Official Languages Committee on Sept. 22nd, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

For your information, the report was tabled during the 41^st Parliament.

Mr. Harris, you have the floor.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I don't think that we are setting off alarm bells or that this is a witch hunt, although that could be interesting. It is precisely to avoid hot situations in the future that we want to discuss this. We want to come up with some ideas and put things in place so that in future, when documents are tabled in one language or another, there will be a structure in place to ensure they are translated.

We aren't asking that this be done overnight. But documents have been coming in for a number of years. Yes, we've studied them. The reason our party did not participate had nothing to do with this: we wanted public hearings and the government wanted private ones. That is why we did not take part.

Whatever language documents are submitted in, we don't want to hold up our work here, we want to get down to the business at hand. So from time to time, we have to accept this to do our work. However, the committee is entitled to wonder why these documents were not translated at some point during that period of a year or more. That, among other things, is the very reason for this committee's existence.

So I don't think we are setting off alarm bells. We simply want to prevent this from happening again. If this happens again and nothing has been done about it here, that will certainly set off some alarm bells.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Godin, you have the floor.

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

Perhaps I was one of the turkeys who was in favour of holding the last election, but I recall there was a whole flock of turkeys… I'm sorry if I'm insulting you, but I don't much like being called a turkey this morning. I remember there being a law pursuant to which elections were to be held every four years. But your government ignored the law, and it triggered an election, not the fowl you were referring to. I object to being called a turkey in this committee, Mr. Galipeau.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay, okay.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

You weren't the one on the block.

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

As to that, I'll tell you one thing: when I feel the government isn't doing the right thing, I'll vote against it, and I'll continue to do that.

In this case, we are talking about a report to be submitted to the House. We all have the right to see that report. Mr. Galipeau said so himself: officers' letters aren't hard to translate. Was some effort made to get these letters translated, yes or no? This committee is entitled to know if efforts were made, how far people went to get this done, at what point they decided there were too many, or whether they decided not to translate them—and the committee would like to know the reasons behind that decision. This could have been a newspaper article instead, or something like that. We have the right to know what it is. We are entitled to that much respect here. Our work here at the official languages committee is to conduct studies, and not to sit here being called turkeys.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

I wasn't talking about you.

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

Yes, but when you speak generally, you include everyone, my friend

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

I'd like to ask everyone to address their comments to me, as chair of the committee, in order to cool things down a little here.

Mr. Weston, the floor is yours.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Chong, regardless of how important we think our work here is, I feel that compliance with the Official Languages Act, as well as its longevity and viability, rely on the support of Canadians, just like any legislation does.

If we try to find problems where there are none, if we exaggerate the flaws in our legislation, if we do irrelevant work and if we lose the support of people in British Columbia, New Brunswick or anywhere else in Canada, we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we will no longer have the support that is so vital to meeting our objective of promoting the use of the official languages.

I heard about the circumstances in which those documents were submitted. I don't think this is the right place for a study like that. In my view, that is likely to be ridiculed by people who think that what we do is neither relevant nor useful for Canadians.

That is why I am not in favour of starting a study like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Weston.

Mr. Harris, the floor is yours.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I would like to ask Mr. Weston a simple question.

How can we find out whether there have been problems or gaps if we don't look into those issues?

What information is available to say that there wasn't a problem, without studying it? That's really what we want to do, and when you talk about le soutien des Canadiens, if this committee is seen as being inept and not studying issues when they arise, then people will start to lose respect for the committee and for the official languages.

It's not a witch hunt. We just want to study whether there was a problem or not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

If Mr. Weston wants to answer that later, he can.

Mr. Godin, the floor is yours.

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

My remarks will be quite short. There is no point in going on and on about it, since there are other ways of doing things.

Did you know that we are the only parliamentary committee whose existence is prescribed by law? All the other committees are agreed on by the parties.

Our responsibility is to be the watchdogs of Canada's official languages.

Just because Canadians think that we are out to lunch, we are not going to start saying that it's better not to do something because we are going to look bad. When we asked for francophone schools in British Columbia, I can tell you that francophones looked bad. When we asked to have French schools on Prince Edward Island, I can tell you that it looked bad. When we asked for francophone schools in Nova Scotia, it looked bad. If we had listened to public opinion, we would have never had schools. When we asked to have francophone schools in Ontario, it looked bad. If we had listened to public opinion, we would have never had any. Are we here to look good or bad, or are we here to ensure that the two official languages are respected?

I will follow my colleague Mr. Harris in saying that the sole purpose of this motion is to figure out what happened. Could we have done things differently? Once that gets to Parliament, they will have to agree or disagree with it. I will leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Aubin, you have the floor.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

In my first comment, I didn't think I was crying wolf; I just wanted to point out that a situation had occurred, that it should not have occurred and that we have to figure it out.

In Mr. Galipeau's last comment, I must admit that things were heating up a bit more. I can guess that that's not what you were trying to say. You are saying that the report was submitted in both official languages, but the notes weren't. To me, that's a slippery slope. If we start thinking that the report being in both official languages is an acceptable and reasonable compromise and that we should not be too greedy—that's what a number of people might understand from an expression like that—I think the slippery slope is dangerous. I don't want us to get into these types of comments or this type of debate, but I do just want us to clarify something that happened and that should not have happened.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor.

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

I am really very shocked to hear this nonsensical discussion. My colleagues opposite refuse to accept a report being submitted later because some of them have not read it. We are expected to agree to this type of report without being able to have access to the working documents. I think that's a bit ridiculous and I'm not quite sure what is going on.

We are talking about the support of Canadians. As my colleague said, Canadians expect us to be the watchdogs of the official languages. If we are not able to comply with the Official Languages Act ourselves, how can we have the support of Canadians to do our work? We have no credibility if we don't do these types of studies, which go beyond partisanship, as I said earlier.

Mr. Galipeau raised some very good questions just now. Why did the Bloc never stand up? What went wrong? We will never know if we don't look into it together and study the issue. After all, we share some of the same concerns that have been raised here and we have to address them by getting the job done. That is why we are here. Since we finally managed to get through our routine motions, we could start doing the real work. We have a golden opportunity to think about the parliamentary process and find ways to improve it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Gourde, the floor is yours.

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

In closing, I would like to remind you that we had the unanimous consent of the House and the parties to do what we just did. We cannot override the unanimous consent of the House. Regardless of what we are going to study, the fact of the matter is that the House gave its unanimous consent. So we are going to vote against that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Harris?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

The unanimous consent had to do with the fact that Parliament had been waiting for over a year for that report. It was very important that Canadians had access to the report. That is why we did that. We have to know why it wasn't done in both languages.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Godin, you have the floor. Then it will be Mr. Galipeau's turn.

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

I just wanted to clarify the unanimous consent.

If it hadn't been unanimous, all Canadians could have said that they are fighting for the languages whereas we are not even able to produce a report on something important. So they would have had something to say.

Even though it was a unanimous decision by the House, that does not prevent us from saying, after the fact, that we are doing the study to make a recommendation that perhaps in the future things should be done differently. We cannot change the decision now.

Mr. Chair, I hope that Mr. Gourde is listening to what I am saying. That is how studies and recommendations work—with the future in mind. At no point have we talked about changing Parliament's decision; we are thinking about what to do in the future. That is our responsibility.