Official Languages Committee on Oct. 27th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

On this Thursday, October 27, 2011, I would like to welcome you to the ninth meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. We are meeting pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(f) for the purpose of evaluating the Roadmap and improving programs and service delivery.

In front of us today we have the Quebec Community Groups Network, Madam Martin-Laforge, director general, and Mr. Thompson, director of policy, research and public affairs.

Before we begin with an opening 10-minute statement, I see that Mr. Bélanger would like to say something.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

With your permission, I would like to table a notice of motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

You have a notice of motion.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes. I will read the motion in French and in English:

That since proficiency in both official languages was clearly indicated as essential in the notice of vacancy (Canada Gazette, Vol. 144, No 40) for the position of Auditor General of Canada, the Committee invite Mr. Michael Ferguson, Auditor General nominee, to be heard on his knowledge of both official languages.

That:

Since proficiency in both official languages was clearly indicated as essential in the notice of vacancy (Canada Gazette, Vol. 144, No. 40) for the position of Auditor General of Canada, the committee invite Mr. Michael Ferguson, Auditor General nominee, to be heard on his knowledge of both official languages.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bélanger, for that notice of motion. The chair will ensure that it gets put onto the agenda for the next meeting.

Without further ado, we'll begin with a 10-minute opening statement from Madam Martin-Laforge.

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge, Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network]

Good morning, Mr. Chan, Monsieur Bélanger, Monsieur Godin, and members of the committee.

The Quebec Community Groups Network is pleased to have been invited to provide testimony today. We congratulate the committee for assuming a leadership role in shaping the Government of Canada's official language strategy, following the road map report. We wish to offer our full support, and the support of the community sector serving Canada's English linguistic minority communities, the English-speaking community of Quebec, as you undertake your long-term study.

Listening to Canadians on issues pertaining to linguistic duality and the development of official language minority communities is fundamental. We have noted the increased efforts to consult our community, and we are hopeful that individual English-speaking Quebeckers will experience positive results in the short-, medium-, and long-term. The Minister of Canadian Heritage has made himself available to meet with the QCGN twice in as many years and took the time to visit our community this summer and hear from our front-line community sector workers.

There have been demonstrable efforts to understand the specific challenges of our community by many elected officials. Opportunities for the issues and concerns of the English-speaking community of Quebec to be heard and included have also been made available through the continuing efforts of current parliamentarians like Monsieur Bélanger and Monsieur Godin, and previous House members like Monsieur Nadeau and others.

Our community is also deeply grateful for the ongoing support of your Senate colleagues. The Senate Standing Committee on Official Language's report, “The Vitality of Quebec's English-speaking Communities: From Myth to Reality” followed an historic visit to Quebec last fall. The report is a remarkable document, capturing the experience of living in our unique linguistic minority community. The Senate recently requested a government response to the report's recommendations by March 12, 2012.

We would also like to share with you the noticeable increase of effort made by federal departments and institutions in consulting with the English-speaking community of Quebec. From the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Canadian border security agency, it is clear there is a genuine interest within government to learn more about our community and find ways to enhance our vitality.

This welcomed change has been driven by three converging factors: the increased capacity of the English-speaking community to engage with the federal government; the untiring support of the Commissioner of Official Languages; and the thoughtful and practical support provided to QCGN and the community sector by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

We feel there is a genuine interest in our community from Parliament and the Government of Canada. We are also benefiting from an increasingly accurate and sophisticated understanding of the unique nature of our linguistic minority, a community that seeks integration with the majority in which it exists and whose communal focus is not the survival or protection of a language but the preservation and sustainability of our community.

Some on this committee may recall our comments in April 2010 testimony and appreciate that we have come some way in terms of gaining the opportunity to participate in the national discussion regarding Canada's official languages as an equal partner.

Committee members may also recall our frustration towards Canadian government strategies towards official languages that do not take into account our community's reality. For example, programs that depend on federal-provincial cooperation for the provision of services and community support are not developed with the realization that the Government of Quebec does not recognize the existence of an English-speaking minority community.

