Official Languages Committee on May 7th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

I'd like to call the meeting to order.

While committee members take their places, we'll begin the meeting. This is the 19th meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. It concerns the federal government's support for postsecondary institutions and their efforts in promoting bilingualism in Canada. This morning's meeting is the last that we'll devote to this subject until the Commissioner of Official Languages appears.

This morning, we have some prominent guests, starting with Mr. Labrie, who is Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages, Mr. Labrie.

We also have Ms. Bernadette Kassi, who is Director, Module of Arts, Department of Language Studies at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. You have a supporter with you this morning.

You will be with us for the first part of the meeting. The committee will then hold a teleconference. Without further delay, I invite Mr. Labrie to start with his opening address.

[Normand Labrie, Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto]

Good morning, everyone. I'm honoured to be here today to represent the University of Toronto as Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies of the OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which is the Faculty of Education of the University of Toronto.

I'm going to use the six minutes allotted to me to provide an overview of what the University of Toronto is doing to promote French and bilingualism. You know as well as I do that the University of Toronto is essentially an English-language institution, and the actions taken at the University of Toronto to promote French are often little known. I'm going to provide this overview to show you everything the University of Toronto is doing.

The University of Toronto has a special history and mandate. It has been in existence for nearly 200 years, but, since 1853, the university has offered courses in French as well as courses in French literature. It thus started doing so 14 years before Confederation and 12 years after the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada.

The university has imposing collections of works in its French-language libraries, and a number of institutes, research centres are advancing knowledge on issues concerning the French language and the Francophonie.

With regard to demographics, as is the case for most Canadian universities, the vast majority of students at the University of Toronto come from the immediate region: 82% of students are from Ontario, 1.2% from Quebec, and 9% from foreign countries. This situation is typical of Canadian universities in general. We have 72,000 students, including 25,000 whose mother tongue is a language other than English or French. Today I could talk to you about everything the University of Toronto does for English as an official language, but I'm going to focus on what it does for French. So there are 25,000 students whose mother tongue is a language other than English or French and 613 students for whom French is their mother tongue, which represents roughly 1% of our student body.

However, we have a larger number of francophone students because the figures we have do not enable us to determine who consider themselves francophones. We only have figures from students who apply for admission and say that French is their mother tongue. We know and you know as well that these kinds of statistics are often not entirely clear. Three hundred and seven students come from member countries of the Francophonie, that is 4% of our 8,000 foreign students.

In a study I am currently conducting with Professor Sylvie Lamoureux of the University of Ottawa, we have examined data from the Ottawa University Application Centre to determine in which Ontario universities Ontario francophones enrolled from 1998 to 2006. We discovered that, out of 15,000 francophone students—who are students completing high school in French-language schools or graduates from English-language schools, but who say their mother tongue is French—half went to the University of Ottawa and 15% to Laurentian University in Sudbury. In third place, for the largest number of francophone students enrolled, was the University of Toronto with 618 students. During that eight-year period, the universities of Windsor and Carleton came next in terms of enrolments, and the bilingual Glendon College, of York University, in Toronto, was quite far behind with 212 students, one-third of the number of students we took in.

We offer French-language university programs. Undergraduate students at the University of Toronto have the opportunity to choose a major in French. We currently have 321 students who have opted for a major in French studies. They specialize in language, literature, culture, civilization, economics and so on. We also have a number of students who are taking French courses, but who are not included in that group of students really specializing in French. The department offers a number of courses in Quebec history, culture and literature as part of this major in French. We also have 13 students in the master's program and 73 students in the doctoral program in French studies at the University of Toronto.

You see that we are producing a lot of sources of knowledge and future researchers who will be specialists in French later on.

French-language knowledge is not a requirement for admission to our programs, except for students doing a major in French. They have to have an adequate knowledge of the language to be able to do those studies.

In addition, a number of master's and doctoral programs in the Faculty of Arts and Science require knowledge of French, whereas the master's or doctoral thesis requires students to work on Francophone issues in Canada. In that case, students must have knowledge of the French language.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where I come from, every year trains 1,300 students in education, all future teachers. We are offering a French cohort for future teachers of French as a second language, immersion or core French.

In the past three years, we have trained 173 future teachers of French as a second language. A study by the Ontario College of Teachers recently showed that 70% of graduates from a French teacher training program, whether it be for French as a second language or as a mother tongue, find a permanent job in the year after they complete their education, compared to only 25% of graduates from English-language programs. There is a much higher permanent employment rate if you graduate in French. This rule applies to our students as well; they very easily find work in the first year.

The Institute also offers master's and doctoral programs. In the past 10 years, nearly 435 students have taken French courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education or have conducted research and prepared theses on francophone issues. Some of those theses are written in English, others in French. In all, a very large number of theses and essays have been written on French or the Francophonie in education.

