Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Penni.
My name is Greg Allain. I am a sociology professor at the Université de Moncton and past president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. I am here with our president, Penni Stewart, professor at York University. Many thanks to the committee for inviting us to make a presentation on official languages this morning.
My presentation will address three points. The first point will concern the official languages role of our members at the postsecondary level.
Our members provide training through a full range of academic and professional programs in both official languages in a broad variety of minority official language communities, from Vancouver to Church Point. Many of our members provide training in the minority language. For example, we train primary and secondary school teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers and social workers, not to mention journalists, researchers, artists and so on. Our members also provide a varied range of instruction in the second official language at various levels, including the postsecondary level.
Outside Quebec, many of our members perform duties in French in official language minority communities, in university certificate, undergraduate, master's and doctoral level degree programs at colleges and universities in every province.
The second point of my presentation concerns funding. We absolutely acknowledge the central position that the two official languages occupy in Canada, and we entirely support the introduction of Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality 2008-2013: Acting for the Future, and I quote:
Both official languages, English and French, represent a great cultural wealth for Canada. As a founding and fundamental characteristic of Canadian identity and culture, linguistic duality is at the heart of the values that have forged Canada, making it a strong and united country that is open to the world.
We absolutely agree on the importance that is attached to programs for supporting and promoting official languages. However, one of the problems we are facing is funding. The very nature of postsecondary education programs requires stable, firm, funding commitments, particularly in the official language minority communities. That partly reflects their need to be recognized as equal partners, alongside programs intended for the majority communities. The latter will always risk attracting minority students, particularly if those majority language programs receive guaranteed funding.
The nature of postsecondary programs is such that they frequently require a cycle of three or four years before granting a degree. In that sense, any softer or periodic funding jeopardizes the ability of postsecondary institutions to deliver programs at all levels. Without this kind of funding and institutional commitment, programs may seem precarious to professors and students alike.
To attract highly qualified academic staff to offer these programs and thus to contribute to the minority official language communities, postsecondary institutions need the type of hiring commitment that is the standard in this area of postsecondary employment, that is to say positions that become permanent for universities and regular hires for colleges. Short-term funding programs, even those spread over five years, those agreements that we're living with right now, may not be able to attract qualified professionals in the official language minority communities. If they are able, there is a risk they will be unable to retain them.
I'm going to give you an example, then we will return to the discussion.
At the University of Moncton, the five-year agreements with the universities appear to be working quite well, but the preparation process for those agreements is very long and arduous. The other problem is that measures appear to be lacking for there to be any continuity between agreements once they expire. In other words, there is a problem of continuity to ensure continuity between agreements once they expire. At my university, the current five-year agreement has just expired. I imagine the same is true at the other New Brunswick universities. The university will send its applications out for April like all the other universities. We're told that we'll have to wait two years before we get an answer. In other words, everything that comes under that agreement is frozen, which represents a lot of things. We are reliant on Canadian Heritage and to the official language agreements. There is a kind of de facto two-year freeze, which causes a lot of uncertainty.
My sociology department has been working for three years to develop a new bachelor's degree in criminology, a field very much in demand across Canada. We get a lot of applications from students who want to take this training. The program has just been approved by all authorities and has arrived at the funding stage. Since it's a new program in a targeted field, this application is among the applications for the new five-year agreement. We're told we won't have any news for two years. It appears the province takes quite a bit of time to do its job. I don't know where the system is blocked.
The criminologist we hired developed the program and is now ready to give it, to promote it and so on. If it isn't right away, it will be next year. However, we don't have any money to pay her and we won't be getting an answer for two years. That's a major problem. We may lose that person, and program implementation will be delayed further. That's what I have to say on the funding question.
The third and final point concerns the unrecognized additional work that our members have to do with regard to official languages. Under the current funding formula, our members often face excess work to develop programs and the culture of official language minority communities. However, that excess work is not officially acknowledged or remunerated. For example, the documentary resources for teaching and research in the minority official language are frequently limited, whether it be textbooks, scientific works or electronic resources. Where they exist, books and material in French are generally more expensive.
At first, the teachers at the major francophone universities in Quebec were members of CAUT, which has been in existence since 1951, but, when the Quebec federation was established, around 1972, they obviously joined it. Consequently, only a few CAUT members are francophones. Our members work in smaller institutions, the Université de Moncton being the largest. There is also the Université Sainte-Anne, the Collège universitaire the Saint-Boniface and so on. As the libraries of the small institutions are often lacking in various areas, teachers are often required to translate teaching material not available in French. However, that additional work is not acknowledged and it undermines efforts to recruit and retain qualified teachers.
Investment is required at a number of levels. We could provide support for small publishing firms outside Quebec that translate English-language works that have no equivalent in French. People tell us to publish our own textbooks. That's what some colleagues have tried to do, but the major publishing firms are located in Quebec and are not interested in publishing works not intended specifically for Quebeckers. They say that the market outside Quebec isn't big enough. There should be support for the creation of a national consortium for the acquisition of French-language postsecondary libraries across Canada. Support could also be provided for the establishment of a pan-Canadian electronic network for universal access to electronic resources that are expanding as a result of increasing digitization. These are only a few examples, not an exhaustive list.
In conclusion, our main concern is currently the lack of firm, stable and ongoing funding for all official language programs in Canada at the postsecondary level. As I tried very briefly to show earlier, the current formula has a number of perverse effects: difficulty recruiting and retaining both students and teachers, and additional unrecognized duties required of teachers. If linguistic duality forms the very basis of our country and identity, it should be worth the trouble to provide adequate, permanent funding for programs that ensure support for and the development of the official language communities.
I will be pleased to answer your questions. Thank you very much.