The effect of this is that services delivered within areas of provincial jurisdiction, like health, education, and employment, are done so at an individual level. This is seductively appealing, since it is easily managed and quantitatively measurable. Were the services provided in English or not? The problem is that it does little to support community vitality, the long-term capacity to provide services within institutions belonging to and governed by the community.

In some cases, the relationship between Ottawa and Quebec cuts off federal programs from our community completely. For example, programs within the current federal strategy, the road map, in areas of immigration, manpower development, and early childhood development are for all intents and purposes not accessible to our community, although some recent progress has been made in a very limited way.

We noted the testimony of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Official Languages Secretariat, during the committee's meeting on October 18. As the head of this secretariat, Monsieur Gauthier and his staff are playing a key role in the ongoing mid-term evaluation of the road map. We have communicated to the department that we remain very concerned that this evaluation, both at the individual department as well as at the horizontal level, will not properly reflect the impact of the road map on our community. The reasons are twofold and are of a logistical and systemic nature. The results, we fear, will provide unreliable data regarding the English-speaking community of Quebec for decision-makers and political leaders.

First, the evaluation process involved consultation with community sector organizations but was somewhat convoluted in its design from the beginning, and finally it was delayed by the election. I think maybe the election was one of the delays, but there are certainly other design delays. The resulting delays moved community consultations into the summer period, when a number of our organizations are either short-staffed or shut down completely in an effort to save money.

I talked about a logistical issue. Then there's a systemic issue.

Second, many of the programs being evaluated have little or no equivalent in Quebec. For example, $20 million through a recruitment and integration of immigrants program—that's from CIC; $13.5 million for the child care special project; $12.5 million placed in the youth programs initiative. There are no equivalents in the road map for the English-speaking community.

While the English-speaking community has received a few thousand dollars from Citizenship and Immigration Canada for research, they remain reluctant to consider designing an ongoing initiative that will respond to the needs of renewal in our regions in Quebec. We have received nothing from the child care project, as I have mentioned, and we don't have a youth community sector group and therefore are unable to take advantage of the youth initiatives program.

These are not abstract problems. Canadians living in the English-speaking community of Quebec do not have access to some programs and services contained in the road map or consideration in the policy and program design of the millions of dollars that support official languages in regular funding streams. This community needs to be reassured that the road map's replacement strategy will contain more targeted efforts by the federal government and its partners in supporting the development and vitality of our community.

Earlier, we mentioned the Senate standing committee's recent report on the vitality of our community. The report contains 16 remarkable recommendations.

For the purposes of today's meeting we would draw your attention to recommendation 3 of the Senate report, which says:

(a) Urges all departments covered by the Roadmap (2008-2013), in consultation with the English-speaking communities, to review communications strategies for increasing awareness of the funding available in all regions of Quebec.

(b) Immediately review, in consultation with the English-speaking communities, the Accountability and Coordination Framework and establish specific criteria and indicators so that all federal institutions are able to take into account the specific needs of those communities.

(c) Require federal institutions involved in developing the next official languages strategy to consider these criteria as a means of identifying allocations to both official-language minority communities and explaining imbalances, if any.

This is really not an argument for more money; it is a call for designers of the next federal official languages strategy to realize that although Canada's English and French linguistic minority communities face a number of similar challenges, their political realities are vastly different and their community structures dissimilar. We've said it before: one size does not fit all.

We are convinced that the federal leadership responsible for official languages understands the English-speaking community of Quebec much better than it did when the road map or its predecessor was being designed. In fact, I think our community understands its needs better.

There seems to be an appetite within government departments and institutions to find positive measures to enhance our vitality. The momentum exists. Let us help each other seize this moment to ensure a healthy and sustainable English linguistic minority.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, madam.

We have 1 hour and 40 minutes for questions and comments.

