Official Languages Committee on March 25th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages. This is Tuesday, March 25, 2014, and we are holding our 15th hearing.

We are here pursuant to Standing Order 108 to carry out a study on the economic situation of Canada's minority linguistic communities.

Today we will be hearing three groups of witnesses. Mr. Béland and Mr. Murphy represent Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada. Ms. Bossé and Ms. Kenny represent the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada.

From Youth Employment Services, we have Mr. Aylen and Madam Unger, who are representing that organization.

Without further ado, we'll begin with Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada.

[Shawn Murphy, Manager, Government Relations, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wish to begin by thanking you and the committee members for inviting Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada to appear before your committee as you are undertaking a study of the economic situation of Canada’s minority linguistic communities.

Before I address the study before us, I wanted to bring to your attention the fact that a new era will soon begin for Canada's cooperative movement with the launch of Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, or CMC, on April 1. For the first time, cooperatives and mutual enterprises in every sector and every region of Canada will be represented by a single national bilingual organization.

CMC will assume responsibility for the Canada-based work of its two founding organizations, the Canadian Co-operative Association, or CCA, and the Conseil canadien de la coopération et de la mutualité, the CCCM. The CMC brings together the francophone activities of the CCCM and the anglophone activities of the CCA to form one single national association. A single voice, a common table: this is the cooperative way.

Over the past 125 years, the cooperative formula has been an indispensable tool in the economic development of francophones and Acadians. It allowed them to work and live in their mother tongue, while introducing measures to respect cultural diversity, and ways of doing things that strengthened the use of their language in all sectors of endeavour.

It also allowed them to preserve and support the dynamic nature of Acadian and francophone communities outside of Quebec. It allowed them to get organized in daily life, and to live in the area that they chose. This dynamic is the cornerstone of the survival and lasting development of francophone and Acadian communities in Canada.

How does the cooperative model play out in assisting the economic situation of Canada’s minority linguistic communities?

Linguistic minority communities often face the challenge of accessing tools and resources that are often not available in their regions. Individuals may have to travel great distances to receive services in their language of choice. This is where we see the benefits of promoting the use of the cooperative model to help the economic situation in minority regions.

Cooperatives bring together individuals with common goals, often when there is a lack of service to meet their collective needs. Language is one of the common elements that can bring people together, even in minority situations, in order to receive the services that they might not have available.

The cooperative model was used by many official language minority communities to sustain their culture, for instance, through cooperative radio in the Maritimes, through a theatre cooperative in Calgary, an Acadian crafts cooperative in Chéticamp, or a francophone publishing cooperative in Regina.

However, cooperatives are not present only in the cultural arena. They are the backbone of the economy in many communities. What would these communities be without the many credit unions, fishers' cooperatives, agricultural and forestry cooperatives? Imagine Embrun without the Embrun Coop, Caraquet without the Caraquet Cooperative, or Saint Boniface without its credit union. Even the annual general meetings of these organizations literally become meeting places for the community. The cooperatives also provide a francophone environment, for instance through housing cooperatives, and we can educate our children in their native language in cooperative daycares such as the one in Chelsea, not far from here.

Finally, these cooperatives are the future of economic life in French in many communities. Indeed, the issue of finding a new generation to take over in business is an open door to the loss of economic assets for official language minority communities. If the executives of a business give it over to someone from outside the community, or worse yet, close it down, there is a far greater danger that the services will no longer be offered in the language of the community than if the community itself takes over the business in the form of a cooperative. A cooperative business will be an asset that it will keep forever, and one that it will benefit from.

Co-ops have been critical in providing a high level of innovation and services in areas that this government has highlighted as important. This innovation helps improve productivity in a way that specifically meets the needs of communities, including linguistic minority communities. This includes co-ops for food production, health care, child care, seniors' housing, and transportation, as well as grocery stores, funeral homes, and energy production. Co-ops for new agricultural products and domestic food distribution are one of the fastest growing co-op start-ups. The cooperative model of ownership is flexible, responsive, and adaptable enough to respond to many concerns of local communities.

