Official Languages Committee on Nov. 20th, 2012

[Sue Hylland]

It's at both. Certainly, in respect of the organizing committee, the leadership, there are some language requirements there. But then as you build the volunteers...we do have standards that say you have to have a minimum of this amount of bilingualism within your volunteer group to be able to meet the standard for the games.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

What do you expect to do differently for 2017 compared to previously? This being a 50th anniversary, is there going to be more of a cultural element to the summer games? Or is it going to be really focused on sport?

[Sue Hylland]

To me, the games may be a sporting event, but they're so much more to our country. They are a major cultural celebration of our country.

With the convergence of the 150th and the 50th happening in the centre of our country, it is a huge opportunity for us. With the reach and impact we do have into our provinces and territories, with millions of kids vying to be on a Canada Games provincial team, we think we have a great opportunity to reach out and speak to the linguistic duality of our country in a better way than we've done before.

We're already doing it and meeting certain standards in a positive way. We speak about the games as a multi-sport event, but I look at it, as the president and CEO, as being more about our country and the celebration of our culture. The unity through sport is what we do. That's where we're at.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

We'll take a brief pause here of five minutes to allow members to take a health break.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

The 60th hearing of the Standing Committee on Official Languages will now resume.

Ms. Bateman, you have the floor.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am very conscious of the fact that we are welcoming witnesses who are very well-respected in their profession. They have the potential needed to help us establish our master plan for the Confederation celebrations. That was for Mr. Dion; in fact, my comment was addressed to both of you. You missed the joke.

I have a few questions to ask. Firstly,

I have to say, Mr. Wilson-Smith, that my family at the lake have enjoyed those Historica moments for so many years.

There was some discussion about the largest youth forum in Canada, and that is of great interest to me. For everyone, this represents the future.

Do you have any concrete ideas about how to integrate your youth forum into the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation?

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Bateman.

Mr. Godin, you mentioned the former Katimavik program. One could say that with the current program, we share the spirit and some of the principles of the Katimavik program.

As I mentioned, Encounters with Canada is every week of the school year. For 30 weeks we bring in between 100 and 130 students from coast to coast to coast. This is a very validly bilingual program, and we draw from every community you can imagine. I was there recently and met someone who had been organizing for us, for example, in Îles-de-la-Madeleine for years, and others from small towns across the prairies, and on from there.

The idea is not only to present a bilingual program, but also to engage people in different cultures, and of course also again to build up these relationships. I'm fairly certain it's had a deep impact. If memory serves, for example, I believe Mr. Kenney is one of those who took part in one of the early iterations of the program. It's 30 years old now. I also believe we do have other MPs, who I can't recall at the moment, who have been engaged in it as well.

This is the aspect of our programs that focuses on civic engagement. When you ask how we might engage otherwise, one occasion we had not mentioned is that 2014 will mark an anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, as many or all of you will know. Prince Edward Island has a very ambitious and seemingly well-structured program in regard to that. We have had preliminary discussions with them about whether we would be able to move some of our sessions of our Encounters program to take place in P.E.I. These programs presently reside at the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Centre, which we own and operate here in Ottawa, a former school. If we could break that away from Ottawa for one of the first times in our history and locate it somewhere else, there would be an opportunity to learn about that.

If that were to be successful, we would similarly wonder whether there were other opportunities to move this program out of the national capital on occasion, while still keeping the same principles inherent within it.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Jedwab, you talked about ideas to enrich the bilingualism experience among anglophones and even among francophones. What are those ideas? I come from Winnipeg. Both of my children are bilingual. Our family values being able to speak both languages.

You mentioned the difficulties that occur after the BA level, concerning positions. Do you have any concrete ideas that could improve exposure to both languages?

[Jack Jedwab]

As I mentioned earlier, the best idea, in my opinion, would be to create opportunities to allow young people in schools to interact with other youngsters in the other official language. Technology makes that possible. Using a big screen, young people could speak both languages. In conversing with others, they could use what they have learned in their second language.

We have to take into account the fact that education is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, but it is always possible to twin schools, for instance a school in St. Boniface can be twinned with an anglophone school in Quebec. There would be a partnership between the two schools. That is one example, and I am going to have to stop here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Fine, thank you.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much. Time is indeed flying by. I am going to try and hurry.

My first question is for Mr. Corbeil.

The statistics you presented are interesting. The ones on the language spoken at home and the mother tongue were already known, but as you know, some doubts were raised concerning the reliability of that data, or our capacity to interpret them or use them properly.

Those issues are going to be raised with respect to the next census as well, since the changes made are what caused them. In order to ensure that our official language minority communities are well represented in the celebrations and are given the necessary resources, we have to have a good picture of the vitality of our communities and have reliable data on them.

How can you normalize this situation or improve things so that we have reliable data to continue our study?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you for your question. It's not an easy one.

Previous Statistics Canada experience has shown that changing a questionnaire or moving some of its questions around will certainly influence the results obtained. That's not news. Of course, the fact that the 2011 census questions were asked in a different context led to a loss of comparability. That is not insurmountable, but it has been shown that we must be careful in interpreting the comparisons between the data from 2011 and that from previous censuses.

