Official Languages Committee on April 5th, 2012

[Debbie Horrocks]

One of the Canadian senators who visited a CLC while on a recent tour of Quebec commented that CLCs were doing so much with so little. They are bringing resources and vitality to communities scattered over an immense geographic area in English schools that have been on a demographic decline for 25 years.

At the recent strategic priority-setting forum organized by QCGN, the English-speaking community identified six priorities that were key to ensuring a more vital and sustainable future. CLCs contribute to all six of these priority areas: access to services in English, community building, economic prosperity, identity and renewal, promoting leadership development and youth engagement, and helping ensure that our institutions remain healthy and vibrant.

To better understand the transformation that is beginning to take place, the Senate report noted:

that CLCs are a model that could encourage involvement by the English-speaking communities. All witnesses, without exception, had only praise for the value and potential of the centres. The committee believes that we must encourage innovation and enable the communities to profit from their good work. The government should therefore commit to maintaining and developing the CLCs in the long term.

[Paule Langevin]

If my time were not so short, I could give you many concrete examples of what we managed to do with small budgets. I could give you examples of what the CLCs are doing in locations as different as a disadvantaged city neighbourhood and a remote Lower North Shore village.

So, in a nutshell, what do CLCs do? I refer to a comment made by Mr. Graham Fraser, the Commissioner of Official Languages, taken from a report recently tabled before the Senate: “the availability of services improves community members' quality of life as well as the community's vitality”. That is the influence they have on minority anglophone community life in the province and it is why the federal government should protect their place in the new roadmap. The CLCs have changed the lives of these communities and are now considered to be pillars of development and agents of change in the minority anglophone communities' vitality in many regions.

Honestly, I could talk about the CLCs all day long, but I would rather invite you to visit one and see for yourselves. Mr. Aubin and Mr. Gourde, I invite you to visit the CLCs in your beautiful region, the Centre-du-Québec, and to see for yourselves what CLCs are and what they can do.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you to everyone.

We have one hour left for questions and comments.

We will begin with Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome you all.

It started with the action plan at the beginning of 2000, and then it became the road map.

Mr. Menegakis, I have to practise your name a lot. Trying to do my Acadian with the French to the English is not that easy. I hope you forgive me for that.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

You're doing a good job.

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

He's saying, here's the road map we have today. As profitable as it was, one question is important, and we're all kind of asking it: do you want another road map? And how strong do you want it to be? I say that because there are questions about whether there will be another road map. Did it make a big difference? What was the difference before and now? You kind of explained it in your preamble today, but at the same time, what are you looking forward to in the next one? Do you think there should be more money in it? Everything we do right now is with less money, but I've heard from all the witnesses so far that it did help communities across the country—francophones outside of Quebec and anglophones in Quebec.

I'd like to hear whether you want another road map.

[Jennifer Johnson]

Yes.

[James Carter]

The answer is yes, absolutely.

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

Absolutely?

[James Carter]

Yes. I would simply like to say that it is very important that there be multi-year support. Rather than having small projects here and there, there has to be a plan. It is very important in order to ensure the continuity of investments and the vitality of the communities.

[John Aylen]

The answer is yes, but I'd like to make a point that maybe testifies to our lack of knowledge. We are not always clear what is road map money and what is other money. Perhaps it would behoove you to clarify when it is road map money that's coming through other sources and other places.

Secondly, volunteer-based organizations like our own allow, if you like, small amounts of money invested to be brokered into significant differences to the community. Money from the road map definitely makes a difference and definitely gets leveraged into much more impact than it would have if it was simply spent.

[Kevin O'Donnell]

I echo the two previous speakers.

Yes, we do need that money. The Canadian government, of course, under the Official Languages Act is committed to supporting minority communities. We're very happy to note that the current government, in the recent round of budget cuts, did not cut funding to the official languages program. We're very happy about that. It's a strong signal that the current government is committed to its commitments to support our communities. The road map money helps us to go a lot further. We can give all kinds of examples of places, museums, historical societies, and so on, who are trying to do the best with what they've got. They have very little.

They're also quite elderly. I have to say I'm one of the junior members in the historical community out in the regions. Many of them are in their seventies and eighties. They have the limitations of age. They may not understand the new technologies. They have a vague idea of its potential but they don't understand it. These are all areas in the domain of heritage that are so important for our collective memories and identities to be maintained. It's so important that we still have the ability to go out and get these stories to maintain this identity.