We will begin with Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to welcome Madame Martin-Laforge and Mr. Thompson here today. It's a great pleasure to have you at the committee. It is not the first time, and I think the relationship with the committee has been good in the past. We hope we can help your community, the minority in Quebec.

You were talking about the transfer of money. It's like a contract between the federal government and the provincial government on jurisdiction that really is not federal--it's provincial--like health care, education, and so on. I want to hear more from you about what voice the community should have in this regard.

I want to hear about it because we do have the same problem across the country within the francophone community. We complain, for example, that money is being sent in-province for the francophone minority, and francophones feel that the money is not coming in. We raised the question to the Commissioner of Official Languages this week, and the answer was that he's only there to investigate federal, not provincial, institutions. He had no authority at all.

I still believe the Commissioner of Official Languages could have gone to the minister in charge of a certain department and said, “Your department has sent money to a certain province. Are they not accountable for where the money went?” He could still have gone to the federal department to get the accountability, to see if the money went to the right place. The province has been complaining, people have been complaining, did the money go to the province, while in the community they don't feel they've had it.

I understand, Madame Martin-Laforge, that you're saying the same thing too. You're saying you feel that money goes to Quebec, but you don't feel it goes to the community where it was supposed to be sent. I'd like to hear more from you on that.

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

I think the responsibility around accountability for federal money going into provincial jurisdictions could be a shared one. This is done at the political level and at the bureaucratic level.

In Quebec, we have had devolution of certain programs without rigorous consideration of the impact on the English-speaking community. We can go back as far as the manpower programs, the labour development programs. Quebec was the first one to have it devolved. Then there's immigration, with Couture-Cullen.

So I think the responsibility is one thing. The community has a responsibility to make it understood to federal and provincial jurisdictions that there is an impact on them. If we are all concerned about the vitality of this minority community in Quebec, there should be accountability when the money comes in for where it goes and how it is expended. There have been many attempts by minority communities over the past many years to be at the table for consideration of where the money will go in education. There are other areas where money goes in and there's no consideration of what the impact will be.

On the other hand, I have to think that who gives the money starts to set the conditions. I don't want to be too harsh, but if the federal government is considering devolution, impact on the official language minority community should be considered.

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

Yes, but I don't think we're saying it's within the capacity of Quebec to decide about their education. It's the same thing in New Brunswick. I don't think you're saying that the federal government should get involved in education and how it's done. But if the money goes to the anglophone community, which is a minority, that community will decide with the government how the money will be spent in that community—not on the program, because the program is totally the responsibility of the province.

It's the same with health care. The federal government sends money to the province and says, “Okay, we're not going to tell you how many doctors you need, but we want the people to know when they go in that the service is free.”

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

I know a little bit about the education money that goes into a province, having worked elsewhere with that portfolio. On the money that comes in for a minority community in any province, there is a wish on behalf of the community to.... Let's pick a number and say that $50 million goes to Quebec, for example. How is the accountability for that money done? Does the community see that the full $50 million goes somewhere, or somewhere else?

The Senate had that in their report. They were worried that the money the federal government was expending in those areas for the minority community was not necessarily being used effectively.

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

The Commissioner of Official Languages said here on Tuesday that he spoke to some minister in the province who said, “When the money comes in, we decide where it goes.” That's not very good news. According to part VII, the government has the responsibility to promote the official language in a province where the minority exists, and the money goes to that group. It's not for the government to say, “Now I'm going to do what I want with it.” It's not for roads; it's for education or health care. That's what was said here on Tuesday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Mr. Gourde, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today. I am very pleased to be able to ask you a few questions today, especially because in my riding, 40% of the population have ancestors who came from anglophone communities. In fact, there was considerable Irish and Scottish immigration in the 1800s, from 1820 to 1870. Both our communities, the francophone and anglophone communities, are an integral part of the history of our riding and our country. We have experienced a positive history of integration over the course of generations. Today, every family includes a descendant of anglophone communities. This is a beautiful love story within our party and within our beautiful country.

