Evidence of meeting #31 for Official Languages in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was acoa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Information, Language and Community Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada
The target is 7%, but it has never been achieved.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
9:30 a.m.
Director, Information, Language and Community Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada
We could provide you with the figures later; I do not have them now.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Information, Language and Community Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada
I would think so.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
You are correct.
So if a province wants to set a target of 7% and is able to achieve it, why could the country itself not do the same thing?
9:30 a.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Mr. Chair, the answer I would offer is this.
As you well know, we have a somewhat limited pool of potential francophone immigrants, first. Second, we are competing rather heavily with Quebec, which is also trying to attract a fair number of francophone immigrants. So, logically, if we set a target of 7% Canada-wide, given that Manitoba is already having trouble achieving its target of 7%, I imagine that this would be a very big challenge.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Excuse me. I had the impression that Manitoba was going to achieve that objective. We have in fact seen constant growth since the authorities decided that was a good thing for their province. I do not understand why we are so reluctant, in Canada, to make more of an effort.
9:30 a.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Other factors could be added to the answer, Mr. Chair. The provinces, and Manitoba, set their percentages, not CIC. The provinces reserve the right to decide what a reasonable immigration target would be.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
With all due respect, they do not do that in a vacuum; they do with in collaboration with CIC, and using its programs. What would prevent another province from doing the same thing? New Brunswick has received $10 million to try to do something better than it is currently doing.
9:30 a.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Mr. Chair, I do not think there is anything preventing them. As the member noted, we work hand in hand with the provinces and we also work with them on the programs they administer.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To respond quickly to Monsieur Bélanger, I thought we were all friends here. There's nothing to worry about. If you bring a motion forward, we'll debate it for a while. We learn a few tricks from you guys as well.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
That might be true. We'll scramble in that case.
Ms. Frenette, could you explain for us how ACOA ensures that its services are provided in both official languages? This is somewhat by way of answering Mr. Godin's questions, particularly in relation to St. John's...
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
...where there are francophones. We may not be talking about a region like mine, in southeastern New Brunswick, but we are still talking about regions where there is a significant francophone population.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Finance and Corporate Services, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have a high concentration of bilingual employees. These are bilingual positions. More than 50% of our employees are bilingual. We go beyond the bilingualism requirements.
We think this is a positive measure. The requirements are determined at the base, and are based on the representation of francophones in certain regions, and in all regions where there is a certain concentration of francophones. There are in fact bilingual personnel. Among other things, we have a number of regional offices, in the regions, that are designated bilingual. In total, 19 offices, in addition to the head office, are bilingual. We have very strong representation when it comes to bilingualism.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
That is very good.
Can you explain for us what ACOA has done to implement the roadmap, please?
9:35 a.m.
Vice-President, Finance and Corporate Services, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
When the roadmap was adopted, we first prepared an internal discussion paper. In the spring of 2008, we took a good look at the question of how we were going to implement the program. We also developed a management framework for implementing it. Then we really focused on communication and developing an Internet and Intranet site to use for our initiative. We had meetings with members of senior management to explain our objectives and make sure that a sound strategy was developed and was supported by ACOA senior management. We developed an evaluation grid to use for evaluating projects.
Then we really tried to initiate a dialogue with the official language minority community, to be sure that the people there clearly understand how to access EDI funding. As well, as I mentioned earlier, we work closely with the ACOA-RDÉE committee. We also used that table to expand our thinking about the initiative, to make sure our strategy is sound and would be able to support the initiative.
We also did something else that we think is a best practice. For submitting proposals, rather than leaving it to the communities to develop proposals that may not correspond to the vision of the program, we invited them to submit brief proposals that we examined internally. Then we went back to the communities to let them know what we thought about the proposals, whether they were moving in the right direction, in order to guide the work people were doing so they would not waste time preparing proposals that might not necessarily have been accepted at the end of the day.
So I think that really was, for us, a best practice that enabled EDI to play a role as an engine for dialogue with the communities, to try to maximize their potential.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Ray Boughen Conservative Palliser, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Welcome to the panel. We're glad you could spend some time with us this morning.
I have a couple of questions.
In your opinion, what is the advantage of the road map for francophone communities in the Atlantic region? Where do you see the advantage of the road map as you deal with those communities?
9:35 a.m.
Vice-President, Finance and Corporate Services, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
As I've mentioned, certainly we've seen the benefit of the road map in terms of having the engagement with the communities and having the opportunity to work with the communities on a strategy that would move them further in their advancement.
We have the preliminary results of the evaluation. Based on those results, we are seeing that our efforts have had an impact. For every dollar invested, we've leveraged another $1.07 in additional funding from partners. So we see that this initiative has built a lot of capacity in the region. It also has developed a lot of partnerships with other stakeholders. It has been very positive.
I don't know if Wade would like to add to that.
9:35 a.m.
Acting Director General, Community Developpment, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Yes, just to put a finer point on it.
I think this is an important comment. The preliminary results that we're seeing from the evaluation are showing us that 95% of the beneficiaries of the economic development initiative have increased their capacity in their business or in their community.
Denise already mentioned the leveraging. She was too modest. The leveraging is also another important point. When you look at the regular leveraging for BDP, the program we use on the non-commercial side, it's about 25%. But with this initiative, we leveraged, as Denise said, almost double what we invested, which means that we were the catalyst for these communities to generate new partnerships and new investments for new initiatives.
We also see in the preliminary results that over a thousand businesses increased their capacity for training, their knowledge of financial statements, for instance, and their knowledge on being able to access international markets. These are important things for communities.
We also see that about 75 communities reinforced their capacity to coordinate partnerships with other community groups. Again, this is an important thing in minority communities: they need to be able to find strength in numbers when they're in a minority situation.
I could go on, but for us, I think those are some of the more important general benefits that we're seeing. We could talk about the specific benefits that specific projects have achieved.
Denise mentioned the translation project. We've seen hundreds of companies translate some of their products so that a greater number of people are aware of their products and they can increase their sales. We've seen, for instance, that Le Pays de la Sagouine in Bouctouche attracted more people. This increased their revenues. It helps the small community of Bouctouche. Those are real, concrete, tangible results that have come from this initiative.
Thank you for the question.
