Official Languages Committee on March 19th, 2013

[Graham Fraser]

I think the challenge will be to ensure that as the federal government goes through a process of cutbacks and restrictions, institutions continue to recognize and to respect their continuing obligations under the Official Languages Act. For example, it's not because there's a budget cut that they don't continue to have those obligations.

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

In your opinion, what measures should be taken in the next few years to ensure the future of Canada's linguistic duality? In a way, we have two issues: one is we have Canadians who are unilingual, all French or all English, and the other is we have 250,000 immigrants coming into this country yearly. At the end of your mandate in three years, that will be 750,000 people, and the probability that they will be bilingual is very remote. In the context that we are a country of immigrants, how are we assuring that the dynamic of the duality of languages in the country will be maintained?

[Graham Fraser]

There are a number of things that are important. One that I recommended in my most recent annual report is that the government invest in exchanges for students so that there would be a significant increase in the number of exchanges and opportunities for students to study in their second language.

In terms of the arrival of newcomers to Canada, which is something that I welcome, I think this makes it all the more important that the government engage in public education about the history and values of the country. It is one of the reasons that I think the changes happening to the Museum of Civilization, and the various anniversaries for which there are plans for celebration, are extremely important as an exercise in public education for Canadians who did not go through the school system and are learning as adults about the history of the country and the values that shaped the country.

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

Okay.

Finally, Mr. Commissioner, can you tell me three achievements you are proud of in the seven years you have been commissioner?

[Graham Fraser]

I will take it chronologically.

Shortly after I arrived, there was the abolition of the court challenges program, and the report we did on the 118 complaints we received was the basis before the courts for the court case, which resulted in an out-of-court settlement and the creation of the language rights support program. The fact that the report we did was the only piece of documentation in the court case that resulted in that out-of-court settlement is something I'm proud of.

I'm also proud that we were able to engage in a constructive way in the planning for the Olympics. In many ways the Olympics were a huge success in terms of linguistic duality, with only one failure, and that was the opening ceremonies. We were able to produce a handbook that is now being used by the organizers of the Canada Games in Sherbrooke and also by the organizers of the Pan American Games.

I'm proud of the ongoing work we've done in terms of investigations, complaints, and audits, which I think has had a greater impact than is often publicly recognized or realized in helping institutions to realize the problems that exist and in leading to the corrections.

I'm also proud of the fact that we've been able to use our study on post-secondary learning opportunities as a continuing evergreen document that I can take across the country and use as a basis for discussion with federal councils, with provincial governments, and with university presidents and department heads about the importance of the continuum of language learning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Benskin.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Fraser.

I would like to go back to the questions of immigration, integration and the official languages.

Last week, the National Metropolis Conference was held, with “Building an Integrated Society” as its theme. There were discussions and round tables on topics like immigration, integration and so on. At one of the round tables, the main topic was how to study the immigration question without any data

How do we study? How do we do? Is it feasible to do a study when we don't have the information? This is directly in response to the cutting of the long-form census, which gave us a lot of detailed information and helped government target where the support was needed. To continue the discussion on immigration without that information, how is your department going to be able to target where support is needed, where there are deficiencies in the integration of immigrants into our society, as well as continuing to be able to watch over how both official languages are faring in minority situations?

[Graham Fraser]

That's a very good question. When the long-form census was done away with, we received complaints and did an investigation. I expressed my great concern about the loss of information that would represent.

What became clear in terms of the investigation that we did was that the institution was not at fault. Our investigative powers stop at the cabinet door, and as the resignation of Munir Sheikh demonstrated, this was not a decision that was made by a federal institution. It was made by federal cabinet.

I'll say just a word about the National Metropolis Conference. I have attended two of them and would have attended this one, except I had a planned holiday out of the country that was previously booked, unfortunately. I had hoped to be back on time. There was an event on the Wednesday night that marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Part of the tradition of the Metropolis Conference is to consider language issues as part of the pre-conference. Language has certainly been one of the continuing themes of those conferences, and I was sorry to miss that one.

Despite that, I think we will continue to be able to monitor the activities of the department. We're going to be doing an audit. It will be one of the institutions we will be looking at in detail in the years ahead, and we have certain capacity ourselves to conduct studies and to do investigations, even though, obviously, the lack of information that would have been there from the long-form census is unfortunate.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

What do you see as the two major challenges facing anglophone and francophone minority communities?

[Graham Fraser]

These days, I believe that the anglophone community in Quebec is affected in a number of ways. First, there is a general lack of understanding of how fragile the community is, especially with regard to established anglophone communities off the island of Montreal. The francophone majority tends to see Montreal as the one and only centre of the anglophone community and to compare the services provided in Montreal to those provided to francophones in Sudbury or Saint Boniface.

If you make the comparison with the situation of anglophone communities in Sherbrooke, Quebec City or the Gaspé, you get a much more balanced picture. In a qualitative study done by Statistics Canada in 2006, it was even discovered that people in the anglophone community in Quebec were rather pessimistic as to their future, even with the significant institutions and services at their disposal. On the other hand, people in minority communities outside Quebec were more optimistic, even with fewer services and institutions, or ones that were just beginning to develop.

