Yes.
Evidence of meeting #36 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 quebec.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #36 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 quebec.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Voices
Yes.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
All right. Therefore, the perspective has to be different.
The mistake we make quite often is that we equate
…the situation of francophone minority communities…
with the situation of anglophone minority communities, and it's not the same. Do we agree on that?
9:40 a.m.
A voice
Yes.
9:40 a.m.
Assistant Project Director and Community Liaison Coordinator, Community Learning Centre Initiative, Leading English Education and Resource Network
I would suggest that we work as partners. We all work together, each partner here. We all work together. We don't work exclusively with the English community. We can't possibly. When you're an organization in the province, you also have to work with your francophone partners.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Do I have a couple of minutes? I have a minute.
I brought this up on Tuesday. Do you have a comment to make on the current issue of L'actualité and how this may result in your community being perceived?
9:40 a.m.
Project Director, Community Learning Centre Inititative, Leading English Education and Resource Network
We had a discussion with Jennifer about it last night.
If you look at how the questions were worded, from an anglophone point of view the questions were biased; therefore, you get biased answers.
I will let Jim continue.
9:40 a.m.
Program and Policy Advisor, Community Health and Social Services Network
We have to make a distinction between the political discourse in Quebec around language and what happens at the community level. We're involved with our French-speaking colleagues and French-speaking communities all over Quebec, and the relations are excellent. The collaboration is excellent. Most of my francophone colleagues who work in the health system shake their heads when they see attempts to create a tense linguistic environment for what are essentially political reasons.
Everybody, in fact, understands the need to support the French language in Quebec. There is a high degree of bilingualism. But an article like the one in L'actualité affects community relations, and that is probably the most damaging thing.
9:40 a.m.
President, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network
I would just add that there is no question that we are entering another era, another phase of political life, here in Quebec. Elections are coming up.
It's an issue. There's no getting around it, and that's one of the reasons we are so appreciative of the fact that we can provide support to our community, because we need that kind of moral support as well.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank all of our witnesses for being here this morning.
It is a great pleasure to meet you.
As my colleagues on the committee have said, we have been studying the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality for several months now. The program was implemented in 2008. The biggest change for the linguistic communities is that they get long-term funding. As you said, it is difficult for your organizations to function without that long-term support. That is why we started the roadmap in 2008.
Another aspect of the roadmap deals with inter-departmental coordination. That is perhaps not something that you can see. This coordination with federal government officials here appears to be in the background; but it also constitutes another change.
Thank you for being here. We are looking for some feedback from the groups that have benefited from this new approach to supporting linguistic communities.
I want to ask the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network some questions. Because I don't have time to ask all of you questions, I want to do maybe a bit of a deeper dive.
I'll give an example of why I think the work you're doing is so important.
Recently I was talking to some parliamentarians from the Republic of Georgia. They're always in a linguistic struggle with a Russian minority, and they have a large Russian neighbour. They talked about the importance of maintaining their heritage in the republic. They gave the example that Russians will take over a 1,000-year-old Georgian Orthodox church and put a Russian onion dome on top and remove any traces of the Georgian language within the republic.
I am not saying that Canada is Georgia or Russia. But could you describe the importance of heritage, recognizing the centuries of linguistic reality in the province of Quebec?
Furthermore, it is the same story in the rest of Canada, in terms of the francophone heritage in other parts of the country.
What is the importance of what you do for young people? I am the father of young children. My children are 12 and 10. Could you describe some of the things you do and what they mean in terms of their outlook with respect to the language and with respect to the communities they live in and are neighbours with?
9:45 a.m.
President, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network
Yes. To go back to your larger issue about the whole question of language and minorities and so on, these are indeed sensitive areas, where you have groups that have come together for various reasons, sometimes because of political dominance at one point.
The only thing I can say about this is that the English-speaking community of Quebec is a very diverse group of people. Today, of course, they represent literally dozens of different groups made up of people whose first official language is English. That's how we describe ourselves, as English-speaking communities; we're not the people from Great Britain or wherever.
Many of us have been in Quebec for a long time. Believe it or not, many of us do not live in Westmount and have the kinds of privileges that sometimes get associated with everybody. Yes, some of us are, I'm sure, part of the 1% of the world, but most of us, I would suspect, are part of the 99%, to use the Occupy language that got popular last year.
So it's varied. We've had experiences, over the centuries now, on farms, in factories—not only in the head office of the factory but on the factory floor—and so on. We've had these kinds of experiences, and they have to be remembered and celebrated. I think that's an important thing.
It's important that our young people understand that as well. Very often today we have standardized textbooks. We have families that move from one place to another, for promotions and stuff like that, and we have teachers now who....
In the old days, teachers tended to be from their area. We have to actually talk about now and try to promote something called “community-based learning”, which our CLC partners do so well and which we are doing, to help them to do that, to try to give young people a sense of rootedness, of where they are. I mean, they're not just living in bedroom suburbs and their place is the mall; they actually live in a place, in a town, that has an interesting past, with people who have problems and situations that are remarkably similar to what they are going through or have gone through—although it would be a little different in those days.
