secretariat. We wanted an opportunity to talk to him. But we're still waiting for a call from him.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

So you didn't find him.

[Ed Cashman]

No.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

He'll probably say that the country is big and takes a long time to cover.

These situations are a bit appalling. I'd like to put the following question to the people from the Public Service Alliance and the Professional Institute of the Public Service.

Perhaps you would have liked to meet him, but I'd like to know what more could have been obtained by telling him about the situation of your organizations.

[Michèle Demers]

Listening to my colleagues around this table talk about the extent of the problems concerning official languages, whether it be in industry or in the universities, I see once again that the federal public service is the poor cousin of Canadian society. Not only does no one pay any attention to it, but also, when thoughts or projects are developed to renew the pan-Canadian official languages program or bilingualism in the country, the people who, as you say, are in the field, offering services to Canadians and responsible for developing the programs are completely disregarded. It's really a sad and, in fact, quite annoying situation.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

And as regards the Public Service Alliance?

[Ed Cashman]

If we clearly understand the mandate that the Prime Minister gave Mr. Lord concerning linguistic minorities, we find it hard to understand why we weren't consulted. The federal government has a very important role to play with regard to services offered to all Canadians, including those belonging to linguistic minorities.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Citizens' complaints are due to the fact that they haven't received certain services, but those service failures don't occur in another world: they occur directly in the field. They say to try and see how it's possible to improve official languages, but they forget to ask those who offer services to citizens directly in the field, which, in their view, could improve those services. That's quite contradictory. Ultimately, that enables these people to appear to be conducting a nice evaluation, whereas they don't even take the time to speak with stakeholders on the front line.

[Michèle Demers]

Yes, absolutely.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Ms. Demers, earlier you said that funding for training had declined and that it was now at approximately $12 million a year. In the years following what you were able to determine, have those amounts declined further? Does the federal government appear to be less and less interested in finding ways to provide additional training?

[Michèle Demers]

The language training situation in the federal public service is declining so much that it appears to have fallen off the radar screen. We don't hear about it anymore. He heard a lot about it in 2003, 2004, 2005 and even 2006. Now we can only see the pure frustration in people who say there's no more language training at school.

Responsibility for providing language training has been delegated to the departments, but they haven't been given any budgets to carry out that function. They have to draw on their operating budgets, which are already tight and are cut from year to year, and try to provide an hour here and there. That doesn't make people bilingual.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

So it's all fine words, but there's no concrete action.

[Michèle Demers]

Absolutely.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. D'Amours.

We'll now continue with Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning to you all, ladies and gentlemen.

Ms. Demers, you talked about the issue of children's education in both official languages. We know that this is a provincial responsibility. I lived in Saskatchewan in the 1990s. There they were starting to feel the impact of the cancellation of immersion programs in the English-language schools. It was found that they were no longer useful and they were replaced with something else.

That's somewhat the spirit in which people often find themselves in majority Anglophone areas far from Quebec. There's a deficiency in the area of education. I'll talk about training later. They say they're moving toward contracting out in order to train people, whereas Canada boasts of being a bilingual country. That's not right.

Mr. Vaillancourt, you talked about the Language Technologies Research Centre, which is controlled by the Université du Québec en Outaouais. That centre is extremely important for research and development. It's said that there are deficiencies in the field of education in civil society and that there is no apparent will to put French on an equal footing with English.

I've learned that the Language Technologies Research Centre was established by a conglomerate and that today it isn't even a federal government centre. It's more of a non-profit organization that has to seek funding each year in order to survive in an extremely important and expanding research field.

In the second phase of the Action Plan for Official Languages, would it be important to ensure that a centre such as yours and the universities are formally recognized as the trainers of the individuals who'll be working in the language field? There are no doubt other centres. I know there is one in New Brunswick.

[Jean Vaillancourt]

All right. Perhaps I can provide a quick snapshot of the Language Technologies Research Centre. It's a non-profit organization that has three founding partners: two federal agencies, including the NRC and the Université du Québec en Outaouais.

It's an organization whose annual budget is currently approximately $0.5 million a year, including all expenses. In addition to that are contributions from each of the three partners, totalling approximately $6 million a year. The NRC contribution of $2 million is stated in the 2003-2008 plan.

To achieve full impact and to secure a competitive advantage for Canadian researchers who work there—we're talking about some 30 researchers—the research centre would need a minimum of $6 million a year in addition to its $0.5 million budget. So its budget should be increased by at least 10 times.

Six million dollars would enable the centre to allocate approximately half of its budget each year to efforts to market the centre's inventions. Two research projects, one of which won an award, have been carried out in cooperation with the industry. These projects have commercial potential, but marketing efforts are obviously limited by the research centre's tight budget. In my opinion, this amount would make it possible to compete adequately with the large American centres that are currently doing the same type of research. I think $6 million a year would be one factor that would enable Canada to have the necessary strike force in research and development at the LTRC. Obviously, it is also extremely important that funding for the Language Industry Association be renewed, because it is these industries, those currently emerging, that take the research centre's achievements and market them for Canada's benefit.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cashman, earlier you talked about contracting out. What does that mean? Does it mean that, at one point, all services were offered by the federal training school and that, suddenly, savings related to the government's lack of vision resulted in a decline in service? Could you explain that to us?

[Ed Cashman]

Yes. You may have observed that, here in the region in particular, private language schools, which, in our view, are not of the same quality, are spreading like wildfire. We can't guarantee the same quality as that previously offered by the School of Public Service.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

So, if I understand correctly, the funding has been cut in this field, or at least the orientation has changed.

[Ed Cashman]

There was a time when a public servant could dream of enrolling in the School of Public Service to learn our language. Now, as Ms. Demers mentioned, they may be offered a few hours a week in the evening, in a local school. That's not the same thing.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Ms. Demers, still on the subject of training, in your organization, that's being done more with professional public servants.

There are deputy ministers who don't speak a word of French. The Department of National Defence is trying to lead us to believe that it has found a solution to a dreadful situation: 47% of its designated bilingual positions are occupied by unilingual Anglophones. How could we improve the situation in the next stage of the Action Plan?

[Michèle Demers]

You have to change the approach and dynamic regarding official languages. That has to become something we're proud of. I agree with Mr. Peralta, who said earlier that speaking two languages is an asset and a source of pride and that speaking three or four is even better.

What do we do to make people want to become bilingual rather than feel they have a sword of Damocles over their heads? They're told now that they have to be bilingual or else they'll have to give up the position they want. That's what's currently happening. Bilingualism is perceived as a threat. It isn't considered a positive element. The departments and employees aren't being given the tools to become bilingual. They're given no reason to be proud of that.

The encouragement of the bilingualism bonus is completely ridiculous. When it was introduced, it was equal to 10% of an individual's salary. Now it's $800 for a salary of $50,000 or $60,000. It's not a carrot; it's not an encouragement. How can we conceive of a way of thinking and mechanisms that will make people want to become bilingual and be proud of being bilingual?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Demers. You're one of the passionate people.

Now we'll go to another passionate person, Mr. Godin. That's a compliment, Mr. Godin.