History has shown that in Canada language communities in minority situations have used the cooperative formula for a very long time to give themselves economic and social development tools, and to give themselves services that are at the very heart of the challenges of maintaining and consolidating their community.

The presence of cooperatives in these communities in all sectors of activity bears witness to that most eloquently. The cooperative reflex is deeply rooted in the way of life of the citizens of these communities, who needed to consolidate, to meet and to forge their own development. The cooperatives have molded the history of our country and have been a feature of its identity.

That is why we believe that the cooperative movement is an important partner and supports the federal government in its mandate to promote the development of official language minority communities. The very nature of a cooperative project is implicitly linked to local mobilization and joint action. We think that this groundwork demands some concrete support from the federal government.

How can the cooperative movement support the development of official language minority communities?

The cooperative movement is a powerful tool in leveraging opportunities for minority groups, such as minority linguistic communities across the country. Co-ops have a well-established member network that can help in outreach and development.

We have 200 professionals who work with new and emerging co-ops on a daily basis from coast to coast to coast, and we have 9,000 co-ops and mutuals in Canada with $370 billion in assets and more than $50 billion in annual revenues. Co-ops exist in all economic sectors, including health care, social, renewable energy, finance, home care, and retail, to name but a few. Cooperatives and mutuals pay out over $1.2 billion in patronage dividends and donations every year.

There are large enterprises and small ones; there are enterprises in all sectors that often compete with each other on the market; in them there are anglophones and francophones and people from all cultures; people from minority communities and majority communities; all are brought together by cooperation.

We believe that the future of Canadian society goes hand in hand with this capacity to use everyone's potential to meet the common needs of our communities. That is why large cooperatives such as the Co-operators, Agropur or UFA are in favour of and support the small cooperative organizations that work with official language minority communities.

The CMC is happy to support the efforts of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, which is conducting this study at this time. We dearly hope that your work will mean that the cooperative movement will finally be considered as an indispensable economic actor in maintaining and developing official language minority communities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Murphy.

I will now yield the floor to Ms. Kenny, from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada.

[Marie-France Kenny, President, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I first want to thank you for having invited the FCFA to address you today.

As the leader of the collaborative networks of francophone and Acadian communities entrusted with seeing to the overall development of these communities, the FCFA is greatly interested in economic issues.

As you may know, the federation coordinates the Leaders' Forum, a group of 43 francophone organizations and institutions that work together to prepare a national strategic plan for communities. In fact, our friends from the CMC are members of it.

The plan has five parts, one devoted to the socio-economic development of francophone and Acadian communities. The objective of the communities in that context is dealing with the aging population and the rural exodus, as well as stimulating employment and economic growth. They want to do so by capitalizing on the dynamic nature of their networks and their private and collective entrepreneurship. They also want to put in place innovative strategies for local development to strengthen human resources, the acquisition of the necessary skills to allow everyone to succeed, as well as the recognition of foreign credentials.

It was with these objectives in mind that the federation addressed the Government of Canada and the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie about the importance of community economic development as a factor in the long-term survival of our communities. The conference and the governments that are a part of that entity provided financial support to the Pan Canadian Forum on Economic Development in the Canadian Francophonie in the fall of 2012.

The integrated action plan developed by that forum takes into account the economic development vision of the various levels of government, the private sector and the community networks. The plan has six main themes, and they are the market and commercialization, entrepreneurship, economic integration, sustainable partnerships, funding and investment, as well as public policy and regulations.

This last element leads me to voice the following basic principle: our communities must absolutely be active players in their own economic development.

Often, certain economic development stakeholders seem to have a tendency to see the communities not as partners but rather as passive recipients of development initiatives. However, the best solutions for social and economic challenges are most often to be found in the rural and local communities themselves, as the government in fact itself recognized, in particular in its 2011 Speech from the Throne.

The second principle is that there are a large variety of community stakeholders who do economic development. Very often, economic development is equated with entrepreneurship. Without wanting to minimize the contribution of business people to the creation of wealth in our communities, it must also be pointed out that the cooperative movement has played a very important role in many development sectors. In 2006, the francophone cooperatives outside of Quebec did more than 7 billion dollars of business.

