Official Languages Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

I can answer that question.

Statistics Canada has clearly developed a number of partnerships with the various departments and agencies precisely because it does not necessarily have the resources to respond to as many requests from the various partners.

Consequently, the efficiency achieved by being directly funded clearly enables us to target issues more specifically and perhaps to respond more efficiently to members of the official language minority communities. I would say, and my colleagues from the justice and health departments are proof of that, that it is thanks to these kinds of partnerships that we can provide information to the official language minority communities. Otherwise, it would be much more difficult to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Boughen, would you like the floor?

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me add my voice to that of my colleagues welcoming the panel here this morning.

The question I have is one of your drawing on your own background to help answer the question, and what I'm referring to is French being spoken outside of Ontario.

Once you start heading west there's very little French, outside of immersion schools that teach some French programs and some core French. But as you move farther west...in fact, in B.C. I've been given to understand the second language is now Mandarin. That's the one chosen by most of the young people who are attending secondary school.

I would invite the panel to share with us on the committee here how we will change that around. What can we do to increase the probability of young people taking French? Moms and dads basically don't take French; it's the young people who are going to school who elect to take the French program. The parents may support that, but it's still up to the kids to make that decision. What do you see that we can do to again increase the probability of French being introduced more and taught more in secondary schools in the western part of Canada?

Do any members of the panel care to comment on that?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

If I may, just to give you a little quick information, 60,000 of B.C.'s population in 2006 had French as their mother tongue. And when we look at the number of people who can speak French, we're close to 300,000, so it's five times larger, actually.

You're absolutely right. French is only one of six languages, because there is in B.C. this requirement to learn a second language. What is interesting is that in our discussions with many of our stakeholders, a leading idea was to develop a sense of the importance of learning a second language. In Quebec, it's interesting to note that 55% of those who don't have French or English as their mother tongue can speak three languages.

Actually, in Canada, close to two million people can speak more than three languages, which is interesting.

Even the Commissioner of Official Languages has mentioned that French is sometimes considered a foreign language in some parts of Canada. The knowledge of languages and this love, I would say, of learning languages is not satisfied with knowing only one language.

I know we've identified immigration sometimes as a factor in explaining this reduction in the number of youth who can speak French. But it's interesting that in B.C. many Asian parents make it a priority for their children to learn French and English. They want to make sure that they fully integrate into Canadian society.

[Roger Farley]

I will give you an example. One of things we are funding is the training of health professionals. In Alberta there is the Campus Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta. They are training health professionals in French. And in their nursing program, the majority of students come from immersion schools.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madame Michaud.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much for your presentations. They will be of considerable help in evaluating the roadmap and in gaining a clearer understanding of the issues you face.

My first questions will be for Ms. DuPont and Ms. Duchesne.

Under the roadmap, you had to implement a new justice training initiative to encourage young bilingual Canadians to make a career in those fields. Can you give us a brief update and tell us where you stand in that regard?

[Linda DuPont]

I told you about the CliquezJustice.ca portal in my presentation. There we present a number of justice careers. It was created by AJEFO and picked up by seven associations of French-language legal practitioners in Canada. The goal is to make people aware of the available jobs in the field of justice that are not jurist or lawyer jobs. These are fields we discussed earlier, such as social work, police work, translation, interpretation and so on. A lot of work has been done in this area.

In a number of projects funded by the support fund, there is always a justice careers component. We want to make young people and older people aware of justice careers in French.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much.

My question is also for you.

Under the previous action plan, you received approximately $27 million that was allocated to your legal obligations. However, under the current roadmap, that is no longer the case. No further amounts are allocated to that area.

Has this had any major consequences for your operation? Has it interfered with your ability to discharge your legal obligations with respect to official languages?

[Andrée Duchesne]

No.

I believe that what you were referring to was perhaps the matter of legal obligations. Obviously, everything pertaining to the implementation of the Contraventions Act represented a lot of work. However, I also link that to the implementation of the linguistic provisions of the Criminal Code, which also required a significant amount of work with the provinces to ensure that Canadians have access to their justice system in the language of their choice when they are charged with criminal offences.

That was a concern of our department at that time, and that is still the case, with respect to the roadmap, even though you may not have found that wording.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is more for the Health Canada representatives.

The issue of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research piques my curiosity a little. A research initiative on the health of the official language minority communities has been cancelled. Could you tell me how Health Canada was targeted by that decision?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

All right, thank you, Ms. Michaud.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

I hope someone will take over.

[Debbie Beresford-Green]

Thank you for your question.

Unfortunately, I cannot comment directly on the decision made by another member of our health portfolio. However, even though the program as such has changed, there is still access in the context of their broader contribution programs. I am not an expert on the program, but, with that access, the impact on Health Canada's programs is minimal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

All right, thank you.

