Evidence of meeting #13 for Official Languages in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was castonguay.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:40 a.m.
Associate Professor, Joint responsibility (languages) for the Centre of Ethnic Studies, Faculty of Education, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
Who is that addressed to?
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
Could you repeat the question? Sorry, I'm not clear, Tilly.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
Do you regard the post-secondary educational institution as a good way to increase the bilingualism in your schools, in your community?
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
To the extent that those post-secondary institutions offer or require that there be language instruction.... I don't believe that in my institution, McGill University, we have any requirement for students to learn French. I don't know that this would work, either, in that institution, in terms of trying to create a requirement for it. You might be able to find other ways of creating incentives, but I doubt you'd be able to create a requirement like that. But again--
10:40 a.m.
Associate Professor, Joint responsibility (languages) for the Centre of Ethnic Studies, Faculty of Education, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
I think she's asking which university-degree language programs are offered in English universities.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
I see. I'm not an expert on that. I don't know if you know...you may know that better than I do.
10:40 a.m.
Associate Professor, Joint responsibility (languages) for the Centre of Ethnic Studies, Faculty of Education, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
If I understand correctly, it's whether to continue to support post-secondary education in minority languages, such as at UBC, that there be French teacher training programs. If you're looking at St. Boniface or places like that, yes, of course. The more places where you can...language learning is a lifetime process. I think that's something we need to remember.
If we're going to ask people to become citizens when they can speak French, you're saying they're not going to learn it in the lifelong process. It's a lifelong process to acquire skills. It means you're going to sort out who can and who can't learn French. If you come to a place and you don't have French skills at the beginning, you can get them as an adult. It's not over. There's no reason to think that. I've seen the benefits of federal support to post-secondary education outside Quebec in places like Université Sainte-Anne, Simon Fraser, the universities in Alberta. It's a place where you can live and continue in French, whether you learned French in French immersion or whether you learned French in a small school in a village or in a French neighbourhood in Winnipeg.
10:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
The only thing I would add, though, is this. And I appreciate what you're saying about the interest that people are taking in immersion and so forth. But my conclusion, I must say, is based a lot on the statistics as well. I'm not nearly as satisfied as I'd like to be with the extent to which anglophones are acquiring the French language outside Quebec. I think there's a considerably greater degree of work that needs to be done in that regard, and I wouldn't be complacent about it.
I'm not sure, Mr. Chair, if I'm allowed to relate to a previous question or wait for a forthcoming one.
10:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
In places like British Columbia and Alberta, despite the significant concern over assimilation, a legitimate one, there have been real population increases among francophones in those parts of the country, largely owing to migration--not migration arising from immigration, but migration arising from Quebec francophones who have moved out to those places. I think that reinforces the need for continued support for communities in those places. Some may return to Quebec, some may not, but at least they have a right as Quebeckers, I think.
As Quebeckers, they have the right, anywhere in Canada, to have governments—particularly the federal government, because of its legislative commitment to vitality—that create conditions whereby people can continue to live in their language, in spite of the social pressure Mr. Nadeau referred to, which is in fact problematic.
Just as an aside, I should say that my mother tongue is English, but I like speaking French. That is why I do. My wife is a Francophone immigrant—same one--
10:45 a.m.
Voices
Ah, ah!
10:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
-- and my children are in fact both Anglophone and Francophone.
10:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for Canadian Studies, As an Individual
It depends on the circumstances. They will take that into account: they will speak French in some circumstances, and English, in others.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
Thank you, Ms. O'Neill-Gordon, for sharing your time with other questions from....
Now we'll go to Monsieur Nadeau.
10:45 a.m.
Bloc
Richard Nadeau Bloc Gatineau, QC
Thank you, Mr. Blaney.
In North America, the situation is such that there is a melting pot—particularly in the United States, of course. In Canada, we have a government that is bilingual—that is to say that the public service is bilingual, but not the country. There is one province which is bilingual, on paper, and that is New Brunswick. Quebec has been a self-declared French-speaking province since Robert Bourassa introduced Bill 22, and the other provinces are English-speaking. That is the reality.