In addition, economic development is related to employability. We cannot really consider a global economic development strategy without involving colleges and universities, literacy networks and organizations that further the acquisition of basic skills, as well as all of the other stakeholders who contribute to strengthening the human capital of our communities. Indeed, we must not lose sight of the importance of supporting the employability of immigrants as well as of those members of our communities who are unemployed or underemployed.

Finally, let us not forget tourism and culture.

In short, we feel that community economic development has four dimensions. Firstly, there is the entrepreneurial aspect, i.e. the deployment of a variety of production activities and the sale of goods and services. Then there is the enhancement of local resources on a given territory, within the context of partnerships involving both the communities and the private sector, as well as public institutions. The third dimension is the social and economic revitalization of a territory involving employment, housing, training, health and social services and the ownership by the local population of its economic and social development. Finally, the last dimension is that the community must be the both starting point and the final destination as well.

In reality, do things really take place in that way?

I would like to use the few minutes I have left to describe the challenges as the FCFA sees them.

As I mentioned previously, there are a large variety of stakeholders in economic development. Aside from community actors and the private sector there are various levels of government, and interdepartmental relations. The lines of communication and cooperation among the stakeholders are few and the players are not all at the same table. A lot of work gets done in isolation and often without planning that is directly linked to the needs of the community.

For instance, Canada's 2013-2018 official languages roadmap states that the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities will be informed by a continuous dialogue with the communities. However at the regional level that dialogue is not systematic, and varies greatly from one location to another. Nationally, key players in employability such as the francophone colleges, literacy networks and networks for the acquisition of essential skills, and the organizations that are the spokespersons for our communities, do not participate in that dialogue.

Federal departments that are active in economic development such as Industry Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada regularly organize meetings to discuss things with stakeholders in our communities. These meetings allow for the collection of a great deal of information from the field. However, not much is done with that information, whereas it could be used to better design and plan programs and policies. To our knowledge, that information is not used or is not used very much.

The members of this committee who know the FCFA well know to what extent our organization favours an approach based on cooperation and consultation. Our statement today demonstrates that clearly. We are very insistent on that approach because it gives results. Our communities have best managed to set up services and infrastructures in French when they got organized and concerted their efforts, and coordinated their activities around priorities and specific issues.

The money invested by the federal government in economic development in our communities comes from taxpayers. If you only consider the roadmap, we are looking at a sum of almost $100 million over five years. Can we really allow ourselves to continue to function in isolation without getting together and without getting the community to participate in its own development so as to produce concrete and sustainable results?

Regarding the roadmap, we are coming to the end of a first year. The 2014-2015 fiscal year which will begin in a few days will see investments in economic development become concrete. So there is still time to correct things by redirecting those investments in an endogenous development perspective, that is to say development by and for communities, by introducing new methods which would be based on collaboration and consultation.

I will conclude with a few concrete recommendations on economic development in our communities.

Firstly, generally speaking, all of the federal departments have to focus more on endogenous economic development and work with their provincial, territorial, municipal and private sector and community partners using a comprehensive and integrated approach. Those partners must work together to plan programs by region and by community, taking into account all of the stakeholders who should be brought in to participate.

Next, we recommend that the support programs managed by the federal departments and regional economic development agencies be flexible, so as to take into account the particular realities and challenges of the francophone and Acadian communities.

Finally, when federal institutions commission studies or investigations on economic development or employability, they should include language questions that would allow them to have an accurate picture of the situation and of the issues encountered by official language minority communities.

I will be pleased to answer your questions later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Ms. Kenny.

Now we'll hear from Youth Employment Services.

[John Aylen, President, Board of Directors, Youth Employment Services]

Good morning. First of all, I'd like to speak to you about who we are and what we do, and that will provide a context for our analysis and our conclusions.

Youth Employment Services is a non-profit charity whose mission is to enrich the community by providing English-language services to help people find jobs and start small businesses. YES was founded in 1995 by a group of concerned leaders from the business, education, and corporate communities in response to the youth exodus and in recognition that employment was a major strategy in addressing retention.

