Evidence of meeting #31 for Official Languages in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was organizations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Mrs. Isabelle Dumas
Good morning.
Honourable members,
I see a quorum.
I must inform members that the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of the chair. The clerk cannot receive other types of motions, cannot entertain points of order, nor participate in debate.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair must be a member of the government party.
I am ready to receive motions to that effect.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
I move that Mr. Blaney be chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
It has been moved by Mr. Chong that Mr. Blaney be elected as chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions?
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
Before inviting Mr. Blaney to take the chair, if the committee wishes, we will now proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.
I am now prepared to receive motions for first vice-chair.
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
I has been moved by Mr. Rodriguez that Ms. Zarac be elected first vice-chair of the committee.
Are there any other motions?
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the second vice-chair must be a member of an opposition party other than the official opposition.
I am now prepared to receive motions.
Mr. Nadeau.
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
It has been moved by Mr. Nadeau that Mr. Godin be elected second vice-chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions?
(Motion agreed to)
9:05 a.m.
The Clerk
I now invite Mr. Blaney to take the chair.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
Good morning everyone and thank you for your confidence in me.
This morning, we have the opportunity to resume where we had left off at our last meeting. We were talking about the effect of delays in approvals and disbursements on organizations funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Somewhat by chance, we have with us here this morning representatives of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, Ms. Marie-France Kenny and Ms. Suzanne Bossé.
So, if committee members so wish, we could invite them to tell us about the situation with the Department of Canadian Heritage regarding disbursements and their consequences for organizations.
Do all the committee members wish to so proceed?
9:05 a.m.
Some hon. members
Yes.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
I would invite the witnesses to join us. At the end of this discussion, if there is any time remaining, we could talk in camera about committee business and adopt the agenda for the parliamentary session.
On behalf of the committee members, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the newly elected president of the FCFA, Ms. Marie-France Kenny. I want to assure you of the cooperation of all committee members.
I also want to welcome Ms. Bossé.
Ms. Guay.
9:10 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I would like to add a comment, Mr. Chair. I have nothing against hearing the witnesses, but we had not been scheduled to hear from the witnesses and I have another meeting, in relation to the francophonie. I ask that we might finish by 10:30.
9:10 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
We were not supposed to hear witnesses today. This puts me in a bit of an awkward position, because a group of eight Frenchmen are supposed to be at my office shortly.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
It all depends on how much time we give our witnesses. If I understand correctly, you also want to deal with the schedule for the session do you not? The schedule has been prepared and will be distributed.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
The witnesses are here, and we need to hear what they have to say.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
We could stop at 10:30 and talk about the schedule next week.
9:10 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
In the future, I would like to know in advance if anything special is happening. It would be useful.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
9:10 a.m.
Marie-France Kenny President, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
Good morning. I want to thank you for having invited us to appear this morning to give you a follow-up on funding to organizations serving francophone and Acadian communities in Canada. I am here today with Suzanne Bossé, who is our director general. We will be pleased to answer your questions at the end of our presentation.
When we first appeared before you last June—my predecessor Lise Routhier-Boudreau was here—it was to bring your attention to a situation we considered alarming. At that time, two months after the beginning of the fiscal year, 75% of the provincial and territorial umbrella organizations were still awaiting confirmation of how much funding they would get for programming for 2009-2010, and five of those organizations had not yet received the 25% advance that is usually paid out while waiting for funding confirmation.
You had taken the situation very seriously, as well as its impact on community development, and you called us here this morning to give you an update on the situation three months after we first sounded the alarm.
We have come this morning with well-documented and enlightening data. In fact, over the past month, we have developed and administered a poll to our community organizations in order to find out more about the current situation regarding funding delays and their impact. This time, we expanded our study to the entire francophone and Acadian community network, which includes approximately 600 organizations.
In total, 81 organizations responded to our poll, which gave us a sampling of approximately 13.5%. Since this was an online survey, this is a good sampling and a good response rate, all the more so because among these national, provincial, territorial and local organizations, we find theatres, community newspapers, youth organizations, cultural centres, and umbrella organizations, to mention just a few.
Of the 81 respondents, 65 are funded primarily by Canadian Heritage, while the main source of federal funding for the others is Human Resources and Skills Development, Justice Canada or Health Canada.
