Official Languages Committee on March 31st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Is there consent?

Go ahead, Mr. Galipeau.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I would also like to thank my colleagues on the committee for giving me this opportunity to ask a question.

First of all, I must congratulate the parliamentary secretary for sharing her enthusiasm with us and with our witnesses. I share this enthusiasm too. I must also inform the committee that I am not in agreement with the tone that the member for Gatineau took when he asked his questions.

That being said, I think that out of respect for all the members of this committee and for all parliamentarians from all sides of the House—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

—it is important that Ms. Mounier answer Mr. Nadeau's question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Excuse me, Mr. Galipeau, we are on a point of order.

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

Is this a point of order or a question for the witnesses?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

I may consider your point as a point of order, but I'd like to ask you to put your question.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

My question has already been asked. In my opinion, despite the tone that he took, our friend, Mr. Richard Nadeau, the member for Gatineau, did ask the question. It was entirely relevant, and despite two attempts to get an answer, he did not get one. So I would like to ask Ms. Mounier to give Mr. Nadeau and all the committee members a clear answer to a question that he has asked twice.

I'll ask Mr. Nadeau to repeat it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Chairman, my question was very simple. What is the federal government's role in terms of making sure with VANOC that French will be respected throughout the entire Olympic Games, starting today—since they have gotten off to a bad start—until the end of the games? How are you going to go about telling VANOC that they must provide services in both French and English?

[Marie-Geneviève Mounier]

Thank you.

Obviously contribution agreements are the first mechanism through which we can ensure VANOC complies with its official language requirements. These agreements allow for the inclusion of very specific clauses on these requirements. Moreover, through the Vancouver 2010 Games Secretariat and the two official languages units, which are in constant communication, there is a discussion and oversight process in place. VANOC must also provide quarterly reports and so must the secretariat. Also, VANOC must table its business plan, to be approved by the federal government. The plan includes all official language-related activities and allows the federal government to specify the resources allocated under each official languages heading. This gives us greater control.

Now, there is also the advisory council. Through it we will be better able to advise—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Yes madam, but will that force VANOC to take action? What if it does not, what will you do? Will you cut off funding? It did not consider the countdown. So, will you cut funding? Is that what I should gather from this?

[Marie-Geneviève Mounier]

We can do that. If the contribution agreement conditions are not complied with—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

So, you will cut funding if these people do not do their job. Well, we know they are already not doing their jobs.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Thank you.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Very well. We will suspend the meeting. Thank you for being here this morning.

[Marie-Geneviève Mounier]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

As time is flying by, we will get started right away on the second part of our meeting. It is a pleasure for us to welcome the Director General of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, Ms. Suzanne Bossé. Welcome. Ms. Bossé is accompanied by the federation's Director of Communications, Mr. Serge Quinty.

Without further ado, I would invite you to make your presentations.

[Suzanne Bossé, Director General, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada]

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, I would like to start by thanking you for having invited us to appear this morning. I would also like to say that the president of the FCFA, Ms. Lise Routhier-Boudreau, who was unfortunately unable to attend this morning, sends her regards. My name is Suzanne Bossé.

I am Director General of the FCFA, and I am accompanied this morning by our Director of Communications, Mr. Serge Quinty. We will be pleased to answer your questions following our presentation.

You have invited us to appear before you this morning to share our views on the 2010 Olympic Games. Two areas of a particular interest to us in this regard: the broadcasting of the games and the showcasing of linguistic duality and the French fact in all games- related events. The issue of French- language broadcasting of the Vancouver Olympic Games was a concern to the FCFA as soon as broadcasting distribution rights were granted to the CTVglobemedia consortium, in February 2005. You will recall that at the time, there seemed to be very few measures taken to ensure that francophones outside of Quebec could watch the games in French on basic cable.

Things have changed a great deal since. Over the last few years, the Fondation canadienne pour Ie dialogue des cultures et la Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique worked with the consortium to build a capacity for French-language broadcasting of the games throughout the country. I will now provide you with an update as to the situation today. Agreements have been signed with major cable companies: Shaw, Rogers and Cogeco, as well as with Bell TV and Star Choice, to unscramble the TQS and RDS digital signals not only for the duration of the games, but during the months preceding the opening of the games. Shaw will also unscramble the TQS and RDS signals throughout all Vancouver hotels where it provides cable services, in other words all but two hotels.

Clearly there remains work to be done. For instance, discussions are underway with smaller cable companies and we are currently exploring options which would allow subscribers to analog cable to pick up the TQS signal. That said, once this exercise is completed, a large majority of francophones throughout the country should have free access to the broadcasting of the 2010 Olympic Games in their language and we are pleased with that.