It's just a really good thing. If we don't have that sense of identity of who we are, with some kind of rootedness, then we're just transients with our duffle bags, going from one place to the other.
So we need that. And that's why we're here.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you very much.
Naturally the groups that have come here have appreciated the funding and the efforts in terms of supporting linguistic minorities. Of course, they've all said that, yes, they want another version of the road map. That's not a surprise there.
I want to ask you more of a higher-level question. If you could put yourselves in the shoes of the heritage minister, the hard-working heritage minister, who has to look at this $1.1 billion in funding that we've had in terms of the road map, what would you say would be the criteria for establishing priorities? Ultimately it is about priorities. We've had groups from early childhood, primary education, culture and media, health care, immigration settlement, economic development. Everybody is saying that is the priority.
Thinking at maybe a level higher than that, what would be the criteria? How could you measure success and say that this should be the priority for supporting linguistic minority groups across Canada?
9:45 a.m.
Program and Policy Advisor, Community Health and Social Services Network
In the area of health, in our investments since the first action plan, which I have to say was very successful for us and flowed into the road map without any break, the evaluation in the first action plan was absolutely thorough. We had a major evaluator, and we engaged both the ministry in Quebec and Health Canada in that work.
So within the department of Health Canada and its work through Quebec and us, we have, within the larger road map context, absolutely mapped out the results. We have set the priorities clearly and squarely within Quebec's strategic plan in health.
With that, we can assure the heritage minister, through the work we do with the ministry and our communities—and certainly Health Canada, who has a very clear picture of what its investments have done in our communities in health—that the government has a very, very good picture of what a future investment of taxpayers' money would mean in our health sector.
April 5th, 2012 / 9:50 a.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
My thanks to our witnesses.
Let us carry on with my colleague's questions. It is clear that we will have another roadmap because we know that our minister is a great supporter of the vitality of both official languages. He himself graduated from a French immersion school in British Columbia, as have my children and myself.
What are the criteria to choose those who will receive funding? What do you think of them? When we think of our great country, what are the criteria for allocating funding? How can we continue to ensure there is proper accountability to be certain that this is a good use of money?
Mr. Carter, you may begin. Could you give us short answers, please?
9:50 a.m.
Program and Policy Advisor, Community Health and Social Services Network
It is very important to be able to measure the outcomes and the results, not just at the end of the four years of funding, but along the way.
In fact, we must be able to demonstrate clear results every quarter and every year. That is what we did with Health Canada. There was an agreement with the Department of Health. It is very important to be able to measure the impact and that the impact be felt within the community itself. That is an important criterion.
We must also ensure that Canadian government investments serve as a lever for our communities where a lot of volunteer activities are organized. The investments are intended to provide leverage to communities so that they can create partnerships and obtain other funding to coordinate actions taken by other levels of government, for example. I believe that, in the next roadmap, we must demonstrate that the investments lead to something. It is not simply an investment, it is a lever. We must demonstrate how the other levels of government, regional, local or provincial, have made their own contribution to the federal investment.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
President, Board of Directors, Youth Employment Services
Thank you.
I'm looking at this from the point of view of our clients. I think the most important thing is that we intervene early in the process. When we don't intervene, the laws of motion apply and individuals and their contributions get lost. So we need to reach people when they arrive here. Often they're the spouse of somebody who's come for some other reason, and if that person does not find a job they ultimately leave. We have a number of cases where that's true.
We don't want people to fall into the trap of chronic unemployment or underemployment. I think we need to intervene soon and fast when the need arises, and respond to the opportunity from a community and an economic development point of view.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Assistant Project Director and Community Liaison Coordinator, Community Learning Centre Initiative, Leading English Education and Resource Network
At the Community Learning Centres we're accountable to everyone. We're accountable to our community partners, the school boards that own the CLCs, our provincial government—we appear in the strategic plan of the Government of Quebec—and Canadian Heritage. Each level wants to know that their investment is being well used.
About three years ago we undertook a voluntary external evaluation that did a thorough examination of the 22 CLCs we had then. We weren't mandated to do that, but it has given us a lot of information and recommendations that have enabled us to move forward and make changes as necessary.
I provided a copy to the clerk in English and in French, so that's certainly available to you.
Recently we began to undertake a second evaluation, because we certainly strongly believe that if we don't evaluate ourselves—
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
May I interrupt? We're looking for criteria for choosing recipients.
Maybe I can go to you, Mr. O'Donnell.
9:55 a.m.
President, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network
I think we all appreciate the delicate balancing act that the minister and the ministry has to undertake in this whole question of funding to groups. We know there's one pot of money, that it's going to be shared among many people—not only among us here in this room, but also across the country. We're aware of it and appreciate the fact that this is a difficult job. I certainly am not going to say that heritage and culture and arts are more important than employment and health. That's just not it.