As you know, next May, Statistics Canada will release the first data from the National Household Survey, which is voluntary. We don't know yet what the quality of that survey's data will be. That has been mentioned already. The information is available on the Statistics Canada website. In terms of geographic location and subpopulations, we are still not sure what the quality of that data will be. It is important to point out that the 2006 long form census contained questions not only about linguistic issues, but also about profession, industry, education, immigrant status, and so on.

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

So we now have a less clear picture we can use to understand what the situation really is in our official language minority communities and to potentially better identify their needs for those celebrations. That is my understanding.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

I would simply say that we still have to wait for the data released in May or June to be able to assess whether the data we have is sufficient to paint a complete picture.

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

This will surely not be your last appearance before our committee, so we will likely have the opportunity to ask you questions again.

Quickly, I have another question for Mr. Wilson-Smith and Mr. Jedwab.

Both of you said it was important for the two linguistic groups to have a better understanding of history. We know that historical knowledge varies from one person to another. You also mentioned that it's important for the information made public to be truthful—otherwise we will end up surrounded by propaganda.

I asked the Canadian Heritage representatives a question when they came to testify. I wanted to know how we can really ensure that our most controversial historical figures, such as Louis Riel—or Louis Joseph Papineau, in Quebec—are well-represented, so that people can properly understand their role in history.

As you are a bit more specialized in that area, I would like to hear your comments.

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

Sometimes, slightly different approaches are needed.

As I mentioned earlier, for example, we tried to operate within specific language groups, in studying the black Canadian community, focusing on the Haitian community within Quebec and then elsewhere. But then you bring up the opposite of that. It really comes down to very methodical research in our presentation. For example, we have done polling that shows that the War of 1812, perhaps not surprisingly, resonates less among francophones than it does among English Canadians. Having said that, the figure is about seven out of 10 who say they have a knowledge of it and believe it should be taught within Canadian schools to a degree.

Our challenge in researching that was to ask, when we discuss the War of 1812, how do we make clear the implication of the francophone population in it, primarily in Quebec in this case? There are a number of issues. I'm not here to play history teacher, but when you look at 1812, you had a Swiss leader in the British army who was posted to Montreal, who was considered to be part of the English-speaking community of Montreal, and yet made his peace, because of his fluency in French, with the French community in Montreal. You had a degree, frankly, of language conflict in Montreal, but also language resolution, which, as a native Montrealer, I would suggest exemplifies, for better and for worse, the history of the city, with the communities working together.

So we've looked at the focus of that. We've looked at the degree to which the French Quebec community took part.

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

I asked you to keep your answer brief, as I would like to give Mr. Jedwab an opportunity to speak.

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

That is my example.

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

Thank you very much.

[Jack Jedwab]

I think we should make sure to recognize the event or those figures, and let various stakeholders within the system—for instance, people working in our museums and schools, our professors, our historians and researchers—talk honestly and truthfully about those figures, and not only spread propaganda. According to our surveys, generally speaking, Canadians like us to recognize the good and the bad parts of our history, and not only emphasize what seems good by thinking—mistakenly, in my opinion—that talking about something negative undermines people's attachment to Canada. I think our population appreciates debates. By the way, John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier, George Brown and other important figures from the Confederation were not necessarily very likeable people. There are some important debates, which must be part of our commemoration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Chisu.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank today's witnesses for their presentations. I am bilingual, as I speak Romanian and Hungarian. In addition, I love English and French. But above all, I love Canada.

I have the following questions.

For Statistics Canada, what is your recommendation, based on your area of expertise, for encouraging bilingualism in 2017, on the 150th celebration of Confederation?

For the Historica-Dominion Institute, how do you encourage bilingualism in schools, using our own treasure of having English and French in the same country? You mentioned that you were encouraging scholars to get together, but I think the youth are the base for the promotion of bilingualism in this country.

For the Canada Games Council, sport is fantastic for meeting between peoples. Is there any promotion that you are doing right now? Five years from now, we will have the 150th anniversary. In 2015 we will have the Pan American Games, mostly in the province of Ontario, so that is an opportunity to start to promote the Canada Games.

My last question will be for the Association for Canadian Studies. Immigration is very important for Canada. I understand that you are doing a fantastic job in Canada. However, outside of Canada you are not doing a very good job. For example, in Romania there are seven chairs of Canadian studies, but no Canadian participation. Because Europeans are used to languages, it is important that the immigrant communities be familiar with the nature of bilingualism. Our country is unique in the world in that it is a bilingual country. In Switzerland, they have four languages, but that is another story.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Corbeil.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Stats Canada's mandate is not to make recommendations, but I'll mention a few elements. What we've shown in most of our surveys and studies is that, in general—and we alluded to this earlier—when we have people who have contact, the understanding of the other group's perspective or standpoint increases. Even in Montreal, contact between anglophones and francophones causes each group to identify more closely with the other.

We tend to look at bilingualism or learning the other official language in a somewhat utilitarian way. We think it has to serve something. Often we refer to economic reasons for learning the language. But in learning the language there is also a transmission of culture, an understanding of the other's differences and perspectives. I think that learning the culture along with the language is a nice way to bridge the gaps between these linguistic groups.