Mr. Chair, members of the committee, good afternoon.
First, I wish to thank you very much for inviting us to share our perceptions of Citizenship and Immigration Canada's commitment to promoting Canada's linguistic duality and the development of official language minority communities.
I am Ida Kamariza, coordinator of the Réseau en immigration francophone de l'Alberta, which is governed by the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta, or the ACFA.
The ACFA has been representing Alberta's francophone community since 1926. Today, we are here on behalf of the 238,000 Albertans who make up Alberta's francophone community. Since 2001, this highly diverse francophone community has welcomed over 10,000 immigrants who came directly to Alberta, as well as thousands of francophone immigrants who arrived from other provinces and territories, including Quebec.
Francophone minority communities have been rather active in recruiting immigrants since the 1990s, when studies and discussions led by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages marked the start of an openness toward the wider French-speaking world, along with an acknowledgement of the importance of diversity and immigration for these communities.
These studies and discussions laid the groundwork for francophone immigration to these communities, and they demonstrated the importance of immigration for the vitality of francophone communities as a way to foster their growth and their economic and cultural development.
In 2003, the federal government rolled out the strategic framework to foster immigration to francophone minority communities so as to enable them to reap the economic and social benefits of immigration over the coming years. It included five long-term objectives to increase the number of francophone immigrants coming to these communities and to encourage them to stay.
Later, in 2006, a strategic plan was released, one that outlined the key priorities to help identify initiatives that would support the achievement of these objectives. At the time, then-minister of Citizenship and Immigration Monte Solberg reiterated the Government of Canada's commitment as follows: “The history of our country and our roots tell us that we have a duty to preserve what we have already built—linguistic duality.”
While there is an obvious role for francophone immigration in the growth and economic and cultural development of francophone minority communities, the question is how to attract immigrants, deliver government services and help newcomers adjust to local labour market needs.
One of the reasons for motivating francophone communities to become actively involved in immigration was that it allowed them to address the demographic issue they were facing. However, it is clear that francophone communities in Alberta, and elsewhere in Canada, have seen little benefit from immigration.
Demographics continue to be a very real issue, and it is highly unlikely that the new Express Entry system will be the panacea we so frequently hear about. In light of the significant reforms we are currently going through, organizing and delivering services in French to immigrants is a major issue for francophone minority communities.
Despite current economic conditions, Alberta continues to attract a large number of immigrants. However, statistics show that there has never been a large number of francophone immigrants coming directly to Alberta from abroad. That said, the province has seen an influx of secondary immigration, mostly from Quebec. Immigration practitioners fear that the new reforms will result in a further significant curtailing of the already small number of francophone immigrants coming from abroad. Some have said that, despite the many entry paths available to immigrants, the way the immigration system is currently arranged disadvantages third-world francophone countries, which make up a large source of francophone immigration.
Current efforts by CIC to promote francophone minority communities, as well as Destination Canada, provide abundant evidence that the large francophone pool is not always targeted, despite the handful of timid attempts made for about a year now.
All of this is to say that there are mixed results with respect to francophone immigration to francophone minority communities, especially given the cancellation of the Francophone Significant Benefit Program in September.
We appreciate the government's commitment over the past decade and a half, reiterated recently in the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality 2013-2018, to maintain the vitality of francophone communities outside Quebec through immigration. However, we remain puzzled about the current approaches that do not appear to take the unique francophone situation into account.
In Canada, there are two paths of entry for immigrants—permanent immigration and temporary immigration. Therefore, attention must be paid to each one.
Let's start with the permanent stream. Modernization, which is driving major reforms in the Canadian system, is placing a decidedly economic focus on immigration, which is shifting from immigration based on the supply of immigrants coming to Canada to one where Canada encourages immigrants to come to the country. This orientation is based on the growing involvement of employers, as clearly announced by Minister Chris Alexander in his press release on April 8, 2014, and I quote:
With “Express Entry,” employers will have a key role in selecting economic immigrants and providing advice to the Government of Canada.
In our view, the proposed key role for employers in selecting immigrants, together with the major influence offered to the provinces and territories, none of them subject to linguistic obligations, risks diluting the federal government's commitments to official language minority communities. We do recognize the economic benefits of the kind of immigration our government is focusing on. However, we are concerned that community vitality will suffer without additional support measures.
