Official Languages Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2009

[Marie-France Kenny]

There are problems, and I agree on that. However, there are ways to solve those problems. I go back to the example of Regina. I'm from that city and that's where I worked for a federal Crown corporation. Obviously, if you look for a bilingual chartered accountant in Regina only, you have access to a fairly limited pool. However, if you go further afield, in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, where there is a francophone population, it becomes a lot easier.

Will there be relocation fees to pay? Absolutely. However, you have to consider what it costs to put a unilingual employee into a designated bilingual position. Here we're talking about language training that the employee will have to take and about the success rate, the number of years during which the employee will not be able to offer the service or to supervise, if the employee is a supervisor. I would say that, compared to all those costs, the relocation costs for a person who comes to settle in Regina are quite low.

To that, I would add that we in the regions are paying the cost—and the expression is carefully chosen in this case—of this situation, that is to say of the shortage of bilingual employees. The big stealer of employees in our francophone communities is the federal government. We obviously can't afford to offer the salaries, working conditions and 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. work schedules that the federal government offers. I'm going to finish that incidental remark here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

We sympathize with you. I can tell you that the politicians understand you.

[Marie-France Kenny]

We're on the verge of charging referral fees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Now we'll turn to Ms. O'Neill-Gordon.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome. We're happy to have you here this morning.

As a New Brunswicker and coming from a bilingual country, I was happy to hear you note how much work Premier Lord did in bringing bilingualism to the forefront. I know that New Brunswickers appreciate all that he has done.

It's kind of disappointing right now to me as a former teacher to see core French taken out of the kindergarten and grades one and two. From my years in the classroom I know how much they enjoyed it and how much they learned, but that's neither here or there.

In your talk and in your report you mentioned that we should give more powers to the Commissioner of Official Languages; for example, he should be able to request corrective measures. How exactly would the Commissioner of Official Languages be able to impose these corrective measures and what kinds of measures are we talking about?

[Marie-France Kenny]

We didn't go into detail, because for one thing we don't think we have all the solutions, and we don't think we should be providing any solution without consulting the key stakeholders in this. The other thing is we don't have either the resources--the financial and the human resources--or the expertise to dig out everything that needs to be done, nor do we think we should be doing it by ourselves. We think it's a societal thing we should be looking at. What we're asking is to explore the possibility of giving the commissioner more powers.

As I mentioned earlier, if I did something to contravene the act, then the commissioner should come and see me and say “you did this and this is how you should be correcting”, and if I don't correct, then he can impose sanctions. As for the way it will come out, it's up to all of us as a society to sit down and discuss the possible solutions.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

As we know, and as you mentioned, over the 40 years we see that more and more things could have been done, but as a New Brunswicker I feel that in the last 10 years more things have been coming together to make our area much more bilingual.

Can you focus not just on New Brunswick, but on telling us what things have we really focused on and where we see some changes in making Canada, and New Brunswick especially, more bilingual?

[Marie-France Kenny]

I lived in New Brunswick for several years, so I'm quite familiar with New Brunswick. My father is from New Brunswick. He's a francophone Acadian from New Brunswick.

There have been several improvements, I will say. Just the recognition of New Brunswick as a bilingual province is great. We saw the World Acadian Congress this summer. I was there. It was quite an event. So there is some progress being made.

There are still quite a few gaps. Our beef, if I can use that term this morning, is that it has been 40 years. I don't know the statistics. I'm sure some of my colleagues would. How many of those complaints were filed by anglophones and how many by francophones?

When it was created, the Official Languages Act was meant to create equal status for English and French. Is equal status 99% of the time getting service in English and 75% of the time getting service in French? As I said, it's a law. When we decided that everybody needed to wear their seat belts, we didn't say that 75% of the time you need to wear it and 25% of the time you don't. The day after the law came in, I think we gave a one-month heads-up that it was coming in and we were giving warnings. But after that one month was up, that was it. If you got caught, you got fined.

That's what we're saying. Why did we not apply the same rigour to the Official Languages Act as we would to any other act in this country? As Canadian citizens, are we going to settle with the bare minimum--and sometimes not even the bare minimum--for 40 more years? Are we going to be back here in 10 years saying the same thing?

