Official Languages Committee on Feb. 16th, 2012

[Hubert Lussier]

Mr. Bélanger, what we are saying is this: we are going to use the extremely important forum that you represent, as well as many other sources of information provided—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Lussier, Mr. Gauthier said that our committee work would serve as official consultations. That is what he said.

[Hubert Lussier]

This is the most official vehicle for information gathering that we have access to at the moment.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Will you be funding the committee's work? You get funding for evaluations and consultations. We don't.

Mr. Lussier and Mr. Gauthier, I am honestly shocked to see that you have the nerve to put the committee, its members and the communities in this type of situation. It is absolutely unbelievable and unacceptable. I do not get carried away very often but I think that your actions show a lack of professionalism, honesty and transparency. I hope you are going to fix the situation and hold official consultations with the communities, the way they should be.

With all due respect, Mr. Gauthier, a 10-minute testimony followed by a series of questions where the same old game unfolds is not a consultation.

[Hubert Lussier]

Mr. Chair, with all due respect to the committee, we acknowledge Mr. Bélanger's comments. But I have to reiterate that we have shown transparency in saying that we take your committee's work very seriously. That's crucial. You are members of Parliament, but we are also able to gather information from a host of other sources.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Okay. I think I have made my point.

Mr. Déry, the official languages action plan, not the roadmap, listed two objectives for education: the first objective was to double the number of young people learning the other language and the second objective was to see an increase in the enrollment rates of eligible students from 60% to 80%. Where are we at with that?

[Yvan Déry]

I do not have the data with me. That's a good question. Determining the number is much more complex than the 2003 action plan might have led us to believe. There is a lot of material there for discussion.

The work that we have been doing since 2003 has certainly made identifying eligible participants and recruiting young people living in exogamous households a priority for every school board and for every education ministry. We are working very hard on that.

The numbers are going up, the francophone minority system continues to grow despite general reductions in education staff.

However, I don't have the exact answer to your question.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You don't have the answer. Do you have it somewhere in the files at your office?

[Yvan Déry]

In terms of eligible participants, the answer is no. And in terms of second-language learners, the answer is that the numbers have not doubled.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So where are we at right now?

[Yvan Déry]

I cannot tell you off the top of my head.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So you are going to send us this information. And could you also get this information from all the school boards in the country? They have the numbers for eligible students. If you ask them, they will give them to you, and you will be able to forward them to us.

[Yvan Déry]

We have some data on eligible students, but there is always a debate about the number.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Déry, could you give the clerk the information on the number of students so that the information is then passed to all the members of the committee?

[Yvan Déry]

Sure, no problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Trottier, the floor is yours.

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

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

Earlier Mr. Lussier said that they were transparent. For the sake of clarity, I just want to say that we have never been informed that the Department of Canadian Heritage was doing legitimate studies. That is not being transparent and it is not right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Mr. Trottier, you have the floor.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions have to do with the long term.

The Roadmap was implemented in 2008 and I was not a member of Parliament then. I am guessing that it was a solution to a problem that affected official languages, a funding problem in the medium or long term, meaning five years, and a lack of coordination as well.

Were the three of you there then? Could you describe what the problems were in terms of lack of long-term funding and lack of coordination between departments and the groups receiving funding?

[Hubert Lussier]

My colleague Yvan Déry was the only one there at the time and he had a different role. I think it would be a bit much to ask him to fully answer that question.

I got there soon after, but it is true that lack of coordination was perceived in terms of official languages. There was a perceived need for additional momentum in some areas that had been identified as priorities by official language communities and stakeholders.

That is why investments were made and maintained for the second language and for minority language education, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. That is why investments were made in health care. Actually, for many years, the communities wanted us to focus on that sector since the needs for minority language services were significant. That was possible through the program now led by my colleague Yvan. The same goes for immigration, which was an area of focus in the past 10 years with the help of the commissioner of official languages at the time. So it was a matter of wanting to bring everything together into a more coherent whole, by focusing on specific areas.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

From what the witnesses have said, we saw that many groups received funding. They said that there was a lack of clarity and a lack of accountability. They didn't know where the funding was coming from. If we look at the coordination among departments, your group that was doing the coordinating and the provinces, are there problems to fix in order to eliminate this lack of clarity from the next version of the Roadmap?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

My colleague Mr. Déry talked a little about that earlier. Every department integrates official language activities with overall operations. So, depending on circumstances, departments and their mandates, it can be difficult to identify what they are doing specifically in terms of official languages.

A coordinated strategy like the strategy under the Roadmap makes it at least possible to establish some clear key initiatives—there are 32 in the Roadmap—that together reflect a significant part of the federal government's action in terms of official languages.

We have an interesting system that enables us to be accountable, through departmental performance reports and reports on plans and priorities, for the money spent by each department every year. An appendix shows that information. We have provided the committee with copies.

In retrospect, we see that—and this is included in our mid-term evaluation—we definitely need to spend more time on tracing funding on the ground. We should perhaps do something so that people on the ground know that the Roadmap exists and that funding or part of the funding for such and such a project comes from the Roadmap. That is perhaps an improvement we should consider.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Yes, we got the feeling that a number of witnesses thought that it was especially difficult to find out what to do to obtain long-term funding because the process was byzantine. They said they didn't know who to contact and how to get through all the red tape to get help.

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

We have actually noted the same comments. Difficulties of a practical nature don't make our task any easier. In a number of cases, the funding from the Roadmap basically gets added on to existing funds. So that simply increases the amounts that are available for investment. From an accounting point of view in terms of how funding is allocated, it is challenging to distinguish between money that comes from the Roadmap and regular money within the same fund. But we should be able to solve those problems somehow. That is actually something to consider improving.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Is the current process, the mid-term evaluation, a good way to measure effectiveness? Would it be better to use performance measures that are applied every year, for example? In your view, what would be the best way to evaluate the Roadmap?