That is the profile. Now, let's look at the situation. The first conclusion we can immediately draw: five months after the beginning of the financial year, 5% of all organizations have not received any confirmation of funding of any kind whatsoever, be it for programs or projects. Five per cent may seen small compared to the situation in June, but we should remember that this means that this 5% stands for services to which the public has no access due to a lack of resources.
The survey also taught us that most organizations received their contribution agreement in July and August. Of course, we are happy that these organizations have received funding, but we are much less happy with the impact of the months of waiting on their operations. You must understand that, in many instances, the impact continues to be felt even till now.
In total, 72% of respondents had to use a line of credit or a loan, and, since April, at least 14 of these organizations incurred $500 in interest on those lines of credit. We are talking of at least $7,000 going to banks and not to developing services in French for our communities. I want to stress that this $7,000 amount is a minimum estimate. Some organizations have incurred over $1,000 in interest charges.
I am also thinking about the long-term impact on human resources. In some cases, employees had to use their personal credit cards to pay for expenditures or give up their salary or their expense account. Furthermore, 37.5% of respondents were unable to renew an employee's contract, while 19% said that they had to let permanent staff go.
I want to share with you some of the responses. One organization told us the following:
We had to extend a project officer's temporary contract, because we hadn't yet received confirmation of Canadian Heritage's support for the project. We took that risk however because suspending the contract would have meant compromising the results. We were only told in June that Heritage Canada would no longer support the project. This project luckily had the support of provincial funding partners.
Another organization told us:
A permanent and priority position to ensure the proper operation of the association was not filled for four months after the employee's departure. Since September, another permanent position went from four days a week to three days a week.
Finally another one told us:
We encouraged some of our employees to take summer leave without pay, we reduced the hours of part-time employees and reduced the employer's contributions to permanent employee benefits.
You will agree with me that these are not the ideal conditions to improving the ability of our communities to live in French.
The poll taught us something else that's very important: a number of local organizations rely on financial support from their provincial or territorial umbrella organization while waiting for the confirmation of funding. This is a very enlightening and worrying piece of news. It is enlightening because it shows the important role that our provincial and territorial umbrella organizations play in supporting the development of services in French to people in the regions. However, it is worrying because if the umbrella organization experiences difficulties because of funding delays, the entire provincial or territorial community network is compromised.
A final element of the poll will no doubt be of interest to you: we asked respondents to tell us by what date in previous years they generally received their contribution agreement and their first payment. This allowed us to confirm on the one hand the fact that people are waiting longer this year, but also to determine that this is a systemic problem being experienced year after year. One thing is clear, our organizations do not want to experience next year what they went through this year and what they have been experiencing for years. The situation needs to change.
What is the solution? We would like to bring your attention to various considerations. First, in order to make the examination and application approval administration process easier, we should ask ourselves whether it is really necessary for all projects without exception to go through the minister's office. We know that the Department of Canadian Heritage is considering other options to resolve this issue. We have always said and we will say so again: we are not here just to talk about the problems, we want to be part of the solution and we are prepared to work with the government in order to do so.
However, we cannot ignore the problems that exist with regard to governance. In fact, the Official Languages Support Programs Branch and the regional branches of Canadian Heritage with which a number of our organizations deal are two separate entities that both come under two different assistant deputy ministers. This makes it difficult to consider, for example, creating a joint committee bringing together both the government and the FCFA to try to find solutions.
In conclusion, I want to repeat what my predecessor Lise Routhier-Boudreau said before this committee in June. At that time, she said that organizations and communities are in favour of a responsible use of public funds that produce results, but that approval delays and disbursement delays clearly hinder achieving results. I want to echo those comments and add the following information: new policy on transfer payments clearly states that risk management must not become a way to avoid risk. Allow me to quote the following excerpt from the policy:
Supporting strengthened accountability for public monies and better results for Canadians, this policy requires that transfer payments be managed in a manner that is sensitive to risks, that strikes an appropriate balance between control and flexibility, and that establishes the right combination of good management practices, streamlined administration and clear requirements for performance.
However, the current delays and desire to avoid risks are having the quite ironic result of creating risk. We are creating risk in terms of projects' success. We are creating risk in terms of the survival of community infrastructure or creating risk with regard to social and economic vitality. As we indicated in June, it makes no sense, when you're trying to stimulate the Canadian economy, to adopt an approach that is leading to job losses and undermining our community structures.
Thank you very much. I am prepared to answer any questions you may have.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
Thank you, Ms. Kenny.
We will now begin our first round with Mr. Pablo Rodriguez.