I think that the explanation lies in the path the anglophone community is on. If you compare the size and economic strength of the anglophone community today with the situation 50 years ago, you clearly see that there has been a transformation. By contrast, since 1982, the establishment of francophone schools, school boards and health services all across the country has given people in the francophone community the feeling that they have made progress. They are more optimistic than anglophones.

The two groups have common challenges, especially an aging population. There is also an exodus of rural young people to the cities. However, I can attest to the fact that there are young people who left the Gaspé or the Magdalen Islands to go to university or into the military and then, as 30-somethings, they decide to move back home to start families.

The anglophone community on the Magdalen Islands has an organization called the Council for Anglophone Magdalen Islanders. Two members of the board are young women who came back to the islands after university. They are now financial advisors for financial institutions. I know that is a little anecdotal, but there is a visible change in terms of the leadership of those communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay. Thank you.

Your turn, Mr. Galipeau.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before I yield the floor to our colleague, Mr. O'Toole, I would like to clarify something about the long-form census. It has not been abolished. A greater number and a greater proportion of Canadians than ever filled it in during the last census.

In any event, the question of language was dealt with in the short form.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Galipeau.

Mr. O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation today, Mr. Fraser.

Talk to us about your priorities in terms of access to justice in both languages. By that I mean

the federal courts versus superior courts provincially, and what your priorities will be in that domain of access.

[Graham Fraser]

We have conducted a study jointly with my provincial colleagues, the Commissioner of Official Languages in New Brunswick, and the French Language Services Commissioner in Ontario, on the language capacity of federal courts. We've had a great deal of collaboration from the chief justices in the six provinces that we've looked at. We have a preliminary draft of that study.

I gave an initial presentation to the winter meeting of the Canadian Bar Association in Mont-Tremblant in February. We will be presenting the final report to the Canadian Bar Association in Saskatoon in August.

We are basically looking at the following: What is the process used to evaluate the capacity of nominees to the judiciary to be able to conduct a trial in the minority language? What should those criteria be? What is an appropriate level for designation? It's a study that looks at how the language skills are evaluated for those judges who play a critical role and how the judiciary evaluates its own linguistic capacity.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Has any consideration been given within that agenda or that priority area to assisting minority-language communities in understanding their legal rights, either in the criminal process or civil process, apart from trial, essentially, understanding their legal rights ahead of a court setting?

[Graham Fraser]

That was not part of the study. A few years ago the Criminal Code was changed to ensure that those accused were made aware of their language rights at the very beginning of the process. That was a positive change in terms of an obligation to make clear to the accused that they have language rights before they go before the courts.

I will take under consideration the idea that it's a promotion campaign we could consider. I have to say it's not something we have considered until now.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

My final question stems from your remarks about potential sharing of services among other officers of Parliament. What is the timeline for that possibility and what is the scope? Is it administrative? Is it beyond that?

[Graham Fraser]

The various officers of Parliament, including Elections Canada, information, privacy, and ourselves, are moving to the same building at 30 rue Victoria in Gatineau. The move is happening on a staged basis. We are scheduled to make the move in December. That assumes all the other previous moves have happened.

What we have already looked at is there will be a common reception for all the agents of Parliament and a common mailroom. We are in the process of looking at what other shared services we could engage in.

One of the messages we've heard loud and clear from Treasury Board and other federal institutions involved in the whole shared service exercise is that you should embark on a process, otherwise you will be shared, as it were. It is something we are looking at carefully, but it's the beginning rather than the end of a process at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lapointe, you have the floor.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Quickly, on behalf of my colleague Pierre Dionne Labelle, I would like to give notice of the following motion: That the Committee invite the Minister of Industry to appear regarding Industry Canada’s report of March 8, 2013, entitled Language of Work in Federally Regulated Private Businesses in Quebec not subject to the Official Languages Act, for a two-hour public and televised meeting between now and June 14, 2013.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you for your notice of motion.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Fraser. I am going to stay with the same subject. I would like to talk about that report that was tabled as a reaction to a New Democrat bill.

The report on the language of work in Quebec was done without anyone even being informed of the process in place. Do you support that method of preparing a report?

On the same matter, do you find it normal that the language rights of 135,000 workers are unprotected?

On the same matter, do you not believe that there is a principle of law here, whereby 100% of the people affected should be able to be protected? I say a principle of law, not something to be handled in terms of satisfaction rates, a kind of political calculation, as the Minister of Industry seemed to indicate it was.

Thank you.

[Graham Fraser]

Thank you for your questions.

I have to say that I was out of the country during the Metropolis Conference. I was also out of the country when this report was tabled. We are in the process of studying it.

Just before it was announced, I found out through the grapevine that this was the process that had been adopted. However, given that I have not had the opportunity to do an in-depth analysis, I hesitate to do so now and to say whether it is appropriate or not. What is important, actually, is the quality of the report. But I am not in a position to comment on the quality of the report.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

So you cannot reject or support the report's conclusions at this time.