Official Languages Committee on April 3rd, 2012

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

Thank you.

First of all, I want to welcome you all and thank you for your interventions.

Your comments interest me a great deal.

In my riding there is the small community of Shannon. It's a vibrant and involved English community that's probably working closely with some of you. It's helping me with my understanding of their situation, a bit.

I had a question for Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Childs. You were talking about the importance of the Cultural Development Fund and all the impacts it had on your community. Could you tell us more about how it helped you?

[Guy Rodgers]

Prior to the Cultural Development Fund, there was the IPOLC-PICLO program, which was very beneficial. It was the best thing in arts and culture—it came via the Canada Council, but it was focused on professional arts. The Cultural Development Fund is invested in the link between arts and community. The current project for touring arts in the communities is very important. We had an excellent session in Montreal a couple of weeks ago with regional associations, where we saw all kinds of links. There are many ways of integrating arts and culture into health and youth at risk; schools are very important. We have a culture-in-the-schools program in Quebec that is well-funded and works very well. But it doesn't work so well in the English sector. In fact, we were given some money from the Minister of Education to figure out where the problem is. The Cultural Development Fund has enabled us as professional artists to expand beyond our normal preoccupations with creative art into working with art and community and looking into spheres such as education and health. It's been extremely helpful.

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

Thank you.

Did you want to add anything?

[Charles Childs]

I want to add that one of the crucial elements of the touring project, the ACCORD touring project, is that it's linking professional artists in Montreal to the communities while allowing the professional artists and the artists in the regions access to a broader audience that includes communities besides Montreal.

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

How is that done more concretely in the rural areas?

[Charles Childs]

One of our activities is to have the community associations build a capacity to present artists. This allows professional artists or up-and-coming artists to present their work, with an opportunity of linking with other communities in another region. It's a way of sharing artists and experiences.

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

My next question is more for QESBA. I was quite concerned about the issue of equity in financing, which is not really there for the anglophone community. Could you tell us a bit more about the differences you've seen in the investments for the francophones outside Quebec and in your community?

[David D'Aoust]

There is no differential funding for us to teach more than the core French second language program. That is not enough for our parents. They are at our doors all the time.

They are always after us. They regularly rattle the cage. They want more for their children.

They don't want their kids to feel they have to leave and go to work in Toronto, Vancouver, and Alberta, even though the opportunities are there and they'll want to go west at some point in their life. But they want them to come back and live in their communities. Otherwise there's no sustainability in those communities. For what we do, we do not get funded. We have to find it here and there in our budgets. The Canada-Quebec Accord is very helpful in that regard.

Then there is the whole area of special education. If you have children who need services and you're in the Montreal area, it's fine. But if you're in the rural areas, you don't have that service. It has to be brought in. School boards are finding it very difficult. For instance, psychologists are paid more in the private sector than they ever could earn from a school board. We can't keep them. We have to start trying to match those salaries. If we want to do that, we have to find the resources elsewhere.

Also, when you run schools today, the world is the classroom. It's no longer an isolated room. There are trips outside, there's video conferencing, there are the whiteboards, there are the laptops. Our schools have invested heavily, not only in the implementation of gadgetry, as we would call it, but also

regarding teacher training. This is very important and there's not enough money for that.

The government is offering, by the 2015-16 school year,

intensive French training in Grade 6 of primary school. We asked what we would be getting? We have been providing immersion for a very long time and we are prepared to cooperate. We have heard nothing, not a single thing. To date not one red cent has been allocated for us.

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

Yes.

[David Birnbaum]

On the question of equity with respect to our francophone neighbours, it's a very sensitive but important question. And as you will hear from other groups, they'll talk to you about our being part of another national linguistic minority. Now, as we mentioned in our brief, we have the luxury of a community with history, with a critical mass in Montreal that built universities and hospitals and so on. But there's the notion of every dollar for official languages—I don't have the accurate statistics in front of me—being divided nowhere near 50-50. With the greatest respect to our

francophone colleagues throughout the country, we would urge you to show the appropriate level of caution. There are some very significant questions about the distribution of money available for both linguistic minorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. Williamson.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's been an interesting morning so far. I'm actually pleased that Mr. Bélanger brought up that article. I actually read that, and I was surprised. I was at McGill 20 years ago, roughly, and my impression is that the English community in Montreal has changed.

I come from New Brunswick. I do have an accent, but I speak reasonably well all the same.

Where 20 years ago a young Montrealer parlait comme moi, today I hear them and ils parlent comme vous, d'après moi. There's been a sea change, where I think the families in Montreal recognize that for their kids to stay home, they have to be able to operate in both languages. I'm pleased, at least, to hear there's some skepticism about the accuracy of that article.

My question is actually for the townshippers. You have one line here that stands out in relation to some of the other things I've heard this morning. You say your reality is still one of aging, low income, scattered communities with low levels of education. Could you explain that a little bit? Is that a reflection, would you say—and this is very good—of where the township is today and what its future might be?

