Evidence of meeting #9 for Official Languages in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was english-speaking.
A recording is available from Parliament.
October 27th, 2011 / 9:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
It's not available. A number of people have told me that.
I have made my efforts, and the clerk has made his effort to try to obtain that information on the draft evaluation or the mid-evaluation of the road map by the department, and for a number of reasons it's not available.
However, we—
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Well, it's not done yet, so I understand that it's not available. But when it's completed, will it be made available?
Conservative
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
But the other questions that you asked of the public servants who appeared in front of the committee will, I expect, be answered in due course.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
In May there was a journée de dialogue, which you attended, I believe. There was a report on those days. Were you sent that report?
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Is it something you're prepared to share with us—unless you've been told not to?
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
We have shared it with our community, so—
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Okay. I haven't seen it, so I'd love to be able to get a copy of it.
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
We've shared it with our community. It's available.
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
I don't think it's on our website, but it was shared with the people who attended, Mr. Bélanger.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Yes, I understand that, but we were not invited to attend.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Madame Martin-Laforge, if you want to provide a copy to the clerk, I'll ensure that it is distributed in both languages to all the members of the committee.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Can you tell us what is included? In one minute, can you tell us the gist of it?
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
The event was a good opportunity for people to come forward and to hear from different departments what had been done. If I may say so, it was at a very high level. To say that we learned anything new—we who work in this area all the time—would be probably stretching it a bit. It was a confirmation of what the departments were doing. I don't think there was anything....
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
We are supposed to be working towards perhaps another road map. The current one involves 15 departments. There are 80 departments and 120 agencies or so. Which ones are not included now that should be included, according to QCGN, in the next version, if there is to be one?
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
You know, Monsieur Bélanger, I'm not sure that we would go after many other departments. I think we need to focus on the departments that are doing a good job.
Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network
I think that Health has been incredibly important to us in this work. HRSDC is contributing in different ways.
If I might go one step further into a department, if I were looking to connect to Monsieur Gourde's comment earlier about trying to find a specific initiative around seniors, I might look to HRSDC, which has a stronger alignment with their strategic directions around seniors.
For the English-speaking community, it's to go deeper into those departments that would have, in their strategic orientation, something that could help us out around seniors, around youth, around immigration, and the rural secretariat, for example.
If I have a couple of minutes, I'd like to say that in our regions we did some review of what immigrants could bring to the regions. While in some regions it's pretty good, and the immigrants and CIC could bring us something, there's another piece that could bring us even more, concerning migrants—people coming from other places in Canada. It would be the renewal of our regions with people coming from elsewhere in Canada.
We are looking more specifically within our priorities at which departments within their core—from their regular funding currently—could give us something.