Mr. Menegakis, you have the floor.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning again to all.

Thank you very much for your presentations. I found them to be very informative. It's actually quite nice to hear from partners in the road map about the progress that's been made. I commend you for the work you've done in your departments.

The Canadian government is making an investment of about $1 billion in the road map for linguistic duality, so it's very important for us to hear how it's working. This is why we're studying it mid-term, if you will, or maybe 60% of the way into it, to see how we can improve it and to see what will happen in the post-road-map era.

I was interested to hear that progress has been made. I'd like to hear your comments about what it was like before the road map and how the road map has facilitated your work in your departments. If you could give us a comparison of the situation before road map versus road map, that would be very useful.

[Andrée Duchesne]

I must say that before the road map there was of course an action plan from the government. We did a fairly good amount of work there, as I said, on building capacity, on stabilizing things, as well as on allowing some community organizations to concentrate on projects and to work with their communities as well.

The road map consolidated that, but it also allowed us to get further in the system. I'm referring here to the training initiative, which my colleague knows a lot better than I do. The training initiative allows us to get into the system to make sure that people who are in the system are able to work with a community organization but also to work with ordinary citizens to make sure they understand fully what is happening.

It's the same situation as the one for health. When you face the legal system, you do seem vulnerable. You do not necessarily understand what is being said. We had to make sure that people in the system could also communicate this information. So the road map has definitely allowed us to work with the system and to work with our colleagues from the provinces and territories as well.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Would you care to comment, Ms. Green?

[Debbie Beresford-Green]

From the point of view of Health Canada, there is a key difference in the level of funding that we now receive under the road map, which is significantly more than we received under the previous action plan. There are obviously opportunities for investment that come with that, which have allowed us to build on some of the successes and some of the platforms that I think were developed through the action plan.

There are a number of areas in which we have strengthened, for one thing, the accountability, in terms of the framework and logic model that have been developed as partners together under the road map. That has certainly allowed us to better understand the results focus and to be able to demonstrate some of the results.

I think there's another piece that has been fundamental for Health Canada. We've talked a little bit about working in partnership with our federal colleagues, but we have also been able to further build partnerships with key community organizations. I'm thinking in particular of three that regroup a number of the local community organizations. They are the Community Health and Social Services Network in Quebec, la Consortium national de formation en santé, and la Société Santé en français, which have been key partners with us in a model that I think has allowed us to really understand, consult with communities, and use their expertise to help us set priorities, and therefore be able to target the investments to those priorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

Mr. Menegakis, you have time for a very short question.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay, this is a very short question for Health Canada.

You mentioned that McGill University offers training to working professionals and over 3,700 have availed themselves of that opportunity. Do you know of any other universities across the country that would offer the same, in the west in particular?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Farley.

[Roger Farley]

The approach is very different from that of the other universities. I mentioned the Campus Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta. They do not offer language training to health professionals in the market, but they do offer initial training for nurses and other health professionals. These are different approaches based on the needs that were identified by the committees themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for the Statistics Canada representatives.

A little earlier you talked about immigrants. My colleague Ray Boughen said that, once you start heading west from Ontario, French gets lost. I didn't say that; it was the Conservative member sitting on the other side of the room. When you start heading west from Ontario, it is as though French was being lost. The further west you go, the more people speak Chinese or Mandarin. Has Statistics Canada conducted any studies or research in western Canada on the language spoken by workers? I will explain to you why I am asking that question.

I get telephone calls from people in my constituency. They come from Acadie, which is in northeastern New Brunswick and eastern Ontario. Beyond Ontario is Quebec, and then it's the Acadian Peninsula. I say that to give you some background. I got a telephone call from Alberta, and my caller told me he had been fired because he couldn't take tests in English. He's stuck in Edmonton without any money and can't return to Shippagan. I don't need to explain the situation to you in any greater detail. This is a francophone who went out west to work. The companies asked him to take some written tests in English. He couldn't do it. He's stuck there without money. It will costs money for him to get back home. Our country is big and travel is slow. It's easier to leave Acadie to go to Paris than to go to Alberta.

Today, the Conservative member confirms that there are more Chinese in western Canada, and my voters tell me that workers from other countries are transported by aircraft directly to a landing strip in Alberta. However, a voter from my constituency loses his job because he can't take a test in English. Other voters tell me they will be taking security tests in Miramichi so that they can work in Alberta and that those tests are in English. If they don't know English, they won't get a job. Are we really promoting bilingualism in our country, which has two official languages? I don't want you to comment, but has Statistics Canada conducted any studies on that subject? If not, should the government request that you compile statistics?