[Gerald Cutting]

I'm going to have to introduce another term here; it's called the missing middle. What we have experienced in the townships is a continued outward migration of those people who have already graduated. Many times they are professional, highly employable, and highly mobile. What has happened is this. There has been a steady outward migration of this group, the middle, leaving, and then the youth and the elderly. As the professional—the middle class is also a part of it—has left, those people who have found themselves behind have often been the high-risk students in the schools to begin with. It's those who are more likely to drop out, those who are less employable, and oftentimes those individuals who will be struggling with a number of other types of difficulties—addictions, poor health, etc.

So in order to look at the townships and think about how we are going to address the difficulties we have and how we are going to be able to, in effect, create what is, in many senses, a normal society on a bell curve, we have to be able to encourage more and more of the younger people to stay. And also what we have to do is go within Canada to increase our level of immigration back to Quebec.

[Ingrid Marini]

Migration.

[Gerald Cutting]

In order to do that, what we have to have in place are sustainable, well thought out, and effective mechanisms to get people at critical times to ensure that they can have a sense that they are still a part of a community. In many of the small towns and small villages the church is gone, the school has closed, and where do you go?

[Ingrid Marini]

The perception of opportunity is a big issue that we face constantly. A lot of the youth don't know why they would want to go to school, why they would want to go further in school, because where is it going to bring them if they want to stay home? And some of them don't want to leave. Those are the youth who are very low educated.

In one of the regions in the townships, the Montérégie, we work very closely with our public partners in the health system and youth protection system. Just in one particular region, the anglophones represent 20% of the population, but in the youth protection services they were over 50% of the caseload. That's drastic, and it demonstrates the reality of our community.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

This is interesting. Do you believe that if you build it, they will come, or is this a case of changing demographics?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the townships and the number of things that support this have undergone a tremendous change. It's no longer really an English-speaking part of Quebec the way it might once have been considered. Are we hoping for something that is not going to happen? It's changed.

I have a big rural riding and there are pressures there, and some of them sound similar to what you're describing, except what is different here is that there is replacement. New families are moving in and the population is growing. It just happens to be French-speaking, as opposed to an outmigration. How do you counter that, and should you counter that?

[Ingrid Marini]

How do we counter the outmigration?

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Or how do you ensure that the English community in the township is restored, is returned, is revitalized? Do you do that when it's not just one way, it's not just declining without replacement? There are other families moving in, it seems, and they just happen to be—

[Ingrid Marini]

You have to demonstrate the opportunity. You have to demonstrate the services that are available and the structures that exist. We have to maintain the vitality of all of our institutions, so that will help draw forward new people and keep them, and demonstrate that it's okay to be bilingual in the townships and it's okay to be anglophone in the townships.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Williamson, and Madame Marini.

Go ahead, Mr. Harris.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Welcome again to everyone. For those from the townships, I can certainly understand some of the challenges you face. My mother was from Sherbrooke and my grandparents lived in Lac-Mégantic. I spent many a summer in Lac-Mégantic, and it was very difficult to find anyone who spoke English in the area. Of course, for me the purpose was to be fully immersed in French. As a franco-Ontarian from Toronto, it's not something you get to experience at home.

As with the English school boards, we faced many similar parallels as a French language minority in Toronto. Back then, it was, like those in the townships say, a minority within a minority within a majority situation. We had a small number of French schools in what was then the largest English school board in Canada in the largest English city in Canada.

In terms of the funding we got, it was not on par with what the English schools in our own school board were getting. One of the best things that happened was when we finally got our own school board, and then suddenly the money started to flow, which led to positive changes.

It's a challenge. In the townships, if the economic opportunities for highly mobile young people and those getting educated aren't at home, they'll have to go elsewhere. It's unfortunate, and it presents another challenge.

I'm going to veer off from discussing those things. In terms of speaking about equity, as we talked about earlier, we have in this committee, with virtually all of the French language groups in minority situations, asked about the importance of Radio-Canada to their communities in terms of being able to access French language programming. Of course, according to last week's budget, CBC is now facing some rather hefty cuts.

In Quebec, there's a little bit more English programming than there is French programming outside of Canada. I'm going to ask each group to talk about the importance that CBC brings to maintaining those English communities in your minority situations.

We'll start with the arts.

[Guy Rodgers]

Obviously, in Quebec, the problem is not language. We just have to look south and we're swamped by English language products. It's not English language products, per se.

What CBC does is provide local content. CBC radio does a very fine job of telling local stories. Television is more complex. It tends to be Toronto-driven. There was a big article in the Montreal Gazette a few months ago about why has it been 30 years since there was a drama produced in Montreal. It's the most exciting, interesting city in Canada, in the view of many. Why can't we have a TV show produced there?

CBC radio does an excellent job and CBC television, despite being controlled from Toronto, does a better job than most of the private broadcasters.

[David D'Aoust]

For our minority communities in Quebec, I think CBC radio is essential. As a listener to Radio-Canada and CBC for the past two or three years of my life...I know that people depend on it more than ever. I guess you reach a point in time when you want to hear more about the news of what is happening across this nation; it keeps us together.

I know there was $10 million in cutbacks for CBC—or was it $10 billion?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

It's 10%.