Retention and renewal is still our primary mission, and every program or activity we engage in is with the purpose of supporting, retaining, and attracting individuals to Quebec. In the broader sense, we do this using a community development approach, building partnerships, attracting and cultivating volunteers, and creating networks. In concrete terms, we do this by providing support services.

Our services respond to the ongoing needs of our clients and our community. We help people start and grow businesses, find employment, and help artists who need the business skills to succeed economically through their art. We modify and adjust our programs to ensure that our services remain relevant.

We provide over 1,200 workshops at our downtown location and online. We hold events and conferences, provide coaching and counselling—over 5,000 sessions last year—mentors and internships, and we work with over 400 volunteers and a variety of partners and funders.

We pride ourselves on our ability to build strong partnerships with the business community, Broccolini, Aldo, BeaverTails, and Bombardier; with the arts community with David Usher, Lorraine Klaasen, and Jennifer Gasoi; with the academic community with the universities and colleges; with the community sector with the QCGN members; with the francophone community organizations; and with the media.

We do a regular spots on Global. We're present on CTV and the CBC, in The Gazette, and others.

The objective is to bring together networks and our clients. We work with a variety of funders from both the provincial and federal governments, foundations, corporations, and we do our own fundraising and pay-for-services activities.

In 1993 we helped over 120 clients. Today we help over 4,600 individuals who visit our downtown location close to 15,000 times a year. As well, we now have the capacity through technology to service areas outside of Montreal that need English-language services, and we are working closely with many of our regional partners, including Voice of English-speaking Québec, CASA, and others to ensure that English-language services are available in the regions of Quebec.

We also have programs where our coaches are able to provide services at the offices of our regional partners. Each year YES hosts four major conferences, including the largest English-language entrepreneurial conference and the only artists conference.

In 2008 YES did a report on the barriers to employment and self-employment for the OLMC new arrivals and visible minorities entitled, “Self-Employment and Employment in Quebec’s English-speaking Cultural Communities and Visible Minorities: Prospects and Problems”.

Between 2011 and 2012, YES brought together the OLMC partners to look at the issues of economic development of the OLMC. This research and discussion took place over a two-year span and resulted in a report entitled, “Regional Development of English Language Entrepreneurial Services”, which we have distributed today. This was in follow-up to a report done by the QCGN in 2008.

In 2013, YES recognized an increase in mental health issues within our client base and did a study with the support of the CHSSN, “Building Youth Resiliency and Community Vitality within Montreal’s English Language Population” to quantify what we were observing.

In 2013, with the support of the Status of Women, YES did a gender-based analysis to better understand the needs of women in the field of technology in Quebec. As a result, we are building exciting new partnerships in the technology industry, including Google and Ubisoft. This week we will be matching 20 women with 20 tech companies at a speed-interviewing event being held at Google.

As a result of these studies, YES has created a variety of programs to respond to all of these reports. We take a holistic approach in our responses. You can see some of these programs in the packages that we have distributed. Research allows our community to quantify the issues that we see emerging and these are an invaluable tool.

YES also heads up the employment services round table, the only coalition of community employment organizations that provide English-language employment services. This table was set up in 1998, when the federal government transferred payments and responsibilities to the provincial government, to ensure the continuity and health of English-language employment services. It continues to meet regularly.

I'll pass you to Iris Unger now.

[Iris Unger, Executive Director, Youth Employment Services]

What are we currently seeing?

Obviously, the current political situation is having an impact on what we are seeing and hearing, but I would like to address the issue in more general terms.

Youth unemployment and underemployment is often quoted at about 13% for both Canada and Quebec, but this figure, from my perspective, is really not an accurate figure, in that it does not include those who are underemployed or have dropped out of the job market altogether. I would estimate the figure being much higher. Members of the OLMC face even greater challenges as members of a minority community. Many of our clients have university degrees and are living below the poverty level. TD Economics' report on youth unemployment states that the financial impact will be $23.1 billion in lost wages over the next 18 years. The issue becomes: what impact will this have on our community?

As a result of being unemployed and underemployed many of the young people are facing situational mental health issues. Many feel isolated and have no networks to support them, as demonstrated by the reports that we have just undertaken. I also want to clarify that our organization has grown and most of the clients we see fall between the ages of about 22 to 40 years old, but we also see older people who are coming to us for support for entrepreneurial help, and our artist clientele have no age restrictions.