Furthermore, the 2014 Economic Action Plan states the following:
The expression of interest (Express Entry) system would allow the Government of Canada, provinces and territories, and employers to actively target highly skilled immigrants under key economic immigration programs, including the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program and the Canadian Experience Class.
As you can see, there is no mention of the communities. The same economic action plan goes on to say the following:
In the future, the Government will explore with provinces, territories and employers approaches to developing a pool of skilled workers who are ready to begin employment in Canada.
It should be noted that all consultations on launching this program, which began in January 2015, have been ongoing for several months with the provinces, territories and employers, but without any involvement or input from official language minority communities. We are concerned, since we do not believe that these key stakeholders will see francophone community vitality as a priority.
Fortunately, Canada-wide community consultations have just begun with our francophone communities to look at options for adapting the program already in place. However, the realities of the situation mean that there are more challenges than there are solutions. Francophone communities would have liked to be consulted right from the design phase of the program, so that the government would have brought forward a well-informed approach that takes their unique characteristics into account. Although knowledge of one of Canada's official languages is one of the selection criteria, we doubt that unilingual francophone immigrants will be selected. As well, we have concerns that training standards, which are different in francophone systems than in anglophone ones, will be seen as stumbling blocks to recognizing the credentials from some francophone countries.
I would now like to share a few thoughts about temporary immigration. According to recent reforms, temporary immigration, made up essentially of temporary foreign workers and international students, will be the preferred route toward permanent immigration.
The major impact on francophone communities will therefore depend on the source countries for the temporary foreign worker class. Except for France, there are few francophone countries in the temporary immigrant pools.
Francophone communities are making an effort to educate employers about recruiting immigrants from francophone countries. However, we see somewhat of a contradiction. While the Government of Canada is eliminating all funding for promotional activities overseas, it is at the same time promising in the roadmap to increase spending on activities overseas in order to expand the mandate of Destination Canada and to include more job fairs and more promotional and recruitment activities aimed at employers.
Lastly, looking at how much the government plans to invest in this area in the coming years, we see that the foreign student category will be a focus of the new immigration system. However, we have some concerns about this, as well.
Given that the government's focus under this category is on targeted countries, we are concerned that the target does not include any countries in the Organisation internationale de la francophonie, the OIF. Furthermore, tuition disparities among educational institutions for foreign students will have a major impact on attracting students to certain regions.
For example, the University of Ottawa recently decided that foreign students taking three courses in French would pay the same tuition as Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Could this example be copied across the country to make tuition an incentive to promote francophone immigration?
Regarding government services for newcomers, it is important to discuss pre-arrival services. Currently, and as has been the case for some years now, these services are provided around the world by Colleges and Institutes Canada, or CICan. A pilot project for francophones was launched very recently and will end on March 31. Even though this organization mentions the existence of francophone communities, there is lingering doubt about the selling points used for encouraging students to choose francophone minority communities as their new home in Canada.
Regarding services for francophone newcomers in Canada, while we appreciate the fact that there are about 240 service points across the country, they are not all funded by CIC and their ability to deliver resources and programs is still not up to the level of their majority community counterparts. Those who control the purse strings keep hiding behind numbers, as if the unique francophone aspects that warranted the creation of these service points in the 2000s were no longer relevant.
CIC encourages service delivery in both official languages, which is not in itself bad, but this creates a sort of competition between service providers, while performance reporting for institutional services is more quantitative than qualitative. Francophone newcomers served by bilingual agents in organizations operating in English will not be referred to French-language schools or other French-language agencies and institutions, and their contribution to francophone vitality would be only on paper. When, on the off chance, they actually hear about French-language services available in a francophone community, we are then dealing with people who have received services not suited to their needs, meaning they have to start all over again while their settlement funds have already been spent elsewhere.
Lastly, with respect to helping newcomers adjust to local labour market needs, this is done through francophone organizations, which are still having to make do, delivering programs with the limited resources available, which can be frustrating for clients who do not always understand that conditions imposed by funding bodies allow only for a limited set of services.
