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.