Official Languages Committee on May 28th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.

I would also like to thank you for making your preliminary report available, as we ourselves are into our own report on the same topic. We'll be reviewing it next week, so we'll be able to include your analysis and great work in our own report. We want to thank you for that.

Also, thank you for raising this issue in your report, which you presented earlier.

Without any delay, we'll start with the four-minute round so we can be on time.

Mr. Jean-Claude D'Amours.

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

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Commissioner.

You stated in your opening remarks that, and I quote:

Professors and university administrators involved in second-language programs say that leadership and commitment from the top are critical...

"Leadership" is the key word. This applies to both universities and post-secondary learning institutions. Furthermore, I feel that the federal government should also set the tone. Universities can't be the only leader, the federal government has to be a leader as well. If the federal government sets the tone through its public service programs, for example, there will automatically be movement in the universities.

You stated that additional costs could be involved but this could also be a business opportunity for these universities. If there were some measure of obligation or if the federal government were to assume clear leadership by stating that bilingualism is the order of the day... Some universities or post-secondary learning institutions have already gone ahead and are already offering training in a second language.

If these institutions are already in that position, they will certainly see increasing opportunities, business opportunities, that is, the ability to attract more students. That being said, it is a good thing to state that leadership from the top in colleges and universities is important. If the federal government were to take leadership in this area, do you not think that this would provide a good part of the leadership required to provide the tools, or some degree of motivation that the universities need to offer more proactive learning in a second language?

[Graham Fraser]

The federal government is certainly playing a more and more important role. With public service renewal, in the future, 20,000 positions will be available in the public service every year. I know that this message was strongly communicated by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Kevin Lynch, who met with the university presidents and gave them a very clear message.

However, I also absolutely agree with you that the federal government should send more messages to university presidents, to universities, to students, to parents, to the effect that linguistic duality is an important value in Canada and that in uncertain times for employment, bilingualism is essential to advance in Canada's public service. The Government of Canada is increasingly becoming an employer of choice at a time when the sector of high finance no longer has the status it held three years ago as an employer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you Mr. D'Amours.

Mr. Nadeau, you have the floor.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Fraser, I'd like to discuss three subjects with you.

First of all, would you agree to say that learning a second language should be encouraged at the elementary and secondary levels first and foremost? With regard to the question before us right now, that is requiring bilingualism in the public service, as soon as people are hired, shouldn't we be offering more substantial training than the forced core French program?

We know that this comes under provincial and school board jurisdiction. The latter are abolishing programs and creating others. Sometimes, provincial authorities let them be. I'm speaking primarily of anglophone provinces.

Now let me throw out a question to you here. Would you agree when I say that students who have English as a first language should register for programs offered in French as a first language through universities in primarily francophone milieux, in order to learn French, improve and work in that language?

Finally, if perfect bilingualism were a criterion for employment in the federal public service, wouldn't that be an incentive for universities? They could require that students who want to work in the public service follow English and French programs in order to be able to function in this system.

You have the floor.

[Graham Fraser]

I will start by answering your last question. I'm not prepared to make bilingualism an essential criterion for employment in the public service without having some guarantee that every Canadian could have fair access to high-quality training in a second language.

I'm not talking only about anglophone provinces. According to the Public Service Commission of Canada, for the first time, there is now an increase in the need for English-language training for new francophone public servants who are entering the public service and who do not have the English-language skills they need. So this is valid for both sides of the linguistic divide.

Learning a language at an early age is certainly easier. However, this requires a series of incentives. I think that the federal government can be an incentive-maker for universities and it can communicate that message. If second-language learning is valued by universities, that will encourage high school students to learn it too.

I would have something else to add. I often talk about inconsistencies. The fact that universities often don't make a distinction between students who've gone through a basic French program and those who've been in immersion, with exceptions such as the specific programs discussed here, there is some inconsistency; they only take into account the grades. I've talked to high school students whose teachers had encouraged them to choose the core French program exam rather than the immersion because it was easier.

You'll ace it.

So universities that don't make a distinction between a high-quality program and a less demanding program are thus encouraging mediocrity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Godin, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are doing a study on bilingualism at the post-secondary level. The comment that we hear from representatives of universities is that for all intents and purposes, it is already too late when students reach that level. Unless I misunderstood them—and we will see when the report is drafted—my impression is that second language learning has to start earlier. We are not prepared to say to someone that he has to be bilingual overnight otherwise he will not get a job, because we have to give people a chance to learn. You talked about encouragement.

Secondly, could the government not offer to pay part of university tuition in return for a student learning another language? That would be an incentive.

Secondly, if students do take a university language course, they would have to obtain credits. If the credits count toward their degree, it would be a plus for them to register for a language course, but if the language course is not credited, it is not worth it.

Thirdly, the government should promote bilingualism and tell people who intend to work for the public service that that is the way to go and that is the way things work.

