Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank committee members for inviting us here this morning.
My name is Jean Léger and I am executive director of the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité Canada, better known as RDÉE Canada. The chairman of our board, Gilles Lanteigne, who is from New Brunswick, was to be with us this morning, but the weather was not very good in the Maritimes yesterday and he is unable to be here this morning.
I will begin with a brief history of how RDÉE came about and then tell you about the benefits reaped to date by our organization, which has become a key economic driver in Canada. Like those who preceded me, I will conclude with a series of recommendations to the committee that will give RDÉE the means to develop the full economic potential of Canada's francophone and Acadian communities.
RDÉE Canada was created in 1997 with the original objective of organizing economic development in all of Canada's francophone and Acadian communities, except Quebec.
Specifically, RDÉE Canada, which stands for Réseau de développement économique et d’employabilité Canada—Canada's francophone economic development and employability network—fosters mobilization, collaboration and coordination of efforts to support francophone and Acadian communities to contribute fully to Canada's prosperity.
RDÉE Canada derives its strength and inspiration from its extensive Canadian network. Each province and territory, except Quebec, has an RDÉE Canada member organization. This morning you had a chance to hear from two representatives of those organizations, the Conseil de développement économique de l'Alberta and the Conseil de la coopération de la Saskatchewan. RDÉE Canada members come directly from Canada's francophone and Acadian communities. Business people from a range of backgrounds come together to help create the conditions to build a solid and, of course, sustainable economy.
The members of the RDÉE Canada board are all entrepreneurs and business people active in their respective sectors from all provinces and territories, except Quebec. They are all volunteers who are involved in their communities and who have chosen to live in our Canada in French. In doing so, they help other francophones and Acadians to do the same. By creating jobs, they contribute to our country's prosperity and proudly promote our values of linguistic duality by helping French prosper and flourish.
RDÉE Canada has four priority action areas on which we are working hard.
The first action area is the Canadian economic Francophonie. The task is to ensure that this Francophonie running from east to west and including the north works together and that our francophone entrepreneurs work together. Here we also see the connections with francophones from Quebec.
We also have another action area, economic immigration. The goal here is to educate employers about hiring immigrants and, of course, to invite immigrants to settle in our communities.
The tourism area represents excellent potential for the Canadian Francophonie. We need to enhance the francophone tourism product and to extend its outreach to the national and international levels. This becomes a kind of value-added for our country.
The fourth action area is the green economy. We must ensure that our businesses and communities go green for the sake of sustainable development.
In addition to these four main action areas are the other, more sector-based initiatives. I will name only a few, in fact two key issues for the francophone communities.
The first is labour. This issue often highlights the gap between business needs and the skills businesses seek and labour availability. We must direct our young people to promising sectors in our various regions.
Another area requiring our attention, both anglophones and francophones, is entrepreneurial succession. Changes in business ownership in the OLMCs is becoming a critical issue for the sustainability of businesses and the communities. You can imagine the consequences of losing a business in a rural francophone community. It obviously undermines demographic and economic vitality.
RDÉE Canada and its members have achieved concrete, measurable results. RDÉE Canada commissioned Ronald Bisson and Associates Inc. to measure the influence it exercised from 2009 to 2012. Here are a few examples of our contributions.
Our network invested $100 million in the Canadian economy over those three years through the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities, which serves as a lever and encourages the private sector and federal and provincial departments to participate in a real way. It thus helped create 3,700 direct and indirect jobs.
For example, every year RDÉE Canada members support 20,000 entrepreneurs through various activities. We want to do even more and further maximize the impact of our actions. We would like to establish a Canadian economic development plan for the official language minority communities.
As you can see, as a result of the enabling fund, we have taken various actions that have had a major impact.
Further to these achievements and the confirmation of the economic importance of French for all Canadians, RDÉE Canada undertook an inclusive, nation-wide consultation in cooperation with its Quebec anglophone colleagues from CEDEC to involve both economic and community players in the plan and thus to encourage cooperation on specific projects.
We are not necessarily trying to stick with the strategies, but rather to engage in actual projects. I can tell you that 1,200 people responded to an on-line survey, which gave us a good overview of the economic concerns of our communities across the country, including in Quebec.
I will close with a few recommendations.
You may have noticed that limited research is being done on economic development or on the economy of official language minority communities. We recommend that more studies be conducted on the economic development of OLMCs under Industry Canada's Economic Development Initiative.
We also recommend consulting and engaging in open dialogue with the communities for improved efficiency of federal government investment for the amounts identified under the roadmap for official languages, supported by the Canadian Plan for Economic Development of OLMC, which we are developing.
Lastly, we recommend that the federal government continue and enhance Employment and Social Development Canada's enabling fund to allow the francophone and Acadian communities to continue contributing to the economy of our country, to create ties with other federal government departments and agencies, the provinces and the private sector and to exercise an influence over them.
That concludes my presentation, Mr. Chair.