Many young people who are English-speaking are coming to Quebec for a variety of reasons and can be very instrumental in the renewal of our communities. Many are attracted by the creative economy and in many cases they have been recruited by what's being referred to as creative companies. They often come with families, and they come to Quebec with the hopes of joining this creative economy.

We've worked with the spouses, we've worked with the people who come hoping to get jobs, and many of them find themselves underemployed or working on short-term contracts or underpaid jobs. Many young people as well go to English universities in Quebec and want to stay in Quebec. We also see them at our doors. New government policies have made it a bit easier for these people to remain in Quebec, but they also, again, have the potential of renewing our community and need the support to remain.

It is very difficult for new arrivals to access English-language support, so they either will integrate into the majority community or will leave and use Quebec as an entry point for Canada. There are many people interested in entrepreneurship in the OLMC for a variety of reasons but one of them is their difficulty in finding jobs, so they create their own businesses. Last year we helped more than 700 businesses get launched or sustained.

A large percentage of the OLMC is made up of visible minority communities as well, who are struggling with a whole variety of difficult and systemic issues. They are a minority within a minority.

Youth from the OLMC are reluctant to go into the trades or government jobs for a variety of reasons including: the lack of training for many of the trades, the heavy influence of trade unions in Quebec, and government bureaucracy and forms in French only. If they succeed in getting employment, there is often a sense of exclusion on the job. There is also a perception related to language competencies and complexities related to government positions in the province.

There is also difficulty in accessing English-language services, and much of the funding is going to para-government or government agencies in Quebec that don't necessarily meet the needs, or there is not the perception that they will meet the needs of those in our community.

Many individuals, especially new arrivals from the OLMC, lack networks as identified in all of our studies. There is a skills mismatch between what young people are learning in university and what the needs of employers are. This is a universal issue, but again, it impacts proportionately our community.

Internships work as a vital tool for the OLMC to retain young adults seeking career opportunities in Quebec. They clearly need the community sector's involvement in their success. Thanks to the Youth Employment Strategy we've had great success with those.

I will quickly pass it to John for the conclusion and recommendations.

[John Aylen]

Community organizations have played and continue to play a crucial role in the vitality of the OLMC as it relates to retention and renewal of the OLMC, whether the group is in Montreal or in the regions. They provide services, a network, an entry point to a community, and a place that makes community members feel part of that community. Groups need the financial support and stability to do their jobs. Project funding is not sustainable.

Community organizations have an important job to do but spend an inordinate amount of time trying to secure funding instead of focusing on their mission. It is an important and economical investment on the part of the government, but we need to also add businesses to the dialogue. Government can possibly look at ways and incentives to encourage businesses to be part of that dialogue. Many of the issues related to renewal and retention—employment and immigration to name two—fall under provincial jurisdictions and this makes addressing already complex issues even more difficult. The federal government may be able to play a role in helping the community build those bridges.

Community organizations, governments, and businesses all need to work together to ensure adequate resources for the community organizations to address issues that are crucial to the health and future of the OLMC. These issues are intergovernmental, interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, and intersectorial, and they need multi-pronged and creative responses. They can't be dealt with piecemeal or hampered by jurisdictions.

Today young people and many business leaders would say this situation needs an organic response because the issues are more complex, are moving quickly, and don't fit into tidy matrix graphs and boxes. We all need to be thinking more organically in our responses to the issue of renewal and retention for the OLMC in Quebec, as it is ultimately having an important impact on our youth, our economy, our province, and our country.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

We'll have about an hour and a half of questions and comments from members of the committee, beginning with Mr. Godin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I begin, I want to thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

The committee decided to do a study on the economic situation of official language minority communities. This topic is even more important because the people we have met in these communities have asked us to examine that question. More than ever, those people are asking for solutions to the economic problems their communities grapple with. Indeed, official language minority communities very often have economic problems. So there are good reasons to work together to help those communities.

My first question will be addressed to the cooperative representatives.