We also offer courses to provide additional qualifications for active teachers who have to go back to university to specialize. The Institute offers 100 different additional qualifications courses and seven of those courses are for teachers of French as a second language. They attract approximately 240 teachers every year.

Lastly, the University of Toronto also has a school of continuing education, which offers adult courses in French as a second language. This year, we had 12 different courses, with 44 sections, and more than 600 students were enrolled in our French second-language courses for adults.

Allow me to say a few words about research. The University of Toronto is the number one university in Canada in research supported by outside funding every year. We have a number of research centres that focus either directly on French or the Francophonie or on other subjects, but with a francophone component.

I'll cite only four examples. The purpose of the Centre d'études de la France et du monde francophone, established by the French Embassy and the Faculty of Arts and Science in 2007, is to combine everything that is done at the University of Toronto in the area of French-language teaching and research on francophone issues, and to promote student exchanges and maintain bridges with the francophone communities in Ontario and the rest of Canada.

The second important research centre is the Centre Joseph-Sablé, whose research focuses on 19th century France and which houses archives that exist nowhere else, such as the Émile Zola archive, which comes from the Zola family. People come from around the world to work on those archives at our university. It is a centre that houses an enormous number of documents on 19th century France, and it is an important place.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has two education research centres that are no doubt of interest to you. The first, the Modern Language Centre, has been in existence for more than 30 years. It conducts research on second-language instruction. Research on French as a second language has always been a very important component of that centre.

By conducting research and demonstrating that immersion is a program that works well, the centre has really popularized the idea of immersion in Canada in the past 30 years.

The Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne focuses on linguistic minority issues, the francophone minorities in Ontario and across Canada. It was my pleasure to be the director of that research centre for 10 years. It is a centre that is very active and that receives a number of research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It is very successful in that field.

The University of Toronto has entered into research partnerships. The most important one on the francophone side is with Laval University for the writing of the Dictionnaire biographique du Canada. This is a fully bilingual resource, on line and accessible free of charge, which provides biographical information on prominent Canadians who died between the year 1000 and 1930. This partnership has been in existence for 50 years and has also been funded through federal research funding granted over the years.

We still have a lot of research partnerships. For example, over the past 10 years, approximately 200 researchers from the University of Toronto have cooperated on research projects conducted by Quebec universities at francophone universities and have been involved with those research teams directed by researchers from Quebec.

The University of Toronto has an exchange program with Laval University. Every year, one of our students can study at Laval University on a full one-year scholarship.

We've also entered into agreements with six universities in France and a number of student exchange agreements with several other francophone universities. Last year, some 40 students from the University of Toronto studied at francophone universities around the world.

This year, 265 students from the University of Toronto took part in international exchanges, while the university received 377 foreign students from 33 different countries. France was the country most often selected by our students: some 40 students went to that country. As part of those exchanges, we also welcomed some 40 students from France. This is the fourth contingent from a foreign country to come to Toronto.

Before closing, I am going to say a few words about the library of the University of Toronto, which is the largest in Canada and the fourth largest in North America, following those of Harvard, Berkley and Columbia. Out of a fund of 13 million to 14 million works, 472,000 are in French. Every year, the library buys more than 4,000 volumes in French published in foreign francophone countries and more than 1,000 volumes published in French in Canada. We generally buy everything in print so that our students and researchers have access to it.

The library also includes two collections linked to the research centres I just mentioned: that of the Modern Language Centre contains approximately 4,000 works on second-language teaching and learning, and that of the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne, which has more than 1,000 works on minority language and francophone issues in Canada.

To conclude, the University of Toronto is truly an international-level academic, intellectual and scientific environment. It offers considerable opportunities to students, society in general and the university world in French to develop and acquire knowledge.

We think our efforts to promote French and bilingualism in the context in which we operate—I would recall that the vast majority of our students speak a language other than English and French—could benefit from increased federal government financial support, mainly through scholarships for our master's and doctoral-level students who wish to specialize in various fields, including French. We also hope to see funding for research in the social sciences and humanities increased. That will be one way for us to help our researchers continue conducting research and to benefit society in general as a result, including people who are interested in the French language.

We also hope that the federal-provincial agreements on official languages will be extended and reinforced because our research centres benefit from them, in particular the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne, which receives federal government grants. This is essential for the continuation of its activities.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, sir, for your opening address.

We'll now continue on with Ms. Kassi, from the UQO.

[Bernadette Kassi, Director, Arts Module, Department of Language Studies, Université du Québec en Outaouais]

Mr. Chairman, committee members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this opportunity to express my university's vision of federal government support for universities in promoting bilingualism in Canada.