I was very disappointed in a decision by the New Brunswick government. You may say that this is provincial jurisdiction, but you took the trouble to include this in your report, so it stands to reason that you are interested in this. This is the first time that I saw such a reaction in my province or elsewhere in the country. Three hundred and fifty anglophones demonstrated in front of the legislature in Fredericton to say that their rights were violated and that they wanted their children to learn a second language. There are countries where people learn up to six languages, where this is not an obstacle at all. Learning three or four languages is something beautiful, it is a benefit, a gift. I am happy to speak two languages even though I don't speak either one perfectly, Commissioner, but that does not bother me because I am able to communicate with people.

So the New Brunswick government took a big step backward. I am completely against this decision—I have said so publicly—to eliminate early immersion and offer it starting in grade 6 only. I think that the government does not understand the importance of bilingualism among the largest employers in the country. And I think that people should not be learning a second language on the job; they should be learning it in school. We have schools and universities where we should be learning. That is where learning takes place, not after you have gotten a job.

[Graham Fraser]

Mr. Chairman, the member's suggestions seem very interesting to me.

I am reluctant to say one size fits all. I think there are all kinds of ways to learn a second language. I learned French during my summer jobs when I was in university, and that changed my life. It is as simple as that. I was finished high school and immersion did not exist in those days. So I hesitate to say that there is only one way to learn other languages. What is important is to have the largest possible number of options. I have noted that in Europe, they have the Erasmus program through which the European Community provides bursaries to the university students so that they can spend a year or more in another institution in order to learn another European language.

I would ask Mr. Goldenberg to describe briefly what we discovered regarding the number of programs that already exist here.

[Mark Goldenberg, Consultant, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Very briefly, there are various ways of offering second language learning at the university level. We have bilingual institutions as the commissioner mentioned. Some offer a whole range of programs in those languages while others offer certain programs in certain disciplines. There are universities that have started to offer second language training courses related to the content and vocabulary of the students' academic discipline and career choice. Students like that better. There are universities that have started to offer some courses in the students' second language, more or less to continue to offer the experience of immersion that they had at the elementary and secondary level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you for that listing.

I give the floor to Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your preliminary report, Mr. Fraser.

Thank you very much for this. I have a suggestion and then a question.

My suggestion is that one of the things you might include in your final report is a greater elucidation of the need for the Government of Canada to have bilingual graduates from Canadian universities. It's not something that I see in this report. You have a section titled “Need and Demand”, so it might be a good area in which to slot the fact that we have a huge need for bilingual graduates from Canadian universities. It's not just a stick issue; it's also a carrot issue.

We are the largest employer in the country. We directly employ 260,000 public servants, and if you include the armed forces and crown corporations and federal agencies, that number is well into the 400,000 range. We are the largest hirer. We hire 10,000 people into the public service alone, every year, the equivalent of a General Motors every single year. In fact, we hire more than the payroll of all the employees of General Motors every year. In fact, in the next decade we are going to likely hire close to 100,000 new public servants. These are great jobs. They're well-paying jobs that provide the stability that only a government can, and they include defined benefit pensions, which obviously is a big issue right now. Yet we're not getting the university graduates we need from Canadian universities. So I think this is certainly an area that needs to be really emphasized in the final report because I think it will highlight to universities and to younger Canadians that there is this employer that needs them to come out of university with the knowledge of both official languages.

That's my comment.

My question is at this stage--I know you haven't finished your report--can you tell us the top one or two things that our government could do to get universities in Canada, get colleges, to produce a greater number of bilingual graduates? What are the number one or two things that we as a government can do to encourage that?

[Graham Fraser]

First of all, let me reinforce what you said in your preliminary remarks. I think we will definitely take note of your suggestion to spell out the importance of the federal government as an employer of choice. The federal government is going to be ever more an employer of choice in the current economic context, where all of a sudden being a policy analyst for the federal government may acquire a certain appeal that being a hedge fund manager no longer has. So there is going to be a continuing demand, as you say, for people who master both official languages.

In terms of concrete things that the federal government can do, one of them is to much more clearly deliver that message to universities, to students, to parents, to secondary schools. One of the things that I think people tend to neglect, and certainly I don't, is that often the key decision-making period is when adolescents are 14. That's when they are looking at what courses they need for high school, what is the university looking for, so that's when they are deciding whether they should keep studying French or take something else. What's the value added for the student who is 14? That message should not be limited to the Clerk of the Privy Council going and speaking to what's called the G13, the thirteen major research universities. It has got to be a message that is delivered in as accessible a way as possible to families and students in grade 9 or 10.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Commissioner. We can certainly work in conjunction toward promoting a leadership role for the federal government in the second-language continuum.

That brings to an end our work here this morning.

Thank you for your presence, Commissioner. It is always greatly appreciated.

We will see you again next week for the consideration of the report.

The meeting is adjourned.