In 2012, the Conservative government abolished the Co-operative Development Initiative. What do you think was the main effect of that on the cooperative sector overall in Canada, and on official language minority communities, more particularly in western Canada?

[Michaël Béland, Manager, Co-operative Development, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada]

I won't deny that the consequences were very serious. Francophones outside Quebec used to be able to count on francophone provincial councils in seven provinces. I would say that we got kneecapped, not to put too fine a point on it. Several provinces had to stop offering services. For instance, from that day on, a francophone in Nova Scotia would have had to travel thousands of kilometres to receive services to help him to set up a cooperative. Because of that, expertise was lost in several provinces. The consequences were very serious on the service that helped to set up cooperatives, first of all.

We also lost the help offered for innovative cooperative projects and subsidies to help them start up. For a community that wanted to solve a community problem with a cooperative solution, access to start-up funding became much more difficult.

Yesterday, again, I was discussing matters with various francophone provincial councils outside Quebec, who told me that on top of everything the demand is increasing. Communities are asking for new cooperative projects in greater numbers, but there is a lack of resources. People can no longer meet the demand.

So clearly, the consequences are very serious.

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

What repercussions did the decrease in human and financial resources at the Cooperatives Secretariat of the Department of Industry have on the Canadian cooperative sector, in your opinion? What will the consequences be for official language minority communities?

[Michaël Béland]

The secretariat did follow-up on the cooperative movement as a whole. When needed it could examine the situation of francophones outside Quebec or of anglophones within Quebec. The latest data go back to 2009. The difficulty in having access to data and painting a current picture of what cooperatives and mutuals represent for the official language minority communities is a good example of those repercussions.

Industry Canada, to which the portfolio was transferred, does do good work. We are satisfied with its work, but there is still much to do. There are very few resources at Industry Canada and there is not a doubt that increasing those resources will be a welcome move.

It is important to point out that official language minority communities and the organizations that work there receive no funding from the roadmap. We thought that this could be rethought and that another solution could be found. The current roadmap has been in existence for a year and not a single dollar was transferred.

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

My question is for the FCFA representatives.

You talked about the importance of joint planning between the government and the communities to further community economic development. Can you tell us in a more specific way what you mean by that?

[Marie-France Kenny]

Sure. There are national tables in various departments and in several of our organizations. I do not want to just talk about the departments because there are national and local tables too. Our impression is that not all stakeholders participate. There are a lot of economic players, including the co-operatives, of course. There is the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité in the provinces, as well as RDEE Canada at the national level. There are colleges and universities, as well as communities.

For parents, it would be easy to say to their children that they are going to plan the rest of their lives, without having them participate in the planning, and just tell them what they have to do. But things do not work like that.

We should take the time to talk to each other. Each community has an overall development plan. Collectively, we have a national strategic plan for communities. The Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie has just held an economic development forum where they came up with an integrated plan. Another strategic plan is being done at the moment. How many strategic plans are we going to have? Can we not all get together and discuss how we are going to go about doing things?

Departments often tell us that they have not thought about the desired objectives. We have had that discussion right here when we had the consultations about the last Roadmap. We want specific, measurable results. Before a program is implemented, can people not sit down with the communities to find out what they need?

If you just want hard-nosed economic development, it will no longer be economic development for minority francophone communities. I am an entrepreneur. I could just go with the majority and drop all this, but I take pride in operating my two businesses in French and in English in minority situations.

When a program is being considered for implementation, can we not make sure that all the stakeholders in economic development are at the national and local tables? I am talking about co-operatives, if there are any, and about colleges and universities, but communities should be at the table too. If community economic development programs are put in place without having the communities participate in the process, there is going to be a serious problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Ms. Kenney.

Your turn, Mr. Gourde.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for being here this morning.

My first question goes to the representatives from Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada.

Earlier, I heard that francophone and anglophone co-operatives had come together. Can you explain why?

What does the fact of all co-operatives coming together mean in terms of national sales figures? That includes the financial sector, insurance, the service sector and the many agricultural co-operatives all across Canada.

Can you show us how powerful an economic engine co-operatives are in Canada?

