Official Languages Committee on April 8th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Godin, if you would please allow the witness to answer.

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

He stated that the people working with him could recount what happened. I am speaking specifically of a report.

According to your contract, the results of the consultations were to be presented in early January in the form of a written report. That is not the final report. According to your contract, for which you received payments, did you hand in a written report to the minister, yes or no?

[Bernard Lord]

To tell you the truth, Mr. Godin, I have not yet been paid.

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

I didn't ask you if you had been paid. You may have a payment problem, and the conservative government may not want to pay you, but that is not my question. My question is clear. Was a draft report submitted to the minister?

[Bernard Lord]

Mr. Godin, I am very happy to answer your questions, but I don't understand why you are so aggressive this morning. I am here—

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

Is it because you were not paid, Mr. Lord?

[Bernard Lord]

I appreciate the fact that you are worrying on my behalf, Mr. Godin, and I appreciate your point of view. However, seriously, the mandate that I accepted was to act as Chair. There were changes made to the contract, because I agreed to meet with people who were not part of my original mandate. I agreed to do so without asking for any change in pay, given that you referred to payment. As the process unfolded, drafts were prepared. I submitted the final report at the end of February. Did the department already have draft reports in hand? Yes, I told you that earlier.

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

Okay. How do you explain the fact that Ms. Verner's spokesperson says that there was no preliminary report or any interference on the part of the minister. You held the discussions after the draft reports. You may find that I am a bit agitated this morning, but I just want to get answers to my questions to understand the process.

[Bernard Lord]

Mr. Godin, I did not say agitated, I said aggressive. I am telling you clearly that both can co-exist. There was no interference. You referred to interference, but there was none at all. I was the one who signed the final report, I am the one who takes responsibility for it, according to the mandate that I received. I had discussions with the minister throughout the process. When we were in Ottawa, on January 24, during the wrap-up event, I was sitting right beside the minister, Mr. Godin. If I told you that I did not speak to the minister during the process, you would reply that I was sitting right beside her and that I must have spoken to her. Absolutely, I was sitting beside her and I did speak to her about the consultations. I informed her of what people had told me.

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

I just want to get a clear idea, Mr. Lord. A preliminary report was submitted to the minister. The minister is aware of this preliminary report. A final report was published. That's what I want to see in the minutes, not what the department said to the effect that there was no preliminary report.

[Bernard Lord]

What I told you...

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

Earlier, you told me that there was a preliminary report.

[Bernard Lord]

Mr. Godin, I want to help you. That's why I accepted your invitation to testify today before this committee. Consultations were held at the beginning of December. Web consultations were held as well. We reported on these Web consultations in January. At the meeting held on January 24, we provided a summary here in Ottawa. I think it was on the 24^th or 25^th. Everyone present received a very preliminary report of what happened during the consultations. Drafts were prepared, and I submitted the signed final report in late February.

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

Mr. Chair...

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

We will now go to the government side with Mr. Lebel. I would like to welcome him to the committee.

[Denis Lebel, Conservative, Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Indeed, it is a first for me to be sitting on the official languages committee today. It is perhaps also a first for the city of Roberval—isn't that right, Mr. Lord?—to have two of its native sons testifying and representing the government, especially since our guest witness was a provincial premier and I had the honour of being the mayor of your hometown. Please give my regards to Ms. Bouchard. In fact, in Roberval, the name Bouchard is associated with government. I had the honour of taking over from Benoît Bouchard as the Conservative representative in the riding of Roberval. It's a great honour for me to be here today and to take part in this debate with my colleagues.

Mr. Lord, I would like to commend you on the work that you have done. There is no doubt that your excellent knowledge of official languages in a Canadian context has brought about the results that we have sought after. Our government is proud to be able to continue working thanks to your recommendations. Accountability and clear decisions are important for the government. You talked about establishing a process that would ensure measurable objectives and accountability.

I would like to hear more about that.

[Bernard Lord]

It is a pleasure for me to take questions from the honourable member from the city in which I was born, a very important place for my mother, who is always proud of her home in the Lac-Saint-Jean region, and who wanted all of her children to be born somewhere close to the lake. So I would like to thank the honourable member and former mayor of Roberval for his introduction.

