Official Languages Committee on June 13th, 2013

[Peter Sylvester]

Yes, that is in fact the definition, Minister.

Do you want some data on this topic, Mr. Gourde?

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

Yes, if that is possible, because in my opinion, the francophone immigrants who come from France nearly all speak English.

[Peter Sylvester]

According to the 2011 census results, 10.3% of the immigrants who come to Canada are French-speaking. Outside of Quebec, this percentage is 2%. As an aside, in New Brunswick, the rate is 12%. So this is the province with the highest percentage of French-speaking immigrants.

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

Do these immigrants state that they are unilingual French or do they speak the two official languages?

[Peter Sylvester]

It could be a combination of the two, but according to the definition, as the minister stated, these are immigrants whose mother tongue is French or immigrants whose mother tongue is a language other than English or French, but who choose French as the first official language.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Casey, the floor is yours.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kenney, I am replacing Mr. Stéphane Dion. I am going to quote a few of his comments that have appeared in the newspapers and I would invite you to respond.

First of all, I need to give you a little bit of background.

The new Roadmap indicates that your department intends to refocus its official languages activities in order to take the modernization of the immigration system into account. Here is a comment made by Mr. Dion on this issue:

There is always the danger that the Roadmap be used as a showcase enabling the Conservative government to hide its program cutbacks. We see an example of this with the use of part of its plan to finance another government objective, an objective other than the one to promote the vitality of our official language minority communities.

Do you have a response to this issue?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

By the way, I am impressed by your proficiency in French, Mr. Casey. I did not know that you were bilingual.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

It is a big challenge. I started learning French immediately after the election.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Congratulations.

It's always funny when we anglophones are speaking French together.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I was under the impression that there were no reductions in the budgets. The Roadmap is indeed one of the federal government programs that was not really affected by this. That being said, I would say that the budget cutbacks were necessary. Generally speaking, this program did not have its budget reduced, although there were some small decreases.

For example, we have a budget of several million dollars to support the Destination Canada program, which involves promotion activities in Paris, Brussels, Tunis, etc. We eliminated the travel grants for provincial, municipal and non-government organizations. We said to ourselves that if they wanted to go to Paris, it was up to them—and not the Canadian taxpayers, to cover expenses. This was a reduction of approximately $400,000.

Would you like to add to that?

[Peter Sylvester]

Yes.

I would just like to complete the answer by saying that, indeed, there was probably some misunderstanding about the budget cutbacks. People were concerned we had some very good success this year with the 2012 edition.

As the minister stated, what we did cut was the money allocated for travel costs. The primary reason behind these cuts was that the employers who wish to attend this job fair, this opportunity to promote and recruit, had the means to pay for all of that. Looking ahead, with the new Roadmap, we are going to also build and even expand the Destination Canada program to include other locations where we can recruit.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I want to focus in on the concern that this $120 million and the change in emphasis is going to result in teaching the official language of the majority to economic immigrants.

Mr. Minister, you know that this subject was raised at this committee by the Commissioner of Official Languages. He expressed concern that the road map had gone through a change of name, from being a road map for linguistic duality to being a road map for official languages. He shared Mr. Dion's concern that this is exactly what would happen. His concern was that this fund for official language training would end up being spent on something other than the promotion of linguistic duality.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'll be absolutely blunt about this. Primarily what we're talking about with economic immigration federally is outside of Quebec. I'm not saying we're abandoning Quebec, but we have an agreement with them. They choose their own immigrants. We're talking primarily about francophone minority communities outside of Quebec. With the exception of the francophone refugees, whom we select and direct to live in certain francophone minority communities like Saint Boniface, the economic francophone immigrants who choose to go outside of Quebec, in almost all cases, are going to have some proficiency, if not fluency, in English.

Let me just put it to you this way: Good luck. You can be a francophone working in Winnipeg. That's wonderful. We want you to be there. We want you to support the francophone community, hopefully working for a francophone employer, but if you don't speak English living in Winnipeg, you're going to have a hard time. Let's face it.

I think we can almost take for granted that the francophone economic immigrants going outside of Quebec already have basic English. What we really want to do is help the non French-speaking immigrants outside of Quebec to learn French. They have these 170 points of service where they can go to learn French and get French services. They provide advice, counselling and whatnot to the francophone immigrants outside of Quebec. We're doing that as well.

I think we have to be practical about this. We're not going to turn the 250,000 immigrants we get every year into developing instant fluency in both official languages. We have to be a bit realistic about it.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

If, as you say, we're being realistic and this isn't necessarily about linguistic duality, is the funding really aimed at majority language training as opposed to minority language training?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

It's demand based. We don't aim it at English or French; we aim it at the official language the immigrants would like to learn. In most places outside of Quebec that happens to be English, although we are offering French services. I'll be honest. There's not a heck of a lot of demand in British Columbia for immigrants to learn French, but they can if they want to. We're offering it for free, and we encourage them to do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. Galipeau, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank you, minister, for being here accompanied by your champions. I have witnessed Mr. Sylvester's work as champion for official languages in your department. I have also noted that you are a champion for official languages within government and I thank you for that.

I have noticed that, quite often, immigrants that are supposed to be French-speaking and are recruited by the Quebec immigration system get to Canada through Quebec and then end up in communities outside of Quebec. So, francophones have been recruited by the province of Quebec and end up in Toronto, leading to an increase in the number of francophones in Toronto. That is not a bad thing.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

There are even some in Calgary.

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

There are some in Calgary, but perhaps not as many in Fort McMurray.

The Roadmap for Canadian Linguistic Duality that your colleague, Minister James Moore, included in the 2013 Economic Action Plan is more or less equivalent or perhaps a bit more generous than the previous Roadmap. It is 40% more generous than the 2003 to 2008 Roadmap was.

This Roadmap for Linguistic Duality is now focused on immigration. How is this new focus expressed in Quebec within anglophone minority communities?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As I was saying, in the context of the Canada-Quebec Accord on immigration, we grant quite a bit of funding to Quebec for settlement services. This year, we are disbursing over $250 million to Quebec. Quebec has the power to decide about the way in which it wants to spend this money. In fact, it does not spend all of these amounts for settlement services. That is a problem.

Also, because of the agreement, we cannot directly support settlement services for minorities in anglophone communities.

That being said, we are aware of our responsibility towards anglophone communities in Quebec. That is the reason why we subsidize certain research projects for anglophone organizations in Quebec, to the tune of $500,000.

Under the agreement we cannot directly provide services for the settlement of anglophones in Quebec. However, we can support them a bit through these supplementary projects.

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

For over 40 years, throughout Canada, we have seeing evidence of federal funding transferred to provinces for linguistic duality being spent by the provinces for other purposes.

With respect to this agreement with the province of Quebec, is there a sunset clause?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Officially, according to the best available data, the Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities in Quebec spends approximately $110 million per year on settlement services. However, I think that this year we are granting $260 million to the province.

Actually, the Government of Quebec has never been very clear on the way in which it makes use of this money.

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

These transfers exist because there is a Canada-Quebec agreement. What I'm asking is, does that agreement have a sunset?