Canadian citizens are in favour of linguistic duality, at 77%, and this is the biggest opening we've ever seen. This is the time to make these changes. This is the time. I think that as a society we need to.

If I may talk about the Olympics, we've talked about the Olympics at length. I think the Olympics are great. What I'm hearing--me personally as a francophone citizen, not the FCFA--is that international communities are coming and we need to show them how we can greet them and how they can be made welcome. For 40 years I've lived in this country and we haven't made any effort at the Vancouver airport to provide me with services. So it's telling me that as a Canadian people we are valuing more the guy from France than we are me, the francophone who's been contributing all these years, the businesswoman who's been here all these years and paying income tax. That's the message we're getting.

For me, it's all a question of respect and equity, nothing more and nothing less. We don't want anything more than what's given to any other Canadian citizen in this country, but we don't want anything less either.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.O'Neill-Gordon

Now we'll move to what will probably be our last member to speak before the bell.

I take this opportunity to thank you. Forty years! You have been an important player over the past 40 years. I'm sure committee members join with me in congratulating you.

[Marie-France Kenny]

We weren't born yet.

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

You've just been had.

[Marie-France Kenny]

Pardon me, that was too tempting.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

You were at the symposium that was held with the commissioner. It was mentioned how much the act had helped shape the Canadian identity and, to a certain degree, contributed to national unity, and made it so that francophones feel at ease across the country. So that's not negligible despite the stumbling blocks. I think you've shown your passion.

We'll continue with Mr. Nadeau, who will probably have the last word.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today I won't be sharing my time with Mr. Petit. I'm sorry.

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

He never shares.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We're talking about political will, about how much this costs, about how much money you need. I remember the report of the Fédération de la jeunesse canadienne française, which was written by Roger Bernard. The title was “Vision d'avenir” and, if I'm not mistaken, that was 1990. In four volumes, he painted a picture of the francophone community at that time. Among other things, he emphasized that money is always a consideration in the official languages issue because the political will is not in place. If you put this in the contemporary context, if the A H1N1 virus is important, we invest the necessary money so that all citizens who want to be vaccinated can be vaccinated, regardless of how much it costs. It's important; it's a priority.

In what you've presented us today, there is this vision for fighting these old demons that ask how much it costs and what return it ultimately provides. We know that the effort the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne has made since it was founded in the early 1970s has been to ensure the vitality of the communities against that very tough Canadian evil called assimilation and disappearance of the French fact. Today in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and even in certain other regions closer to Quebec, such as New Brunswick and Ontario, people have difficulty finding people who speak French. There are even some who have French family names but who no longer speak French as a result of assimilation, because governments have shut down schools and the whole question of returning schools management to francophones in all provinces is very recent. The federal government has also let matters ride and never made sure the French fact was respected across the country, except recently when this was established. In Saskatchewan, I know from having worked there, that there were 63 French-language schools in 1931—that goes back to the time of Émilie Bordeleau. The Anderson government, a Conservative government, had abolished the French-language schools at the time and they did not come back until 1995, 64 years later. At that time, they were only able to open eight schools.

That's what we're dealing with. That's the reality. So I'm going to ask you this. What are the priorities where we have to hammer in a nail and then hammer in the next one so that this structure of the French fact can be solid and lasting in English Canada and across Canada as a whole? What are the areas where you suggest that we as parliamentarians should rectify the situation immediately?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Governance, regulations and consultation. Enhanced powers for the commissioner are important, but if we begin by resolving all that, there will probably be less of a need for enhanced powers because we'll be complying with the act.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

So you're saying governance, consultation and...?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Regulations.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

And when you say regulations, I assume we're talking about the Official Languages Act?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Yes.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Which needs a backbone.

[Marie-France Kenny]

There's the 5% and the supervision question. There is all the regulation that decides who will have services, when, where and how. This part is very complex and very much separate, whereas the act is intended as a whole and the parts of the act are highly interdependent. Let's look at them as interdependent parts and create regulations that are universal rather than separate regulations.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

In that context, from what I heard at the start of your presentation, the entire question of institutions—to clearly define the terms, in my opinion, a school is an institution—must be considered for those regulations to be effective. That's what I understand. It's not a matter of statistics.