Official Languages Committee on April 10th, 2014

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are about the enabling fund you talked about in your presentation, Mr. Johnson. You said the funding ensures the financial stability of the economic development networks and allows the linguistic minority communities to make long-term plans. I remind you that the definition of “ensure” is to make certain or to guarantee that something shall occur, and quite simply, this is not the case. We've had witnesses before this committee. We've heard that service organizations have to use resources and time for fundraising activities other than leveraging activities for private fundraising, and they still fall short.

Simply stated, the fact that these organizations have to go out and do bake sales or silent auctions or whatever kind of fundraising activities is taking away the time they have and the energy to provide services to the OLMCs. For 14 organizations, $12 million simply isn't enough, and there is a discrepancy between what Heritage Canada is saying in the road map of $69 million for the enabling fund and the $48 million that's actually being funded by ESDC.

The partners on the ground have come here before us, and they have testified that they need more to provide services to their organization.

My question is for Mr. Gauthier. The Commissioner of Official Languages talked about the fact that Canadian Heritage's official languages initiatives aren't tailored to the needs of Quebec's English-speaking communities, and the new road map doesn't appear to have corrected this problem, so what will you do to ensure that the specific needs of Quebec's English-speaking communities are recognized when implementing these road map programs?

My follow-up question would be about the EDI, the $10.2 million to CEDEC, the funding that's announced in the road map. Is that a yearly funding of $10.2 million, or is it spread over five years? Are we talking about $2 million every year for CEDEC?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

Let me start with the question at the end, which is the easiest to answer. It's basically over five years, so it's $10 million out of the $30 million that we have for five years for the community development initiative.

The needs of English-speaking Canadians in Quebec are something that we're very mindful of. We have, I would submit, a number of elements in our programs, including the road map, at Heritage Canada where we are supporting them. The needs are even greater. For instance, we supported the community in its efforts to talk among themselves, to establish a priority plan. They did that about a year and a half ago and came up with a plan. That's an initiative that we supported completely from the beginning, and financed as well, because we need that information on our side as well to make sure that we can tailor a response.

It doesn't mean we're going to have additional funds overnight to basically address whatever needs are there, but we definitely need to be aware of where to set the priorities and make the right choices and decisions, and we do that very much in discussion with them.

We meet with the QCGN a couple of times a year just to review those kinds of issues and have open and frank discussions with them to see where the priorities are and what to do, what best we can do, and we also intervene with colleagues sometimes to draw their attention and to make sure they are tracking the different needs.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I have a follow-up question for both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gauthier that involves tracking.

The QCGN came up with a vision and a strategy for the English-speaking community. We had one of the enabling fund organizations testify here just a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it was CEDEC. They basically said that they weren't really aware of the QCGN strategy, and that they met perhaps yearly or every two years. There seems to be a sort of disconnect between your two ministries in terms of how the rollout of these programs is happening.

How are you going to address coordination amongst your ministries? Just the fact that you've come before committee and Heritage is saying that there is $69 million for an enabling fund while ESDC is saying there is $48 million for an enabling fund.... There are a lot of discrepancies going on. There's the fact that Heritage says it regularly consults with the QCGN and the fact that we've heard CEDEC saying they weren't even aware, when they came to testify, that there was a vision and strategy for the English-speaking community in Quebec in the QCGN's actual report that they did with the communities.

Can you explain how you're going to improve on this discrepancy?

[Stephen Johnson]

Sure. Let me start perhaps by clarifying the discrepancy. There is not a discrepancy. The enabling fund is an amount of approximately $13.8 million per year, of which $12 million goes to the 14 organizations. That is what I focused on in my conversation, because I thought it would be of most interest to committee members. So $12 million over five years is $60 million à peu prés.

The $1.8 million in funds to national committees also funds, if you will, operating dollars within the department and pays for evaluation of research and some other activities. That's how the full amount that is cited in the road map breaks down into its components.

In terms of the disconnect between QCGN and CEDEC, I wasn't aware of that in terms of their plan. In fact, I was looking at some material from CEDEC and RDÉE Canada last night which suggested that in fact the work they're doing aligns very well with those higher-level strategic plans, so I'm not in a position to talk in much more detail about that.

I can just add by way of information that I chaired our national dialogue sessions on January 22 and 23. We had RDÉE, CEDEC, the QCGN, and the FCFA all around the table discussing and sharing plans and priorities.

We are doing our best to bring people together. Organizations in the communities also have to talk to each other.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

We are going now to Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming here this morning and presenting.

I'll start with Mr. Gauthier.

On page 3 of your report, Mr. Gauthier, you talk about the disadvantages that are faced by both anglophones and francophones in OLMCs. Can you talk a little bit more about what those disadvantages look like and what your department is doing to level the playing field or to address them?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

The disadvantages actually will vary from region to region, as I was explaining. One thing is to make sure that we get people close to the ground to work with the communities. That's partly why we have the design that we have with the community development initiative, where it's actually each regional development agency close to the ground that will help with the funding they have with respect to the road map. That is true in Quebec for the English-speaking community as well, where they can actually engage in discussion, being on the ground with them, and try to sort things out.