When plans of this type are drawn up, in my opinion, it is essential that they include accountability provisions and set clear, measurable objectives. I asked this question of the people who took part in our consultations. Most, if not all, agreed that it was important to set measurable targets so that we can determine what progress has been made after three, four or five years, depending on the duration of the next phase of the action plan—I expect it will be five years. This will also enable us to check whether the taxpayers' money invested by the government has produced the results we were expecting.

[Denis Lebel, Conservative, Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I'm sure you are aware of the measures in place at the moment. What do you think of them?

[Bernard Lord]

Some of the measures are good. Throughout the process, I tried to avoid becoming partisan. I did not want my report to destroy what had already been done, because the objective is to build on what already exists. That is why in the report I refer to the new strategy and to the next phase of the action plan, rather than to a new action plan or to getting rid of everything that has been done. Throughout the country, we want to build on what has been done so far.

We all agree that it is desirable to build in ways of measuring progress, to see where we invested funds and to set objectives that can be measured so that the official language minority communities and our partners, the federal government, other governments and community groups, can measure the impact of the strategy and the action plan. In this regard, the discussions I have had with the minister confirm that it would certainly be advisable for her and the government to be accountable for the plan to taxpayers, to ensure that their money is well spent.

[Denis Lebel, Conservative, Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I understand that we do not want to start over from square one. There are some good things being done, but there are definitely some more specific areas where correction should be made so that the action plan meets current needs.

Do you have any specific comments to make with regard to certain areas?

[Bernard Lord]

Some points did emerge from the consultations both as regards the strategy and the implementation. In respect to strategy, people across the country told us that they wanted the next phase of the action plan to include a specific focus on the arts and culture. This is an important issue for me as well, and I hope we will have an opportunity to talk more about it. The arts and culture help minority communities flourish, become stronger, try and get to know each other. The arts and culture are a way for Canadians to get in touch each other and to set up a dialogue.

As regards the implementation, something that came out at all the meetings was that some organizations felt a little like they were begging, to use their own words. They said that because the funding was provided from one year to the next, they never had the certainty they required to do more long-term planning. A number of organizations and stakeholders said they would like to see a longer term funding mechanism, so that they could spend more time doing the work they wanted to do, rather than filling in forms or meeting the government's requirements.

It is important to strike a balance here. Taxpayers, who provide the money to the government, must be sure that their money is being spent for the purposes set out, but we must also ensure that things are done efficiently enough so that individuals and community groups can do the work they want to do in their area of endeavour. These comments were also made at the wrap-up event that was held here in Ottawa.

I think there is this desire to find other ways of implementing the action plan's strategies. The idea is to make it simpler and more effective administratively. This is one way of clearly improving what was done before both strategically, with emphasis on the arts and culture, and tactically, with the implementation of the plan and the strategy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much.

That completes our first, seven-minute round. We will now move to the second round, and I will give the floor to Denis Coderre, representing the official opposition.

Mr. Coderre.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Good morning, Mr. Lord.

I imagine you would have had a hard time describing the former plan as flawed, given the number of agreements we signed together when you were the Premier of New Brunswick. I think this was very helpful to your province.

I want to come back to your mandate. I understand from what you said that you did not meet with representatives from the Public Service Alliance. When you spoke to my colleague, Mr. Rodriguez, your mandate was quite broad. In my opinion, the fact that you did not consult with representatives of the public service, who are a key component as regards linguistic duality, shows that this is not an action plan, but rather a public relations exercise on your part. If that was not part of the action plan, that means that Ms. Verner has already written her report and that ultimately, you will not necessarily have any influence regarding your proposals.

That said, I want to come back to the preliminary report and to the report Mr. Godin was referring to earlier. If there was a draft, to use the term that appeared in The Chronicle, that means that there was a written text. Is there a difference between the preliminary report and the final report?

[Bernard Lord]

Thank you very much, Mr. Coderre. If I might, I will come back to the points you raised, and then I will respond to your question.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

No, I would like you to answer my question.