[Roderick MacLeod]

I was president of QAHN during the action plan. I'm an action plan president and Kevin is a road map president. I have nothing but good things to say about the action plan, and we really benefited from it and appreciated it. But I feel that the experience with the road map that I've observed has been considerably more flexible. One of the things it has done is it has allowed us to have—

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

There's a GPS on it; that's why it's more flexible.

[Roderick MacLeod]

That's true. Otherwise we'd be lost without maps.

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

We don't know that yet.

[Roderick MacLeod]

With the multi-year funding for projects we've been able to be much more creative with what we've done. I'm not sure what has gone into the thinking on that, but it's been very well received. The outcomes, in terms of some of the efforts of our organization, have certainly benefited from that. I'll say it's even more dynamic, as opposed to flexible.

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

I like to hear that.

[Debbie Horrocks]

Certainly, with regard to the community learning centres, while our budgets individually are quite limited, as our presentation indicated and as I think Mr. Aylen referred to, we leverage that into much greater amounts that come into our centres. Our partners, over 350 throughout the province—English partners, French partners, government and non-governmental partners—have leveraged the minimum amount into more than $2.5 million. We would like to see the road map continue, not only for us but for all our partners who we're involved with. We really have made partnerships the backbone of community learning centres; without the partnerships, unfortunately, we'd probably cease to exist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you all for being here this morning. Your cooperation and your testimony will greatly assist us in preparing a good study.

I also want to thank Ms. Paule Langevin for her invitation. Perhaps we can speak after the meeting to decide on a date.

I would also like to thank the representatives from the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network; you are doing excellent work which is so very important. In my riding, the Irish and Scottish communities have really made an exceptional contribution to the history of the area. It is a lovely story. If you have any lines to share, I would like to take the time to read them and perhaps publicize them in my riding.

I would like to give each of the four groups an opportunity to say, in a minute or a minute and a half, what the priorities of the next roadmap should be so that each of your organizations can move forward.

You may begin.

[James Carter]

Good morning, Mr. Gourde.

Before answering, I would also like to invite you to come and visit our community network, the MCDC, in Lévis.

As for the next commitment periods, we have set out our priorities mainly with the Department of Health. Within the framework of the roadmap and the action plan, we have established very important language training programs for francophone professionals in the 18 network communities. It is important that each of these community networks work with the CSSs and other government institutions in the region. We simply want to ensure that the communities can pursue their partnerships with the Quebec public system.

It's very simple: there is a community focus designed to ensure that anglophones participate in the health system. For the province of Quebec, the resources must be in place to ensure the proper human resources in the public system. If things continue along those lines, the results will be impressive.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you.

[Iris Unger]

One of the issues that I think is coming up quite clearly is our dependency upon each other in terms of our partnerships. We're starting to create a mosaic, and I think pulling out any one piece is going to create ripples in the whole community.

I think some of the work that has been done over the past few years has really created a synergy that's really important. I think we're talking about sustainability and continuity around our programs.

The other main issue would be help in figuring out models so that we could access financial resources to provide services, particularly to youth and to work around the provincial mandate. I look at the CHSSN model, where moneys are going specifically to the province and are earmarked for the minority community in Quebec.

So looking at new models of ways of being able to service who we need to service in our communities, in the way that we need to service them....

[Kevin O'Donnell]

I'd like to echo that QAHN is involved as well in partnerships with other organizations, as well as our 90 members, by the way, who are listed on the back of our brief. For example, we work with the Community Learning Centres. They're an important partner in our present-day activities.

We have a number of challenges coming up in the future. Certainly, we relied on the cultural development fund of the Feuille de route for funding for a number of our projects.

In regard to some of the challenges we have today, one is to engage youth, for example. It's important that our young people be aware of and appreciate

…their identity as Quebeckers, Canadians and Anglo-Canadians; they have several identities.

We are one of the organizations. Our projects can help them understand one aspect of that project.

Of course, a lot of the boomers are retiring now—it's quite interesting—and they're looking for projects to become involved in. This is a whole other area that I think has tremendous potential for us in the history and heritage community to tap into, again, to build up this all-important sense of identity that we have as Canadians, Quebeckers, and as anglo Quebeckers.