Official Languages Committee on Feb. 7th, 2011

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Earlier in his remarks, Mr. St-Pierre referred to an advertisement that appeared in both official languages in the Yukon News. I got a copy of that paper. At the top of page 27, there is an advertisement published by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It seems to be a very important advertisement. It's published in French below.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

As it's in both official languages, Mr. Galipeau, that's not a problem; you can circulate it.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

In my opinion, our committee should be quite sensitive to the proposal that Mr. St-Pierre is making. If that advertisement appears there in French, it should also appear in French in L'Aurore boréale, and perhaps it should even appear with the French on top and the English below it.

The Public Health Agency of Canada and, while we're at it, all the other agencies that advertise in community newspapers should probably be told that the address of L'Aurore boréale is 3402 Strickland Street, Whitehorse, and that the postal code is Y1A 2K1. I have the telephone and fax numbers, if necessary.

I believe the message has been sent, Mr. St-Pierre.

[Régis St-Pierre]

Our paper left the presses two days earlier. That advertisement could very well have been published in our paper. In the past, we were told that there was no French-language newspaper and, later on, that we didn't publish it often enough. Sometimes the paper is published that same day.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

We're going to send the message.

Now I'm going to address the question of AFY's involvement in relations between the Yukon and Canadian governments. If I belonged to the Yukon government, I would think that having you at the table would provide my team with an additional asset.

If you were part of the team until 2008, but not subsequently—

[Régis St-Pierre]

The last round of negotiations was the one in 2003.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

In 2003, you were part of the team, but not subsequently. Did an incident occur in 2003 that caused the government to change its mind and decide to stop inviting you?

[Régis St-Pierre]

Yes, you've guessed it.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

I said nothing. I just asked a question.

[Régis St-Pierre]

You're right to ask yourself the question.

During the term of the last agreement—the agreement is usually for a term of four to five years—the 1998-2003 agreement, there were two applications between 1999 and 2001 under the Court Challenges Program. Twelve years earlier we had negotiated for a genuine implementation of certain programs and that was not done. So we filed an application, which was legitimate. The federal government, through its program, subsequently had to decide whether the application was valid or not. It told us that our application was very valid and that it accepted it 100%.

As regards the application concerning education, we had to meet with the school board, which was the representative starting in December 2007. And then, as you know, there was the legal proceeding.

We are currently the representative for French-language services and we are pursuing a mediation process. So was it for those reasons? I can tell you what happened. All our information is public. It is contained in our annual reports and appears on our website: afy.yk.ca. You can access it if you want to know about our activities, what's going on or if you want to place an advertisement in our paper. We are also in the social media. All that is public. We aren't hiding.

We met with the Yukon premier and asked him whether he was going to make a commitment. The premier gave us his work. He told us that he was making a commitment to rectify the situation, that we were right, that we were not receiving enough services. He told us that more had to be done in health, that we were right and that we had been poorly treated.

Now the government is telling us that it will be requesting money from the federal government and that, if it doesn't grant that money, we won't be getting any more. That's curious logic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Galipeau.

Ms. Guay, you will lead our third round.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I'll be the cherry on the cake.

How often is your newspaper, L'Aurore boréale, published? Is it a weekly or a monthly?

[Régis St-Pierre]

It's published every other week, except in July, when the centre is closed and we give our employees leave.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Do any volunteers work at the paper?

[Régis St-Pierre]

Yes, volunteers handle virtually all our activities. Our president has long been a volunteer.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

All right.

[Régis St-Pierre]

Incidentally, our president is a volunteer. She's not paid; she receives no salary. She has a young child at home and is currently pregnant. Our volunteers are the real source of our strength. We have more than 50 volunteers. We have a few tens of employees. We have a lot more volunteers than employees.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

If you didn't have that, you wouldn't survive. With all your activities and a community centre, you need volunteers since you don't have any funding.

Our organizations are experiencing the same problems. You tell me that things are better. We even have organizations whose presidents were paying expenses with their personal credit cards because funding wasn't being sent to them. That's starting to improve, but it isn't over yet. The government is changing the rules; it's changing the applications.

As members, we have a big job to do with our organizations to help them complete the forms and ensure they get their money.

I hope your activities here will continue. I believe you have to bring pressure to bear. We're going to write a report on this meeting and on all the meetings we're going to have. We're also going to conduct some visits this afternoon. I'm disappointed because it's sad that there are so many francophones here, that everything is so lively and you don't have any fair support.

I think that, when we submit our report, we're going to make some noise and we'll see the federal government's reaction. We have to believe that there's a good agreement between the federal and Yukon governments. If the federal government sends money to the Yukon government and the latter doesn't hand it over to you, that's another problem.

[Régis St-Pierre]

Yes, that's a good point.

You mentioned the devolution of services. Responsibility for forest fires fell to the federal government. That was transferred to the Yukon government. This summer, there were two forest fires, as there are virtually every summer in Yukon. The evacuation notices were given in English on Friday, and in French on Tuesday.

Nothing like that would ever have happened at the federal level because your legislation and websites are published in French and English at the same time. You can't put up a unilingual website. And yet, after the transfer, the federal government washed its hands of the matter and is no longer monitoring what's going on. It seems to me that, after a service is transferred, it should monitor the situation for a certain period of time to see what's happening.

A number of employment assistance services were transferred through Service Canada last year. Citizens, employers, workers and businesses pay for those services. It's not services we're looking for; we're entitled to them by law. This has now been transferred to the Yukon government, and it's washing its hands of the matter.

Since the transfer, the Yukon government has provided a host of services. You've seen it; you've received the response: the budget envelope is not increasing. It seems to me that, when you transfer a service, you're responsible for ensuring that all the communities, including the official language communities in Yukon, are subsequently served in an equitable manner.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I think you're very solid people. I think you're going to win. In any case, we're going to try to work to that end. It's not easy not to be able to function in one's language, and that doesn't make people any happier.

In all fields, like health, there are special service needs. Just think of seniors. Work absolutely has to be done in this regard. Count on us to prepare a very specific report on this subject.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much.

Do you want to add something?

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Nadon wanted to say something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Go ahead.

[Roch Nadon]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to mention that the francophones in Yukon are not working in isolation. By that I mean we're also working a lot with the anglophone community, that is the community organizations, the people in the performing arts, culture, youth, people related to the economy and so on. The message we want to send this morning is that the challenges we have to face are, to a large degree, at the level of the departments. We also have challenges at the community level. It's important for me to mention that there is good synergy between the anglophone and francophone communities. That's an asset.

In response to one question, Mr. Galipeau said that there were no doubt challenges involved in managing the cultural centre, but there are models. This could be a cultural centre for anglophones and aboriginals. I'm not just talking about a francophone cultural centre.

In short, we're very creative here. Geographic isolation has often caused us to be creative and dynamic.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

You're welcome.

There is a federal program, at Canadian Heritage, for artistic production areas. It's the Cultural Spaces Canada Program.