Beginning in 2005 and continuing over the life of the road map for Canada's linguistic duality, 2008 to 2013, real progress has been made by many federal institutions to improve their ability to enhance our community's development. This accomplishment is being achieved in three ways.
First, the Government of Canada has made investments in helping the community understand its needs and priorities and plan for its future. Most recently, for example, Canadian Heritage provided funding for a community priority-setting conference in March, following nearly nine months of consultations throughout the community.
In preparation for the conference, the community consulted internally and with its supporting public and private stakeholders for over six months. More than 180 leaders from our community, representing communities and sectors from across Quebec, gathered over the weekend of March 24 and 25, 2012, to determine our community's future vision and priorities.
The conference concluded with the signing of a declaration that identifies priorities to ensure a vital and sustainable future. We provided copies of the declaration to your staff immediately following the conference and brought copies with us today for distribution by the clerk. I will mention them subsequently in our remarks.
The priorities are not to be considered individually or incrementally, but together as a holistic and unified vision of the community. We rejected the notion of producing another laundry list of development priorities.
Communities function as complex interdependent systems. One cannot just work on one area and then move to another without having an effect on the other area. People do not sequentially choose between care for elderly parents, a child's education, and the economic security of their families. It is a weakness of both government and the community sectors that too often, areas of importance to community vitality and individuals are organizationally stovepiped. The remedy is effective coordination. We are very pleased to note that this committee is evaluating current coordination mechanisms and asking how the system could improve.
What we as a community have aimed to achieve through the consultation process we have just completed is an enunciation of the environmental conditions for community vitality. The six priorities we have announced will act together to create sustainable communities. Please refer to the declaration from the community priority-setting conference of the English-speaking community in Quebec. The six priority areas we have identified are: access to services in English; community building; economic prosperity; identity and renewal; leadership and representation; and strong institutions.
We are suggesting that the government use these priorities as criteria for providing public support for the vitality of the English-speaking community in Quebec. The declaration document provides detail around each of those priorities. Although they sound very general in nature, we see them as the core conditions for vitality.
Second, the Government of Canada has made specific investments in research capacity. For example, federal funding was a catalyst in establishing the Quebec English-Speaking Communities' Research Network, known as QUESCREN, a joint initiative of the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, CIRLM, in Moncton, and Concordia University's School of Extended Learning.
Health Canada has provided significant research support to our community through its relationship with the Community Health and Social Services Network, a network of community organizations, resources, and public institutions striving to ensure access to health and social services in English for Quebec's English-speaking communities.
We would like to pause here to acknowledge the leadership of the CIRLM in the establishment of a research capacity dedicated to our community. Good public policy requires an evidence base, which requires research. QUESCREN has been instrumental in creating a space in which researchers in the community sector can meet, to the benefit of individual members of our community. For example, QUESCREN has put us on the map and has launched conference sessions and a theme within ACFAS, and has developed and supported community-based research that has benefited a fledgling seniors' network.
Public investment in research is an excellent example of a positive measure that the Government of Canada's institutions can undertake to enhance the vitality of our community and the rationale for policy development. We are a unique linguistic community, and very little research has been done on us as a community, especially our evolution over time. The public, private, and community sectors will all benefit from a focused research agenda for our community.
Third, finally, thanks to the leadership of such key departments as Treasury Board and the Department of Canadian Heritage, and institutions that include the Parliament of Canada and the Commissioner of Official Languages, a welcome and recently emerging interest in Canada's English linguistic minority communities is developing amongst federal institutions...with which we have not benefited from prior relationships, and we are quite pleased with this.
There are opportunities and challenges associated with this, which we would be happy to discuss during the question period.