Official Languages Committee on Nov. 20th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

It's okay. Thank you.

Mr. Dion, you have the floor.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

There's no doubt that you're right when you say you're a catalyst. The question for this committee is whether you'll be a catalyst in both official languages, from A to Z, perfectly. Do you need some help from the government to be a perfect bilingual catalyst? This is the question of this committee. There was very little in your brief.

Tell us that we will be safe in that—not only about the Canada Games but about sports in general, because big mistakes have been made, even recently at the Olympics. We don't want that any more. This committee would fail in its duty if we did not recommend to the government that everything possible is being done to ensure that both official languages will be respected. That will be the question for you.

I would like to put my questions one after the other, because we have little time, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Corbeil and Mr. Nault, from Statistics Canada, thank you very much for this presentation. It was excellent. The fact that French is losing ground is to be expected, given the hundreds of thousands of new Canadians who, for the most part, do not speak French. However, the fact that bilingualism among Canadians outside Quebec is on the decline is very worrying. It is very worrisome that the rate of bilingualism is declining among the young. And so I would like to know whether you can help us to understand this phenomenon, using some very specific statistics.

For instance, we know that in the case of exogamous couples, when the non-francophone parent speaks French, the rate of transmission of the French language to the children is much higher than when the non-francophone parent does not speak French. Do you have any specific statistics on that for us? That would help us a great deal, as a committee, to pinpoint the problem. It is at the heart of the problem, in my opinion, insofar as the future of bilingualism in Canada is concerned. Anglophones and francophones intermarry, and they have to be able to transmit their dual linguistic heritage to their children. We need your help in that regard.

Also, you told us that the regular French as a second language program is on the decline. From 1992 to today, I believe, we went from 1.8 million to 1.38 million, i.e. a decrease of 23%. Can you tell us in which provinces this happened, for the most part? This would help us to speak to these governments. I understand that this falls under their jurisdiction, but our role is to ensure that French is taught everywhere in Canada in the regular curriculum, and not only in immersion schools. As for immersion schools, if I am not mistaken, you have all of the necessary figures to show us how things have increased. Those are all of my questions for you.

Thank you, Mr. Wilson-Smith and Mr. Jedwab. I found your presentations very impressive.

Very quickly, I have one question. You seem to be well equipped within your organizations. You are not asking for anything at all. Nevertheless, in order to ensure that the message regarding history and research on Canada will be well conceived in both languages, what recommendations would you make to the government?

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

You have raised a few points that are important to us. The challenges in Toronto—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Just a minute, I would like to do this in order. Perhaps Ms. Hylland could reply first, because I put my question to her first. Oh no, first I would like to hear your reply regarding statistics; I don't want to miss that one.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you, Mr. Dion. I will answer quickly.

Over the past two years, Statistics Canada has published 11 statistical portraits extracted from the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities conducted in 2006, and data from the censuses. Each province publishes one report for official language communities, and in exogamous couples, there is a very clear link between the fact that both spouses speak French, or are bilingual, and the growth of the use of French in the home. You are quite right, that is a reality. However there are challenges regarding school attendance. We know that outside Quebec, generally speaking, one young francophone out of two goes to a minority school and 15% are in immersion programs. However, close to half of the parents whose children do not attend a minority language program mentioned that if they had had that opportunity, they would have chosen to send their children to such a school. The lack of availability and accessibility is the problem, and that is due to the fact that the distances involved are too great. So there are some issues in that respect.

Soon, Statistics Canada, in the context of its new electronic publication policy, will be publishing a study on the factors that have influenced the development of bilingualism over the past 20 to 30 years. We will use different files, some of them from the provinces, specifically to determine which factors have been at play.

You are quite correct regarding the teaching of French. West of Ontario, there is no obligation to learn French as a second language. In British Columbia, for instance, French is one of six languages on the menu, so to speak. A large proportion of immigrants settle in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. The fact that that obligation is not felt west of Ontario means that, consequently of course, there is a drop in the number of young people who register in French as a second language programs. There are reasons for that. We would have to be able to study that more in detail. The census data would allow us to do that, but of course our resources are limited. That said—

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Wilson-Smith.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

I just want to make sure that the committee will contact Mr. Corbeil to have him provide whatever studies are available on the topic he has just been discussing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Very well.

Mr. Wilson-Smith, you may reply.

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

You mentioned several important points. From time to time, in Toronto, I get the feeling that you can hear every language on earth except French. Right now I'm learning a bit of Russian. Well, it's easier to find people to practise that language with than to find someone to speak French with in Toronto.

So, when the time comes to hire historians, finding some who can speak both French and English is a real challenge for us. I don't know if the government could

have a program to provide language support or assistance so that we would be able to hire...not at the starting point of unilingual, but people who have done some training, to augment that, to bring them up to speed. That would be very helpful for us. We've looked into other means, and of course there's a not-for-profit that can be—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Your main recommendation would be?