After briefly introducing my university, I will then discuss the federal funding it receives and the teaching programs it offers, then address a few initiatives that have been taken to develop the minority communities and second-language learning. Lastly, I will ask the federal government to support projects designed to increase the success rate of action taken to reinforce bilingualism in the federal public service.

The UQO is a francophone university institution that trains nearly 5,500 students by offering them nearly 100 study options in the undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels, in fields as diverse as business administration, nursing, accounting, information technologies and computer engineering, industrial relations, social sciences and social work, psychoeducation and psychology, the arts and heritage, as well as language studies. Our university also houses the Centre de recherche en technologies langagières, the CRTL, which was founded in 2003 and opened in the spring of 2006, in partnership with the Translation Bureau and the National Research Council of Canada.

Federal funding in support of CRTL's activities has been as follows over the years: $9.2 million from Canada Economic Development for the Quebec regions to UQO for the construction of the CRTL building, which also houses the department of language studies; $2 million a year from the National Research Council of Canada, one of CRTL's three partners; approximately $450,000 from 2004 to 2006 to complete and the distribute the technological roadmap for the Canadian language industry; and, lastly, approximately $100,000 received from Canadian Heritage in 2008-2009 for a project in the field of religious archives.

These various items of support funding have been of capital importance to UQO and the CRTL, given the central role that this research centre intends to play in the language industry, and, especially, in the development of the industrial cluster of the National Capital Region.

It should be noted here that, according to Industry Canada:

Overall, the Canadian language industry represented a GDP of $2.7 billion in 2004. Expressed in real terms or 1997 dollars, this is equivalent to $2.3 billion, or 0.2% of the Canadian economy. Some 51,700 jobs can be attributed to the language industry in 2004. Lastly, federal and regional government coffers benefited from net contributions of $764.9 million and $215.3 million, respectively.

It should also be recalled that UQO is a francophone institution located in a francophone province, Quebec, which excludes it from all provincial funding for minority official language community development. And yet UQO's location, in a border area with Ontario, a majority anglophone province, gives it contradictory status as a result of which it receives no additional public funding. However, although the University of Ottawa defines itself as a bilingual university with “very specific objectives” such as the promotion of bilingualism and development of minority francophone communities—that is, in Ontario—we can only note that it mainly serves the same francophone populations as the UQO, that is the pool of nearly one million francophones in the Quebec Outaouais and eastern Ontario region, a strong majority of whom are Quebeckers. And yet, unlike its Ontario counterpart, the UQO receives no provincial or federal funding to encourage the retention of francophone students or the development of anglophone minority communities because it falls within the jurisdiction of a francophone province.

This precisely illustrates the “atypical [status] of the Outaouais region, particularly with regard to its proximity to Ontario [and especially the] proximity of two different education systems [with two equally different funding arrangements] whose ability to adjust is being tested,” as Ms. Nicole Boutin, Chair of the Conseil supérieur de l'éducation, noted on her recent visit to the region on November 13, 2008.

Despite the UQO's francophone character, as outlined in its recently adopted language policy, there is an institutional will to develop bilingual and multilingual programs, provided the support of the federal and provincial governments is consistent with this young university's development objectives.

We already offer undergraduate programs in translation and writing—translation from English to French—and a master's program in second-language instruction—French, English and Spanish—and we are preparing a master's program in language and technology studies, a program that is not yet completed. In addition, the Department of Language Studies intends to establish a language school that would offer effective language training to anglophones wishing to learn French in an immersion context.

Most of the experts and witnesses who have preceded me unanimously agree on one fact: starting second-language learning in primary and secondary school is an excellent strategy. However, adults can also learn a second language, provided they use teaching methods that are quite different from those used with children.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the AUCC, believes that “universities should work toward improving bilingualism in Canada by providing opportunities within their own institutions for the development of bilingual competence.”

The UQO offers immersion programs in a francophone university setting for anglophone students who wish to learn French as a second language. The combination of courses, extra-curricular activities in French and the francophone environment is a lever for making second-language learning a living experience for these anglophone students.

In addition, contrary to some still widespread beliefs, the majority anglophone environment of so-called bilingual institutions is not conducive to promoting proficiency in the second language, French, among students from secondary immersion programs. A second language is acquired more quickly and readily at a fully bilingual immersion site.

The UQO believes that the federal government would do well to invest more in funding for postsecondary institutions if it wants to achieve the main purposes of the Official Languages Act, by ensuring that the public service succession is qualified and effective in at least the two official languages. The representatives of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada also recalled that “universities have an important role to play in promoting and further developing bilingual competence in Canadian society.”

