Official Languages Committee on March 1st, 2012

[David McGovern]

I unfortunately do not have the information you are requesting.

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

Would it be possible to do a quick search and to provide that explanation to the committee?

[David McGovern]

Certainly.

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

During our consultations, certain witnesses mentioned that the transfer agreements between the federal and provincial governments are administrative contracts that contain no specific language clause.

I would like to know how the funding granted to the provinces is monitored to ensure compliance with linguistic obligations?

[Stephen Johnson]

I can mainly talk about two types of important agreements, the labour market development agreements, the LMDAs, and the labour market agreements, LMAs. Those two types of agreements include the obligation to consult the communities and to provide services in both official languages.

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

Are those kinds of consultations planned for all administrative contracts, or is that just the case for those two types of contracts, because it is important to follow up in order to be [Editor's note: Inaudible].

[Stephen Johnson]

I mentioned those two agreements in particular because they are quite important and because I know them well. Furthermore, to my knowledge, this is generally something important that is provided for in agreements with the provinces and territories. There is a need to consult the communities and to provide services in both official languages.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Boughen, you have the floor.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Let me add my voice of welcome to the panel this morning.

I have three questions. First of all, to the folks from Human Resources, you mentioned $65 million, I think it was, over five years. I guess my first question is whether the funding is adequate. Do you have enough dollars to do the job you were entrusted to do? How's that working out?

[David McGovern]

Thank you very much for your question.

The program you're mentioning is the enabling fund. It's the single largest initiative under our road map contribution. This is a program that allows us to contribute to the development and vitality of the official language minority communities by strengthening their capacity in areas of human resources and community economic development.

Fourteen participant organizations from the official language minority communities have provided funding proposals. We do the best we can with what we have.

[Stephen Johnson]

Could I add to that and say that, by design, the enabling fund was intended to leverage funds? It was not intended to be 100% funding for these activities.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

So how goes the leveraging?

[Stephen Johnson]

Well, three to one—

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

So it's working well.

[Stephen Johnson]

We have completed a formative evaluation, and it's up on our website. It's not a summative. It looked at the early implementation and some of the early results. It did confirm both that there were partnerships that were built and that there was this leveraging effect of roughly $3 for every one federal dollar that goes directly into the pot.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

In the project, do you supply some consultative opportunities for you to share the vision with other people? Do you also supply personnel in the projects you operate?

[David McGovern]

No, we don't. We provide the funding to these organizations, but they actually engage in some pretty useful activities. Our funding allows them to do job placements. It allows for human resource skills development, youth labour market integration initiatives, entrepreneurship awareness, economic integration of immigrants, and development of the tourism sector. It has some very significant spin-off benefits.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Yes, that's a big spectrum.

Thanks, guys.

Moving to Nancie and the project you're involved in, I'm interested in how the measurement is occurring in terms of.... If you're talking about a university in the eastern part of Canada, you're going to have your project people being able to communicate and practise their language skills with other groups of people who are French-speaking or English-speaking.

But if you go to the University of Regina, it's going to be tough for those students to practise much skills building, because there are not many people in Regina who speak French. In fact, if you spoke Ukrainian and/or Chinese, you'd probably have more opportunity for dialogue. How do you factor in that truism that there are just not many people who speak French? In fact, if you were to hear five sentences in French in 12 months, that would be pretty outstanding.

[Nancie Cantin]

Thank you for your question.

Indeed, this is probably one of the main reasons that we put this pilot project in place: to provide tools and opportunities for people. In the instance you mentioned in Regina, where they don't have many opportunities to speak French, let's say, that's exactly the reason why we want to provide tools. We want to provide them as well with the tools I was talking about—to learn but also to maintain their language.

The fact is that, regardless of the number of persons, linguistic duality is in place across the country. Consequently, by at least providing tools in places where there are fewer opportunities to practise the second language, we are making an effort to help people to become bilingual and to retain their bilingualism, particularly if they want to enter the public service, because there they will have to serve the public in both official languages.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Boughen and Madame Cantin.

Mr. Harris.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

In going last for my group, I'm a bit of a catch-all, so I'm going to try to ask some questions quickly.

As Mr. Bélanger mentioned earlier, the heritage department has decided to use our study rather than do their own consultations, which of course raises some concerns for us. Do any of your departments plan on following their lead down the road in using our study rather than doing your own future consultations? Just a quick yes or no, please.

[David McGovern]

We're actually going to use the work of this committee as an important input into our work, but we also have the consultative framework that I talked about, and ongoing consultations, and we're doing our own evaluations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. McGovern.

Madame Cantin.

[Nancie Cantin]

The results of the evaluation will provide us with information for future action.