I would say if the FCFA were to have one wish for the coming stages, it would be twofold. First of all, I have said that cable companies have agreed to unscramble the TQS and RDS signals one month before the games. That is all very well, but francophones in minority settings will remain shut out from the media campaign which is already underway, at TQS/RDS as well as on CTV, and whose purpose is to arouse the interest of Canadians in the Olympic Games. That is why we stated before the CRTC, last January, that we believed it was important for these two stations' signals to be unscrambled far earlier, in other words six months before the games.

We are also pleased to see that the consortium will be responsible for the production and broadcasting of 800 hours of original French-language programming about the games. What we would sincerely hope would be for this programming to extend beyond Quebec reality. It would be a wonderful opportunity to promote the francophone community in British Columbia, which includes over 70,000 francophones. It would also be an opportunity not only to discuss francophone athletes from all over the country, but also francophile athletes. In short, it is a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness of the span of the Canadian francophonie and of the French fact in Canada.

We are therefore rather satisfied with developments in the area of French broadcasting for the 2010 Olympic Games, although there remains some work to done. It would also seem that throughout the process new practices have been developed to ensure that when this type of events occur in Canada they are broadcast free of charge in both official languages throughout the country. It would seem to us that the CRTC would gain from exploring the option of codifying these practices into actual policy.

We are far less satisfied however with the presence of French throughout the celebration and events currently underway in preparation for the Games. We were rather displeased to hear that the French-language component for the February 12 countdown to the Olympics show consisted of one musician who himself admitted that he had probably been chosen because of his francophone name.

We were also quite puzzled by the composition of the national touring program currently underway within the 2009 Cultural Olympiad. There is very little or perhaps nothing at all to clearly showcase linguistic duality in Canada. Among the participants there is the Quebec base group Beast, which sings in English, Bell Orchestre which is a Quebec instrumental group that has a unilingual English website and the Manitoba Métis Music and Dance group which we've heard present a video of Louis Riel over the course of its performance. You will however admit that this is insufficient, grossly insufficient.

We are, however, pleased to see that VANOC created an advisory committee on official languages of which Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former French Prime Minister will be a member. The francophone community in British Columbia and the Fondation canadienne pour le dialogue des cultures will also be represented.

This is important to us because the Games are now less than 11 months away and we have already witnessed two large scale cultural events during which French representation was a problem. We hope this committee will be able to contribute to measures being taken to correct the situation. It is essential for all upcoming activities, the Olympic Flame Relay, the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and all other events surrounding the Games to show Canada and the entire world the bilingual face of this country. Nothing short of that will do.

Thank you, I am now prepared to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Bossé, for that clear and concise presentation.

Mr. D'Amours, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bossé, and Mr. Quinty. I would first like to congratulate you, Ms. Bossé, for having been appointed Director General of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada. I would also like to make special mention of the fact that you are originally from my riding, Saint-Quentin, the maple capital.

[Suzanne Bossé]

Thank you.

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

You raised a number of points that worry me. I do not know if you got the chance to listen to the representatives from Canadian Heritage who were here earlier. It would have been a good idea for them to stay a few minutes longer at least to listen to what you had to say. It may have shown some desire on their part to improve the situation. In any case, there do not seem to be too many people here.

Two things are of serious concern to me. First of all, the Cultural Olympiad. Ms. Mounier told us earlier on that, if there were any errors in schedule A of the agreement on the Games, changes would be made. At the end of the day, there is no purpose in having a schedule A if changes are made to the Cultural Olympiad but there are no improvements with regard to the Games as such.

I did not get the opportunity to raise the point that worries me, but it has to do with the level of French. People from Canadian Heritage mentioned earlier that volunteers had been recruited. I can not recall the exact number, but I think she mentioned 11,000 volunteers. I do not recall whether that was 11,000 francophones, but she did say that these people could express themselves in French to varying degrees. When you have a car, you do not ask whether or not it has brakes. In this case, either people speak French or they do not. How can we talk about varying degrees of French? Either we offer the services or we do not. How will we make sure these services are offered?

I wonder if this implies that francophones understand French to varying degrees. People may have different ways of speaking. Mr. Godin and myself, as well as other francophones throughout the country, may express ourselves differently at times, but we remain francophones. We do not speak French in varying degrees.

I would like to know whether this situation with respect to the volunteers seems acceptable to you.

[Suzanne Bossé]

I will answer your first question with regard to volunteers, and I will let my colleague Serge respond to the question on schedule A.

Clearly, we have to be able to welcome visitors completely in French, beginning when they arrive in Vancouver. After all, we are expecting a fairly significant number of visitors. They need to be able to receive services in French from the start of their stay to the end, and this applies to all services, be they at Games venues or at their hotels. We expect visitors to be served in French.