But how to achieve that praiseworthy objective? According to the UQO, it can be achieved by:

- promoting research and the language industry through its financial support for the CRTL, the Centre de recherche en technologies langagières;

- by funding research into official languages and bilingualism, the languages and literatures of the world and cultural diversity, even multilingualism; learning a number of languages, including the official languages, is a fundamentally important issue for Canada, which moreover is very proud of its cultural diversity;

- and, lastly, by funding French immersion programs at the UQO and other university institutions offering a fully francophone environment, an ideal framework for French second-language learning by anglophone public servants, instead of French courses given in their offices a few hours a week. How can they assimilate the second language by remaining in a majority anglophone context on a day-to-day basis?

The above observations clearly show that the federal government will not achieve decisive results if it continues to invest in educational formats that produce no results in the short or long terms.

In conclusion, I would say that the UQO is definitely a unilingual francophone university, but it offers enormous second-language learning opportunities in a total immersion context that would help reduce dissatisfaction with current programs designed to teach anglophone federal public servants French pursuant to the Official Languages Act.

In view of the fact that all experts agree that the best time to learn languages is before university, that adults can learn a second language, but by using a teaching method suited to them, and that there is an urgent need to improve the language proficiency levels of current federal public servants, we believe that investing in immersion training for a number of weeks in a totally francophone environment, such as that at the UQO, would help the public service solve the bilingualism problem in the short and medium terms, while establishing strategies for future generations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Kassi.

Without further ado, we'll start with Ms. Rodriguez.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Mr. Labrie and Ms. Kassi. Welcome. I am very pleased that you are here with us.

Mr. Labrie, I'm going to speak to you first. I heard your statistics concerning francophones and I found them somewhat surprising. I'm curious. I'm of Argentinian extraction, and my mother tongue is Spanish. I speak French at home. Based on your statistics, who am I?

[Normand Labrie]

The only figure we have at the University of Toronto is the figure on mother tongue. When students file an admission application, they have to state their mother tongue. That's the only figure we have.

As I said, we no doubt have more francophones than our figures indicate.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Based on your statistics, I wouldn't be—

[Normand Labrie]

We don't ask people for information on how they view themselves, how they identify themselves.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

So, based on your statistics, I wouldn't be francophone.

[Normand Labrie]

You wouldn't be according to the statistics in the data bases of the University of Toronto. However, you would be according to our integration notions.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

You said that 60% of people who complete their studies in French get jobs in the labour market in the first year. That's a much higher rate than in the case of those who complete their studies in English. How do you explain that?

[Normand Labrie]

There's a shortage of French second-language teachers in general. There are also needs in the area of French mother tongue instruction. Education graduates, those with a bachelor's degree in education who want to become teachers, very often find jobs because there is a shortage—

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

They mainly find jobs in minority areas, in the francophone communities in the country?

[Normand Labrie]

That's a study by the Ontario College of Teachers. That includes students who have training in French second-language instruction and French mother tongue education. That 70% figure applies to both groups who find permanent jobs in the first year after graduation.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Do you know whether those people stay, remain in the Toronto region, or whether they work across the country?

[Normand Labrie]

We have enormous shortages of French second-language teachers in Toronto. Our Toronto graduates find jobs in the region. There are a lot of young people who come from elsewhere and who live in Toronto to teach French.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Are there links between your university and the francophone community?

[Normand Labrie]

There are very strong links, especially through research centres such as the Centre de recherche en éducation franco-ontarienne, which has been in existence for more than 30 years. There are links. We conduct research on francophones, but also with francophones.

We've worked everywhere in Canada, particularly in Acadia, with teams from the Université de Moncton. This is research that very often includes the communities. There are organic ties that exist and that are very strong.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

These are mainly professional ties? There are no informal ties, such as the organization of activities or festivals, in particular, to integrate the university into the community.

[Normand Labrie]

We do a lot of things together. I could mention a research project that was started by the Association des femmes africaines francophones de Toronto, which wanted to further integrate women in the schools. We formed a partnership with them. We helped that association fit into the school fabric, and at the same time analyze what was going on and all the problems they were having in moving toward that objective.

That's the kind of research activity that involves the community. The members of the centre are personally involved in the francophone community as members of the board of directors of the Centre francophone de Toronto, for example. We have quite strong personal involvements.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Turning to you, Ms. Kassi, do you have any agreements or exchange programs with anglophone universities across the country?

[Bernadette Kassi]

We have agreements with most Canadian universities for students wishing to take courses for a semester or two. There is even a scholarship program that enables them to go outside Canada.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Is there a program that enables anglophone students across the country to come and study at your institution, for example?

[Bernadette Kassi]

No, we don't have that kind of agreement for the moment because the program we offer, at the department of language studies, for example, is an English-to-French translation program.

So if anglophone students come and study at our institution, they have to be in a position where they already master French in their curriculum so that they can enter the courses we offer in our programs, which is not the case at this time.

That's what we want to develop to enable those students to spend a semester or two of their program at the UQO.