You stated earlier that needs differ amongst francophone minority groups and anglophone minority groups. What are the specific needs of minority anglophone groups, such as the one in my riding, in terms of seniors, women and youth?

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

You mentioned seniors. It is clear that seniors are a priority. Statistics show that the anglophone population is aging faster in Quebec than elsewhere in the country.

There are efforts underway to create a seniors' network in order to determine what can be done in Quebec, from a strategic perspective, for anglophone seniors. Traditionally, anglophone seniors, because of the generation they belong to, are not as bilingual as young people. These seniors are 55 years or older.

We are seeing seniors go back to the regions they come from. They are retiring. They went to Toronto or elsewhere in Canada and now they are coming back to the regions they come from. They are not particularly bilingual. These are Canadians who left for various reasons and who are now coming home, to Quebec, but they do not have a very proficient level of bilingualism. This is creating pressure on health services and other services. It is important that we give them a strong network so that they are able to stay where they have chosen to come back to, whether that be Thetford Mines or Gaspésie.

At the other end of the spectrum are young people. Something that is important for our communities is the renewal of our population. People leave, people come back. We cannot chain our young people to a basement and keep them there, but attachment to community is important. There is a strong community in Thetford Mines. Whether the community is anglophone or francophone is irrelevant but the attachment to community is important. It is important that people see that they can come back to their communities and have access to services in their mother tongue.

There are many other issues, but they often revolve around these two target groups, that is, young people and seniors, and their feeling of belonging to their communities in their regions in Quebec.

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

I like what you are saying because that is the reality. In my riding, several people left when they were young simply because there were 12, 13 or 14 of them per home. These individuals went to work in other areas of Canada.

I know a man in my riding who came back from Alberta where he had spent 40 years of his life. He came back with his brother to the family farm where he was born. He reintegrated into his community because of a feeling of belonging. One never forgets one's roots. These individuals are truly proud and courageous. Your comments are very much appreciated. They reflect reality.

These people have a strong passion for their history. I think they are doing a lot to make their history known. Are you aware of any initiatives within these communities to showcase their history?

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

A large number of our group of 38 member associations are in various regions. I hear stories on a daily basis about what is happening in Rouyn-Noranda, the Gaspé, or the Eastern Townships. These are individual stories that help make up communities that want to live on and

—you know, to live, play, and work in their community. How do you live, play, and work? How do you do everything that makes you a vital contributor to a community?

We hear some very interesting stories, stories from the heart. People are trying to find ways in these regions to retain these individuals, but also to give them a feeling of belonging in those regions.

I'm going to be a townshipper, or I'm going to be a person from Shawinigan, but I'm also going to be a Quebecker and a Canadian.

It's that level of attachment.

There are several individual projects in these communities that are contributing to this development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Very well, thank you.

Mr. Bélanger, you have the floor.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madame Martin-Laforge and Monsieur Thompson, thank you for being here. Welcome.

Congratulations, by the way, on the Sheila and Victor Goldbloom awards that QCGN organized last weekend. I think we should note as a committee that Joan Ivory, Gemma Raeburn-Baynes, and Aline Visser, three stalwart members of the anglophone community of Quebec, were awarded the prize; well done.

My first question is not for you. Imagine that. My first question is for Mr. Gourde. It's a question I've asked him twice now. It is whether the evaluation of the road map that the department is now conducting will be made public. I hope to have an answer, because knowing whether or not it will be would be significant in determining how we conduct our hearings.

I wonder whether there is an answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger, for the question.

The department has told us that it is not able to provide us with the draft evaluation or mid-evaluation of the road map.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Do you mean that the work that is currently ongoing will not be shared with the public?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That's what we've been told. We have made inquiries, and that's what we've been told.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

And is Mr. Gourde able to confirm that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

I am able to tell you right now that I have confirmed it.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Who told you this, Mr. Chairman?