However, there is another reality as well, as I see it, and that is the reason I am in politics: there is a cancer there. It is a little like someone who has cancer, but will not acknowledge it. That cancer is ethnolinguistic assimilation—the loss of the French fact. Whether you call “flattened statistics”, negation or denial, there are certain views out there—I hear them. The fact remains that, ultimately, decade after decade, since 1951, since the censuses, the loss of the French fact has been giving an ever-increasing advantage to English. I am talking about Canada. That is the way it is in some regions of Quebec, but it is especially true for the overall picture in Canada.
I will always remember, when I went to Bellegarde, Saskatchewan, meeting a certain Mr. Cormier, who said to me—with a name like Cormier: “I'm proud to be French Canadian, even if I don't speak the language”.
My brother-in-law is a Quebecker of Irish extraction. His name is Terry Bowles. I will send him the “blues”. We have often argued. He would ask me why I was teaching French in Ontario. I asked him whether he was English, and he replied by saying that he was Irish. I asked him to speak to me in Gaelic, but he never did. He is entitled to his identity, and I, to mine. One thing is certain: our strength as a French-speaking people in North American can be attributed to the fact that we are still speaking our language. It is thanks to all of us and to our fight. It certainly is not thanks to the federal government, which allows certain provinces to shut down French-speaking schools, to assimilate people, and so on.
Louis Riel was not hanged for nothing; talk to Mr. Goldring about that. Let us not see the world through rose coloured glasses. It is important to know the facts and to face reality.
I have a question for Mr. Castonguay. What is the actual situation in terms of the loss of the French fact? In Saskatchewan, I taught at a French Canadian school. We tried to recruit students. At the time, there were 10,000 young Franco-Saskatchewanians. Of that number, we were able to recruit 1,000. But 9,000 other young Franco-Saskatchewanians were attending English schools. Even though they were rights holders, we did not have the full complement. Parents had to register their children at our school. We did not have the staff for that. This is a provincial responsibility. So, do not tell me the federal government can recruit students in French schools in order to help Franco-Saskatchewanians schools; that is just not true.
What is the situation with respect to assimilation, Mr. Castonguay?
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
10:50 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I can only answer globally, because we don't have time to go into this province by province, or even eastern Ontario versus southern Ontario, and stuff like that.
At the level of the whole of Canada, in 2006, assimilation made a difference of three million between the population speaking English as the main home language and the population speaking French as the main home language in Canada. Some 400,000 French mother-tonguers in Canada.... This is a net figure, a squashed figure. I don't know what you would call it in English. I've never heard of that before, des données écrasées, but this is an overall, global, net figure. So 400,000 French mother-tonguers reported English as the main home language. That's the level of assimilation there. In Canada, 2.4 million allophones globally reported English as the main home language. Some 200,000 reported French.
When you juggle with those figures, you come up with the gain for the English net level, overall level, of 2.8 million new recruits for the English language through linguistic assimilation in Canada in 2006--2.8 million. For French there was a loss of 400,000 francophones anglicized, but a gain of 200,000 allophones who became French speaking, for a net loss of 200,000. The difference between plus 2.8 million for English and minus 200,000 for French is 3 million. In French you would say ça fait du monde à la messe. This is not a marginal phenomenon. It has to be looked at square in the face.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
Thank you very much, Mr. Castonguay.
Thank you, Mr. Nadeau.
This morning, through the comments of our witnesses, we are seeing that each of us feels directly concerned by this issue in terms of our linguistic, cultural, and sometimes, marital identity. We have the sense that we are players determining the destiny of official language communities.
We are coming to the end of our meeting. We have completed three rounds. I am told it may be possible to extend the meeting beyond 11:00 a.m., as no other group is in need of the room. I would like members to indicate how they wish to proceed.
Would you agree to our continuing the meeting a little longer? We could have a full fourth round. Does everyone agree?
10:50 a.m.
A voice
We also have commitments.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
If we have a fourth round, that will take us to about 11:15 a.m.