Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, I would first like to thank you for having invited us to appear this morning as part of your study on the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality. We are coming to the roadmap's halfway point and we absolutely need to take this time to look back on what has been done and especially the approach that was taken, in order to make the adjustments needed between now and 2013. In preparing our presentation, and in order to make thoughtful comments and assist you in your study, we consulted with the 40 member organizations of the Leaders Forum, which is working on implementing the community strategic plan. That plan arose from the 2007 Francophone and Acadian Community Summit.
The government launched its Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality in June 2008, however, it did not set the new course as we had been hoping for in terms of strengthening the social, economic and cultural vitality of our communities. Nevertheless, the roadmap was a significant initiative. Investments totalling $1.1 billion were announced, representing an increase of $400 million over the Official Languages Action Plan. The roadmap helped sustain most of the initiatives started under the action plan. A greater number of departments and development sectors were targeted by the roadmap. Culture and youth were identified as priority sectors. Investments made in education, health and justice were increased. If the strength of the roadmap was to emphasize services to the public, its weakness came from leaving behind the groups that create and deliver those services. There was no increase in the support given to communities and organizations that create and instil a sense of community living in French.
In a context where the government, in the Speech from the Throne, has spelled out its commitment to further work with local organizations, one of the priorities should be to strengthen the capacity of local organizations to carry out their community missions and offer services to the public, if the roadmap is to become an out-and-out success. That is a priority for both us and the government.
That isn't the only success factor. I would now like to address the main issue that we would like to talk to you about today, i.e. the governance of the roadmap. The greatest challenges are ones of clarity and transparency. To date, it is especially difficult to know what has been invested where, when and by whom. There is still no public document containing a breakdown of roadmap investments by department, year and initiative. Our primary and almost sole source of information is the Official Languages Secretariat website, which presents only the announcements that have already been made. Furthermore, the recurrent funding of the various departments in terms of official languages is not announced and not part of the available data. The situation is not made any easier by the fact that few departments specifically mention the roadmap or official languages in their financial planning. More often than not, you have to try and read between the lines. Added to that is the fact that funding is announced once a year, which makes it particularly difficult to do any short, medium or long-term planning. There is also a lack of clarity with regard to expected results, performance indicators and the linkages among departments or between departments and communities.
We have tried to find out more about how the roadmap is presented in departmental reports on plans and priorities. The only department we currently have information on is Canadian Heritage. The department presents various measures related to the implementation of the roadmap, the renewal of federal and provincial agreements, cooperation agreements with the communities and ongoing initiatives to improve the grants and contributions approval and allocation procedures. Those activities have their own performance measurement frameworks, which include results and indicators. Among other things, the department measures the satisfaction of OLMCs with program access and services provided by the community organizations, as well as the confidence of OLMC members with regard to the promotion of our community.
How did they define those indicators? How will they consult with the communities on the achievement of those results?
Moreover, will they be assessing the impact, the work done by communities, or the impact of government funding? I do want to underscore that there have been improvements in terms of linkages. For example, if you look at the Horizontal Results-based Management and Accountability Framework, which was developed last year for the Roadmap, you will find that the governance structure now includes a dialogue component with the official language minority communities. We are proud to have contributed to that governance structure and are looking forward to the first day of dialogue with the communities. The event will be held in May and attended by representatives of 15 departments and 40 francophone organizations.
It needs to be said, however, that such a day of dialogue was held at least once a year under the Official Languages Action Plan, with senior executives of federal institutions in attendance. This day of dialogue, which was called for by the FCFA, is the first opportunity to hold discussions between the institutions targeted by the Roadmap and the communities.
Consultations also vary considerably from one sector to another, from one department to another. That is something that has been mentioned on a number of occasions by Commissioner Fraser and his predecessor, Dyane Adam. Part VII of the Official Languages Act and its obligation to ensure that positive measures are taken suggest that communities participate in all stages of the development, implementation and evaluation of the policies and programs that are of concern to them.
We, like the government, want the investments made under the Roadmap to produce significant results for Canadians who want to live and grow in French. We believe that the challenges we have pointed out with regard to governance can be overcome through better coordination. As we have indicated in our document entitled La mise en oeuvre de la Loi sur les langues officielles: une nouvelle approche - une nouvelle vision [the implementation of the Official Languages Act: a new approach, a new vision], the success of a comprehensive approach depends on the coordination of a central institution that has an authority over the entire federal machinery of government.
Such coordination would ensure that the federal institutions under the Roadmap take their responsibilities into account in their budget planning, report on plans and priorities and performance reports. That would lead to a better overall profile of all Roadmap investments, guarantee better linkages with provincial and territorial governments as well as with communities, and call on targeted institutions to consult with organizations and report on the coordinated efforts.
Essentially, there needs to be an active, horizontal governance structure to directly engage the key departments and agencies, and ensure strong and transparent leadership. I have often said that we wanted to be part of the solution. That is still the case. That is why, after having reviewed the implementation of the Roadmap to date, we would like to make concrete recommendations for the next steps.
First, in order to facilitate planning both for the communities and the departments, we recommend there be a template indicating how investments are being made under the Roadmap. We will come back to that. Furthermore, we know that your committee made a recommendation last fall calling on the Department of Canadian Heritage to make further use of multi-year agreements. We thank you for that and believe that the recommendation could extend to all institutions targeted by the Roadmap.
As for cooperation mechanisms with the communities, I said earlier that the Roadmap and the community strategic plan share a number of common elements. It would make sense to increase the linkages between the two. That is why we gave a detailed presentation of the community strategic plan to the members of the Interdepartmental Policy Committee in November, and that is the reason why we will be discussing implementation of the plan with the 15 departments attending the day of dialogue in May.
I hope that there will be more opportunities for discussion among the institutions targeted by the Roadmap, other departments and the communities in the future.