With respect to the disadvantages in general, again, since it varies so much from region to region, we have to engage locally. At Heritage we have a network of regional offices. Again, we divide the country into various regions. Regional offices are very much in charge with respect to official language programming in regard to receiving the requests for funding, engaging in discussion, and making sure that we address the priorities of the community and provide value for money in terms of putting the investments where they will actually generate the best results that we can have with the communities.

This is a kind of structural way of trying to make sure that we get close to the people so that we can actually learn, observe, and study what the issues are and engage in discussions with them. For me, I think this is paramount to making sure that we are sensitive with respect to the challenges.

Now, challenges aren't always solved. Actually, some challenges are continuing and are confronting us, and the work is continuing within the amount of resources that we and the communities have in trying to do the best we can. We could review various regions to discuss what these are in northern New Brunswick and what's going on in northern Ontario and so on and so forth, because you can find different challenges in different places.

But the real answer is to try to get close and engage with the people who are actually going through the challenges and the issues and to support them if we can.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Maybe I'll expand a little bit more on that question.

Are you finding that the challenges are with groups that are of the minority in a community or those that don't possess linguistic duality?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

There are different kinds of challenges, I would say. Some challenges are actually common to the whole population, in the sense that you're struggling with people leaving some regions and moving to bigger centres, for example. That will affect both majority- or minority-speaking communities per se.

That being said, we are much more interested in making sure that we focus on the minority communities per se. That's our mandate. It's not that the other issues are unimportant, but other programs and departmental initiatives try to deal with the rest of the issues.

We do have issues, therefore, that are specific to minority communities that are addressed as such. There issues are part of a broader trend that we're trying to address as well at the government level.

Of course, when you're dealing with accessing employment with revenue levels and so on and so forth, we observe that people who are bilingual are actually doing better in general, and that's at the individual level. In going from community level to individual level, we observe statistically that those people are usually faring better in finding employment and getting better remuneration.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

All right, good.

That leads me to my next question. I'm going to direct it to Ms. Gareau, just so that she can feel like she's participated here this morning.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

In the report from your department, on page 5, it says there are “economic advantages of linguistic duality”. Apart from finding employment in government, for which we know there's a distinct advantage, can you give me some examples where there is that economic advantage to people who have that ability?

[Denise Gareau, Director, Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thanks very much for the question.

We heard earlier about the shortages of engineers. So on a human capital basis, in terms of labour market competencies, we see that there are economic advantages to linguistic duality.

I think also of some of the interventions that we heard from Mr. Wilson around accessing.... There include things such as being able to build trade relationships with more countries, being able to attract, as the colleague from CIC noted , immigrants who are French-speaking to communities across the country.

We have a lot of communities that have shortages in certain trades, in certain sectors. They're able to open up their pool of skilled labour to welcome both English-speaking professionals and French-speaking professionals, and actually have the infrastructure there to welcome them.

I think there are a number of ways in which linguistic duality really benefits the country.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

Am I out of time or do I...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

I'll allow a very brief question.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay.

I don't really who to address this question to, either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Gilbert, but when international students come to Canada, is there a higher demand for francophone or anglophone education?

[Rénald Gilbert]

If I can answer part of that. A lot of students from France prefer to go to Quebec because there's an agreement between Quebec and France about tuition fees, which allows a French student to go to study in Quebec for the same fee that a local student pays. However, we see a trend where the University of Ottawa, for instance, has allowed students coming from francophone countries to have the same tuition fee as an Ontario student. That movement probably needs to be encouraged to increase the number of francophone students going to institutions outside Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Falk.

Ms. Perreault, you have the floor.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Good morning.

I am going to go back a bit to the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities. I know we have talked about it a lot thus far. However, we have learned that various regional economic development agencies were not following the same guideline in paying operating costs.

You have made changes to the enabling fund. For example, you are seeking cost cuts. Are these new criteria harder to meet than the previous ones?

[Denise Gareau]

Thank you.

There is in fact no guideline. The program is quite flexible. As my colleague Mr. Gauthier said, the differences among the communities are enormous. Some communities have extensive local infrastructure and capabilities. We can work together to maximize the network. In New Brunswick, for example, relations among the organizations are excellent, and they work very well together. We therefore do not need to focus as much effort on remote services. Consequently, we are achieving economies of scale.

This is more difficult in other places because they have few other capabilities. The organizations work on the ground and have no network through which they can work together. In that case, it is harder. We see that operating costs are higher.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

So there is no direct connection between them. It is not harder for you to meet the current demand.

[Denise Gareau]

That is precisely why we have not set a target for everyone. Consequently, some organizations are already performing well above the target level. In other instances, there is a lot of work to do. We take the 2012-2013 year as our benchmark, and all organizations will have to improve on the performance they achieved in that year.

We are working with the network to generate leverage and lower operating costs. The organizations are trying to find ways to work together to meet the targets.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

I understand what you are telling me, but I find it hard to understand one point. The overall budget of $12 million has not declined, but you are cutting operating costs and calling for more private resources. I am wondering whether the overall budget is the same and whether all that—

[Stephen Johnson]

The enabling fund pays operating costs and funds special initiatives. We want to cut operating costs and proportionately increase project funding. Overall amounts have remained the same, but we want to allocate more money to projects in order to achieve specific results rather than cover operating costs.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Were these changes made at the minister's request?