Official Languages Committee on April 2nd, 2009

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

The government is the largest employer in Canada. Does the government ever say to the universities that it needs bilingual employees and that they should be giving them language training? There is even talk of training at the primary and secondary levels. Do you feel that the government is prepared to tell everyone that, although they may have received excellent training, students will not have a job when they graduate from university, because the government only intends to hire people who are bilingual?

It may take four years to become a welder, seven or eight years to become a physician, but it does not take that long to learn a language, if students are told when they are very young that the labour market in Canada, which uses two official languages, needs people who are bilingual.

[Sylvie Lauzon]

Is that a question?

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

It is a question and a comment.

[Sylvie Lauzon]

As I said, we have close ties to the Ontario government. Being a university—

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

I know education falls within the jurisdiction of Ontario, but as a major employer, does the Government of Canada tell the universities that it needs people who are bilingual?

[Sylvie Lauzon]

That is the kind of message we might be given informally but, to my knowledge, there is no specific forum for relaying that kind of message.

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

Is there no agreement?

[Sylvie Lauzon]

No.

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

There is no agreement, nothing concrete?

A lot of civil servants will be retiring in the next few years. The baby-boomers will be leaving soon and there will be a need to hire a lot of staff—people who are already properly trained. Is that not what is happening now?

[Sylvie Lauzon]

Perhaps not directly at the university. The Commissioner, Graham Fraser, has decided to undertake a study to assess the capacity—

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

There are already a lot of studies. This has been studied to death. I am talking about something concrete.

[Sylvie Lauzon]

There is a study on the universities' ability to train people to be bilingual. We are expecting the results of that study to be released any time now. I believe there will be a meeting next week. When that discussion takes place, representatives of the public service will be very curious to see the results, so that they can go out and hire bilingual students. I have certainly received that message loud and clear.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Godin.

The next one to speak is Mr. Petit, whose turn I skipped earlier.

Mr. Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

When Mr. Godin asks question, it is always very interesting.

There is one thing I would like to say, by way of a preamble to my question. I am from a province where we have Bill 101. Therefore, you will understand that my questions to you are going to be very specific. You represent an Ontario university and, if I understood your explanation, the money you receive comes primarily from the Ontario government. You also said in your opening statement that the University of Ottawa has, or at least seems to have, more Francophones than any other university outside Quebec, and that the Ontario government is providing the necessary funding.

The study we are conducting is intended to try to help us understand how it is, in the public service—because this has been a criticism aimed at the public service for quite some time, long before my arrival here—that so-called bilingual positions are staffed by unilingual employees, be they Francophone or Anglophone. A lot of available positions are offered to people who have completed their university studies, meaning that they were educated in a university. If they send us students—and I am not talking about the University of Ottawa—who are not bilingual, what we have to know is whether they should be required to be bilingual or whether they should be given training, as you were saying earlier.

If I hire someone from Saskatchewan, who has extraordinary skills as a chemist or in another area and he becomes my deputy minister, without knowing a single word of French, then we have a problem. I am sure you understand what I am getting at.

My question is more specific and is addressed, first, to our guests representing the universities and, second, to Ms. Fortier. Laval University is located in my riding. We have a wonderful faculty of medicine, a faculty of dentistry and there are many areas of specialized study, like psychology, and so on. A lot of material is produced in English. I would not say everything, because that would not be true, but a lot of it is in English.

Conversely, at university, we also receive a lot of material that comes from France. My area of expertise is the law, where both French and English are used, and in order to study the Civil Code, when I am appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada, I have to understand both of the judge's decisions—in French and in English. Even in my own province, where we have Bill 101, information is produced in English.

How can we put a stop to this, so that French is not considered to be the language you use only to receive a grant or achieve notoriety? I am a little shocked. How can the universities go along with material being produced in English? I am also talking about institutions in my own province that also go along with this. I really don't understand that.

[Richard Clément]

Your question is a complex one. I fully agree with you as to what might be called the international hegemony of the English language. That is the case in the field of science, just as it is everywhere else. How can a university allow that to happen? Well, first of all, academic freedom means that university teachers can produce material in the language of their choice. I am not sure you wanted to address that, but is an issue in itself.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

No, it's dangerous.

[Richard Clément]

Yes, it is.

In terms of the level of bilingualism of university teaching staff—because we also have the problem of recruiting high-level researchers who are extremely competent and bilingual—on a small scale, the university deals with that by including in the initial hiring contract an obligation to become bilingual in order to achieve tenure. If that obligation is not met, the teacher simply does not receive tenure.

It is a fairly draconian measure. It may not be the kind of action that could be contemplated in the public service. Also, the studies that have been done in places where this occurs show that people can only retain a minority language as a second language in an environment where that second language is valued.

That is a major operation. There needs to be a culture in the public service, an institutional culture that values the other language. In order for that to happen, deputy ministers will probably have to be convinced of the need to reflect that requirement. It is all about the culture in the public service. I cannot really give you any other answer, except to say that it is a substantial problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much for your comments, Mr. Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

We are not finished yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

You may give a very brief answer.

[Dr. Suzanne Fortier]

In the sciences and innovation, there is a local context and a global context. I spend a great deal of time in Francophone universities, including Laval University, and I have observed at the local level that people do talk and work together in French; however, when it comes time to publish, they often choose English because publishing means they are competing at the global level and the dominant language of science is English.

I would like to give you two examples of actions we have taken to promote bilingualism among scientists and engineers. First of all, we have partnership programs where we create linkages between researchers in different regions of the country. For example, we have just established such linkages between Laval University and the University of Alberta. On both sides of the partnership, they speak and work in both languages.

Second, we have programs in place to encourage student mobility, so that they can have experiences in another context, another country. Other than Canada, the three most targeted countries, in terms of mobility and partnerships, are the United States, the United Kingdom and France. This is a way of allowing Francophones to improve their English through partnerships with the United Kingdom or the United States, and Anglophones to improve their French in France. We are seeing the positive spinoffs of these partnerships and this kind of mobility.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Petit.

I would like to add one thing to your comments, Ms. Fortier. Only 5 % of grant applications are written in French, even though it is clear that French-speaking universities use that language to write their applications. I guess we can conclude that the work which flows from those projects that receive grants will also be in the same language.

[Dr. Suzanne Fortier]

Yes, exactly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. D'Amours.