[Michaël Béland]

Yes, indeed. Previously, there were two co-operative networks in Canada, one francophone and one anglophone. They had existed for goodness knows how long for historical reasons. Basically, francophones made up about 45% of the co-operatives, 60% of the assets, 60% of the jobs and 50% of the revenue. So it really was split down the middle.

We asked ourselves why we would not come together, why we would not give ourselves a stronger voice to make the co-operative model known, both here in the House and with the public. We also realized that it would allow us to exchange better business practices. Some models existed among francophone co-operatives but not in the anglophone ones, and vice versa. So we decided to co-operate and to see how we could provide each other with more mutual support. It is very important to point out that anglophone co-operatives are now helping francophones outside Quebec and vice versa. This is the true co-operative spirit, for the good of Canadian society.

Our revenue is $50 billion, with $370 billion in assets that belong to Canadians. It is important to stress that this is not private money; it is money from ordinary men and women in the street. All of us around this table, for example, hold co-operatives.

Our growth rate in terms of both assets and jobs has been higher than for private enterprise in recent years. Our survival rate is double that of private enterprise. That means that, five or ten years after a business has been set up, it is twice as likely to continue if it has been set up as a co-operative. The engine is real.

It is also important to know that, during the recovery, it has been shown, in Canada and elsewhere in the world, that co-operative financial institutions have been more stable than private financial institutions. The explanation is that the goal of a co-operative is for the business to be sustainable, to exist in the long term. Profit is not the most important thing; the priority is rather to keep jobs and services in the community.

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

The level of success you are telling us about is impressive. However, if I am not mistaken, there is no equivalent in the private sector in Canada. There are no businesses whose activities are so widespread throughout the Canadian economy as a whole. Is there an equivalent, or are you really unique?

[Michaël Béland]

I feel that we are really unique, if only by virtue of the fact that we have a number of areas of activity. As we mentioned earlier, it ranges from insurance to forestry, from culture to a number of other things. We are all together. Co-operatives and mutuals represent about 5% of the GDP. In some provinces, it will be more. I think that it is even higher in Saskatchewan, for example.

To my knowledge, no other sector brings so many things together. We could say, for example, that the mining sector represents 5% of the GDP. But its companies are not linked together with the goal of moving society forward. I feel that this is the only economic coming-together of this scope. I do not think there is anything comparable in business.

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

Judging by your comments, it means that the co-operative movement in Canada has reached a certain level of maturity, one that is from 60 to 160 years old. In my region of Quebec, Promutual Assurance Lotbinière has been in existence for 165 years, I think. It is an integral part of a Canadian community.

You chose to unite two forces in the co-operative movement, English-speaking and French-speaking. Do you think you are creating economic bilingualism in the short or medium term?

[Michaël Béland]

Actually, we have bilingual co-operatives operating in both languages, just like we have francophone co-operatives and anglophone ones. Things are not always black and white; they are often grey.

Our organization is fully bilingual. Business between francophone and anglophone cooperatives is developing more and more. You are probably familiar with IÖGO, the new brand of yogurt. That is the result of a partnership between a francophone dairy co-operative and an anglophone one. They are working together. Our companies are working together more and more. We want our co-operatives to work together as a sector to become stronger and to develop all communities.

I should emphasize that we have not forgotten minority language communities in this larger picture.

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

I think Ms. Kenney would like to make a comment as well.

[Marie-France Kenny]

I am a big fan of co-operatives. I am a member of a number of co-operatives myself. So I applaud the fact that the new structure is maintaining its mandate in the context of minority communities.

But I would still like to sound a note of caution. In our country, bilingual organizations sometimes tend to become unilingual anglophone. The francophones are absorbed and you are left with an anglophone majority. In my opinion, this note of caution is important. We have to make a distinction between providing bilingual services and creating a bilingual organization. Often, given that the francophone portion is in the minority, it becomes even more so. I would like us to make the distinction between being francophone and anglophone, and providing bilingual services.

That said, as I am bilingual myself, I understand that we want to strengthen both abilities, but we must not lose the francophone component as we do so.

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

How would our minority francophone communities in western Canada, which probably subscribe to the co-operative philosophy in large measure anyway, be able to look for an economic advantage in this partnership?