Official Languages Committee on March 12th, 2009

[Nicole Thibault]

No, I don't. CMEC works very slowly, but we're very passionate to keep pushing them along.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Good.

And I suspect that may help with the teachers. I know you're trying to encourage more teachers...and you're trying to keep them.

Is there any province that's particularly negatively affected by the impact of these teachers withdrawing from French second language instruction? Is there a specific province?

[Nicole Thibault]

It's the small rural provinces especially. If you're thinking of Newfoundland and Labrador, one of their biggest dilemmas right now is that they have no specialist teachers to teach core French programs in grades 10, 11, and 12. They're actually working on distance learning so they can have two or three students from different towns online at the same time with one teacher in St. John's teaching core French.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

How are our English--

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

We'll now turn to Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Now we're going to look for some answers. We asked some questions earlier; now I want to get some answers. The ones I'm looking for are those from the institutions. You are in the training, education field. So if the government—I'm going back to that again—which is the major employer, said it needed those qualifications for its business and it gives you funding, which will help you, do you think you could succeed better?

[Greg Allain]

Yes, if I can answer you, absolutely. Funding is a major problem for universities in Canada. Since the cuts in the mid-1990s, funding really, even with cost-of-living adjustments and growth in the number of students, has vastly declined. But francophones have special needs. We were talking about small francophone universities earlier. Our association also has college-level members. We have three member federations of colleges in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, representing roughly 23,000 out of 65,000 members. Research is increasingly very important in the colleges as well.

The problem in a small francophone university in an outlying area is isolation. The professors who are at the Université Sainte-Anne, in Church Point, or Shippagan or Edmundston, who are members of our Université de Moncton, are isolated. The people at the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface are isolated. So I think there should be more funding for travel.

A professor in Montreal or Ottawa has colleagues in other universities in the same city, not far away, to conduct research with, to talk to, to go to conferences with or to do all kinds of things. At the Université Sainte-Anne, or even in Shippagan, it's quite far away. It is expensive and people don't have a lot of money to do that. That's crucial for research: more funding is necessary for travel.

Immersion was mentioned earlier. I'm simply going to add a brief comment on that subject.

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

I want to go back to that too.

[Greg Allain]

I can wait until you've spoken.

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

I'd like to ask a question about immersion. I never thought I'd see that in New Brunswick: 350 Anglophones in the street, in Fredericton, saying that they wanted schools, that they wanted to be able to learn early, not start in grade 5. Do you remember that?

I remember that Parents for French came here to tell us that there weren't enough immersion schools. I've visited all of Canada with the Standing Committee on Official Languages. We went to British Columbia, where people are really interested in French and where they would like to recruit people to teach French, the other language, a task that should supposedly be that of the government, under the Official Languages Act. We don't have the time to read it in full, but the act is clear; that's what it says.

So do you agree with me that there isn't enough money invested in immersion schools to follow up and help those people? It's the same thing on the francophone side. I'd like to hear from Ms. Thibault.

[Nicole Thibault]

There's always a demand for more immersion programs across the country. It's greatly increasing in British Columbia right now, and in Alberta. It's at the provincial level that the departments decide where they're going to offer programs and in what circumstances.

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

We're talking about funding that flows from the Official Languages Act. The government says it doesn't want to listen to what the other parties say, that it is investing money. I want to listen to you rather than the other parties. There is a problem; otherwise we wouldn't have asked you to come here. If it were working well, you wouldn't be here.

[Nicole Thibault]

If I can simply make a comment, I would say that what you've mentioned are the MOUs spread over a number of years, and these are things that are done between the provinces and the federal government, when they conduct these negotiations. We've already seen improvements since the last MOU, but we still have a way to go; that's for sure.

[Greg Allain]

I simply wanted to add something on the subject of immersion.

At CAUT, we have eight committees, and one of them is the francophone committee. Everything there is conducted in French, of course. A great deal of money has been invested in immersion. In general, that's working well. It's variable. However, where there is a big problem is that, once students have finished immersion at the primary and secondary level, there's absolutely nothing to encourage them to continue in French at the postsecondary level.

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

No, and when they enter a department, they only speak English.

[Greg Allain]

It's thought that, after primary and secondary school, they are supposed to be bilingual. It's over; they can continue their education at an anglophone university.

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

Take your test and things will be fine.

[Greg Allain]

The transition, the promotion of secondary education in French to immersion students is lacking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much for your remarks, Mr. Godin.

Thanks to our witnesses.

That completes the second round. If committee members so wish, we could do a third round and set aside some time for Mr. Godin's motion.

Without further ado, I'll ask Mr. D'Amours to go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chouinard wants to speak.

Mr. Chouinard, I'm going to give you a chance to speak, since it seems to be quite important.

[Yves Chouinard]

These are remarks for Mr. Godin.

In my presentation, I talked about the need to establish a consortium of colleges, which would enable us to be recognized as second-language training providers across Canada. We have a base in all the provinces. With a little money, we could establish this consortium and provide second-language training in accordance with the needs of Canada's public service and in the provinces.

I also want to underscore what Mr. Greg Allain said. A lot of money is invested in immersion, but some thought will have to be given to investing in francophone postsecondary institutions. The more the anglophone institutions are enhanced, the more you make those who are in immersion want to opt for them instead of our francophone institutions.

Currently in Nova Scotia, 4,000 secondary students are being trained in French and 4,000 more are rights holders, for a total of 8,000. However, there is no francophone community college. Only one program is offered at the Université Sainte-Anne. In Prince Edward Island, a small embryonic college was recently opened, but it really offers one, two or three programs. However, increasing numbers of francophones students are enrolling in French-language schools, and that's what has to be developed. At the same time, we have to develop colleges and university programs to accommodate these people.

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

Mr. Chouinard, even if a pool of francophones is interested in studying in French, if we can't offer those people programs they want to take, they may well opt for anglophone universities. We are seriously missing the boat here. As we are in the same riding, you know there are two community colleges. If you compare them to other colleges in the country, you can see they're not big. The campus of the Université de Moncton, for example, is not large, compared to others. Nevertheless, these are majority francophone places. Let's take the example of the Campbellton campus. If French-language training had not been provided in hospital care, our students would definitely have gone elsewhere to get their training. They would probably even have opted for anglophone educational institutions. If we don't have any programs, we won't get far. Even if we build them, without programs, students definitely won't stay to study in French.

[Yves Chouinard]

Absolutely. That's a problem. There's also the issue of critical mass. It should be acknowledged that, in the case of the francophone minority communities, programs have to be offered even if there aren't 20, 25 or 30 students per class. If the standard is set at that level, we'll have to shut down half of our programs in all communities, except in Ontario and New Brunswick. In British Columbia, you can expect there to be 25 students in a college program. The demand for funding is the same whether there are one or two professors for a given class or two or 30 students.

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

A little earlier, you said that immersion was one thing, but that, if we focused solely on that issue to the exclusion of our francophone institutions, we'd have another problem. There would be fewer and fewer francophones when it came to offering services. When you live in a minority setting, if you don't have the tools to develop, you won't be interested in continuing to study in your language. One of my sisters lives in Winnipeg, and my three nieces are francophones. They have an accent, but they're working hard to retain their French. On the other hand, it would definitely be more difficult if there wasn't a francophone unit, a francophone teaching institution. Francophones would be headed toward English and would ultimately go back to immersion. That's definitely not what we want.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Chouinard, do you want to make a brief comment?