Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Committee members, colleagues, thank you for having me today. I want to pass on the greetings of our Acadian and francophone community and of the president of the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse, Mr. Désiré Boudreau.
As you know, our community comprises slightly less than 33,000 francophones and nearly 100,000 non-French speakers. Our organization, FANE plays the role of mouthpiece of the Acadian and francophone community and represents 26 organizations representing most of the aspects of our society and all its regions. All these organizations, like FANE, play a role and work tirelessly for the community's development through the major support of many volunteers, not to forget, of course, that of the federal government and provincial government.
You have asked us to share with you our reaction to the Canada-community agreements or collaboration agreements. As you may know, the community in our province was the last to sign the new generation of binding agreements between the Department of Canadian Heritage and the community. My argument will enable you to get a better understanding of the reasons why we did not sign the agreements as soon as the other provinces. I will also explain the changes that we wanted to make to what was proposed to us. I will make comments on the agreements signed in the past, and I will also have suggestions to make to improve the government's performance and to enhance the benefits for the community and the federal government with a view to the next round of agreements.
I could entitle my presentation, “What's in a Name?” an English expression that I think says a great deal. The community used to sign Canada-community agreements. Now they are collaboration agreements. The differences between the two are many and significant. The major difference lies in the fact that the Canada-community agreements were signed by the Government of Canada, represented by Canadian Heritage. Now the collaboration agreements are signed by Canadian Heritage. Does this mean a withdrawal on the part of the federal government? Do we really want to make it so only one department has responsibilities toward the community? Where did Canada go?
In the Canada-community agreements, the government signed with the community, whereas, in the collaboration agreements, it's signing instead with the community sector. To my knowledge, we're still talking about official language communities, not official language community sectors. Was the idea to downplay the importance of the document and of the community's potential recourse for enforcing the agreements? I believe there was a legal commitment that the Government of Canada no longer wanted to bear. We would probably have to talk to Crown attorneys or Canadian Heritage in order to get the inside story.
Under the Canada-community agreements, amounts of money were allocated, but that is not the case under the collaboration agreements. Mr. Lussier and Mr. Lafontaine emphasized that fact this week before this committee. This is important. With respect to funding allocated to the communities, any flexibility in negotiations in order to link it solely to program funding through the contribution agreements is taken away, with all the complications that can have for the organizations.
Furthermore, the new agreements do not address a number of aspects that are important for our community, which is a major deficiency for us, a stumbling block that we have tried to avoid through very tough negotiations at the political and bureaucratic levels. First, we wanted to include provisions to reduce the burden on us of the complex funding applications process, for both applications approval and reporting forms. This point was very clearly highlighted by my colleague from Newfoundland.
We also wanted to obtain a review mechanism for the amounts allocated by Canadian Heritage, the purpose being for organizations whose funding applications are denied to be able to have their applications reviewed before a final decision is announced by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
In our opinion, the community mechanisms, particularly the global development plan, which is very important for the communities—it is in fact our community road map—enable the community to establish its priorities. However, this has been eliminated under the collaboration agreements, as well as the funding that was associated with the agreements. Under the new agreements, no additional amounts are available for this purpose, which could well impose an additional burden on the community, which does not have the resources to bear it.
Now let's talk about collaboration. The collaboration agreements between the community and the Department of Canadian Heritage are associated with the management of a few programs, including the community component of the Official Languages Support Program. Under section 42 of the Official Languages Act, the interdepartmental role of the Department of Canadian Heritage in government is, in principle, carried out under the newly signed agreements. Unfortunately, this isn't being put into practice, for lack of time and money, on both the community and Department of Canadian Heritage side. Consequently, the implementation of section 42 of the Official Languages Act, again from a community perspective, must be more clearly defined and the new agreements could be useful in achieving that objective.
The next agreements should also contain evaluation mechanisms for identifying the advantages and disadvantages that those agreements have brought to the community. This is an essential procedure because, if results under those agreements were not good, that would mean that the agreements were indispensable to the Department of Canadian Heritage for internal administrative reasons, but not necessarily for the community. I hope I'm wrong, but that remains to be determined.
We signed the agreement only six months ago. The short period of time during which our community has been part of the agreement is not the best indicator of success. In spite of that, nothing has really changed in the past six months. As you will understand, the community and the government would like these agreements to produce tangible results for community development and vitality.
There should also be specific provisions in the agreements for the organizations' operation and essential survival needs. In our view, with inadequate funding, a number of organizations are having trouble carrying out their mandates and are becoming a burden to manage for the community as a whole, while, of course, burning out volunteers. These operating problems exhaust staff, thus causing staff turnover and a burden for the community. This isn't a good investment even for the government.
There should also be provisions for multi-year funding for the organizations and budgets indexed to the cost of living. That would enable them to manage their funding more effectively and to live in less uncertainty when the agreements approach expiry. The agreements should provide a better framework for the federal government's commitment to support the official languages communities as provided by subsections 41(1) and (2) of the Official Languages Act.
Lastly, the federal government should codify the implementation of these aspects of the act. These agreements could help do precisely that. They could also permit sectoral community development. The idea would be to develop specific agreements by sector under the aegis of this new umbrella agreement with the new generation Government of Canada. Thus, each of the federal departments and agencies would support the needs of the communities with specific programs that would meet the needs of the major sectors mentioned in the global development plan which, I would recall, is our main community road map.