[Anthony Wilson-Smith]

If there are programs to help, for example, not-for-profits that are assisting in fields of national interest, such as these efforts—a training program that would help us, when we look for professional historians, to give them training in a language if they're not up to speed in it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Jedwab.

[Jack Jedwab]

I'm going to start from the recommendation and go backwards, if that's possible, as opposed to explaining why, because I know Mr. Dion wants to get the recommendation.

Again, I want to reiterate that we didn't come here to ask for resources. When you mentioned resources, I didn't think that was the mandate here, so I don't want to sort of tie the recommendation idea to a request for resources. But if there's one thing I could focus on, it would be—whether it's us or other organizations with which we work—to try to strengthen the network of people and the francophonie who work to promote a knowledge of history.

Now let me go backwards. Julie mentioned earlier that we alternate our national history conference between an anglophone conference and a francophone conference, which is not the way I had hoped it would happen. My initial hope was that we could have anglophone and francophone teachers together, historians together, and we could translate the whole thing and it would work. But three years ago—and I hope I do this in a way that doesn't offend anyone I've worked with in the past—when we were doing our conference with the history teachers' association, because that's who we work with in provinces, in Ontario it was a big struggle to get them to have any French at the conference.

Thankfully, that's changed, and now they're working with a group of francophone historians, but it was a struggle. They didn't think there was value in incorporating that particular piece because their teachers were largely anglophones and they didn't feel the interest was there.

I am very determined personally and professionally to make sure that piece is there, but now that is happening in the conference we're doing shortly in Niagara Falls.

It would be really important to strengthen the network of francophones who teach history at the high school level throughout the country, not only for young francophones in those schools who need to find out about their history, but also for those who outside of those schools also need to learn the history of the country and the important place linguistic duality occupies at the heart of it.

A lot of immigrants who arrive in Canada—and I don't mean that this is a matter of immigrants or non-immigrants, you have to be careful—also need to know, even if they don't learn French in British Columbia or elsewhere, that the support provided to our minority francophone community is an essential element of our history and is guaranteed in our country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Trottier, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

I learned something today, which is that we are going to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Canada Games. That is a very important anniversary. I would like to ask you some questions, because in my opinion, sport and athletics are a good way of communicating with people and getting them together.

Just to clarify, in 2017, you mentioned Manitoba. The games will take place in Winnipeg?

[Sue Hylland]

We're talking with the Government of Manitoba now to finalize where it will be.

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

And it will be a summer games?

[Sue Hylland]

It will be a summer games.

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

That's terrific.

We've had some experience with summer games, and I am wondering if in previous summer games we've identified gaps in the ability of the participants to interact with officials, referees, or umpires in either official language. I know that the Canada Games rely heavily on volunteers. When you're dealing with volunteers, you're dealing with local people as much as possible, so that can create some challenges in allowing athletes from across the country to compete in the language of their choice. I know a lot of communication with officials can be done through gestures and so on, but to really make that experience a full one for all the athletes, what kinds of challenges have you had in the past and what do you anticipate doing going forward?

[Sue Hylland]

The games grow from a single person about five years out to 6,000 people in a short four and a half years.

We have standards with respect to providing the language of choice to the athletes. In certain areas it's even more important when it comes to security, medical, things like that. We actually have standards that communities that bid to host have to adhere to.

Are there, at moments, some issues that do arise? Yes. Certainly, in my time here I can't think of an immediate one that's come to my attention. To the contrary, we have received a positive response from the Commissioner of Official Languages for most games in and around what we do and how we've implemented official languages at the games.

We're very cognizant of it, as we said in our comments. We believe we have standards, and I believe people embrace it with the games. Communities are embracing the notion of having to deliver the games to live the linguistic duality of our country.

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

Can you pick a sport, just to illustrate how that would work? I'm thinking again of officials and so on. Baseball is a sport in the Canada summer games. If an umpire is calling balls and strikes, for example, he would shout those out. Would he, on one hand, say, Prise!, or would he say “Strike!”? How would that work?

[Sue Hylland]

In that case, I don't know if it drills down that deep, and it probably doesn't at the moment. It could be something we could discuss with our NSOs, but at the moment we don't necessarily drill down that deep.

I think what happens, though, when our issues are happening on the field of play, the capacity in and around that to deal with those issues is there because it has to be there, based on our standards.

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

You mentioned also the access to medical facilities, and I imagine you're relying, again, on some volunteers in some cases.

[Sue Hylland]

Yes, absolutely.

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

What kinds of measures do the Canada Games take to make sure that volunteers...? Is there a qualification at the individual level, or at a higher level in terms of the team level?