Official Languages Committee on March 24th, 2015

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Another point you mentioned had to do with the act in Ontario applying to the translation of other acts, for example, into French, to be bilingual. But that does not apply to the regulations. You cannot apply an act if you don't also have regulations translated into French. Is your office or the Government of Ontario doing anything about that?

[François Boileau]

Yes sir, we are. Thank you for that question as well.

Not all acts are translated. They are adapted in both languages so they have equal force of law. You're absolutely correct. The French Language Services Act says that some regulations could also be adapted into French and they would have equal force. Doing that is the responsibility of the Ministry of the Attorney General. In our second annual report a couple of years ago, we recommended that the Government of Ontario and the Attorney General take steps to ensure that all important regulations be translated. We devised different criteria. I believe we had five criteria for this. If you'd like to have them, I'll gladly send them to your office. We're making quite good progress. I believe right now we have 40% of regulations adapted into both languages, but we're going for 60%. Not all of the most important ones are translated yet, but we're getting there.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I'm telling you about this because, for example, the Professional Engineers Act in Ontario is translated into French, but the regulations are not. I'm a professional engineer, which is why I'm telling you this. The regulations are very important for the francophone community, which is doing engineering work all over Ontario and also coming from different provinces including the province of Quebec.

[François Boileau]

You'll find me in complete agreement on this issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Boileau and Mr. Chisu.

And now we'll go to Mr. Williamson.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

Ms. Hébert, I am very happy to see you again.

In response to a question from the opposition, you said that it was difficult to find skilled labour in New Brunswick. Did you refer to Moncton specifically or to the entire province of New Brunswick? Could you elaborate on that?

[Anne Hébert]

It is in New Brunswick in general, not only in the cities. In fact, we have just conducted a survey in the entire province that has shown that our entrepreneurs in the rural regions of northern New Brunswick—where the unemployment rate is higher than in the rest of the province—are the most concerned. We might think that this was the case in the Moncton area because the unemployment rate is lower in this area and in the large cities, but that is not the case. The university attracts a number of people to the cities, the people have a higher level of education and young people are more interested in living in the city. As a result, in the rural regions, the training level and the education level, which are lower there, exacerbate the issue of workforce access.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I think you will agree that, in order to attract immigrants, we need to provide jobs. You need to have an environment where it is possible to work. However, I would not want to put words in your mouth.

[Anne Hébert]

Absolutely, yes, I agree with you.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

As you know, in 2014, more people died than were born or came there. So immigration is not needed in francophone communities only; it is needed both in the north and in the south. I am wondering whether we are making enough effort to attract francophone immigrants. Perhaps we should focus on cities such as Moncton, Fredericton or Saint John. Do you agree with that? Actually, could you just tell me on which areas we should focus in New Brunswick to attract immigrants, given that we recognize that there must be jobs for them to stay there in the long term?

[Anne Hébert]

Yes, absolutely, we cannot convince immigrants to come to us, bring them there and then have them on EI. We know that the needs are pressing in some sectors. For instance, the forestry sector has suffered. A lot of factors have contributed to things not going so well in that sector over the past seven or eight years. The sector is now doing much better and that is a good thing. Projects that will need a lot of workers in the sector are under way in New Brunswick. This sector has been slightly overlooked by young people. So we know that there is a need there. Why not work with this industry to bring together francophone immigrants and the forestry sector in the north of the province, which is predominantly francophone? That would be a nice union.

We talk about the knowledge industry and we have discouraged young people from going into traditional sectors. The problems experienced in some sectors discourage young people from heading into those sectors. There will be a shortage as a result. The employees are quite old, the average age is very high in those sectors, so this is a golden opportunity to promote immigration and meet the needs of that industry. I am talking about the forestry industry and the transportation industry. We know there have been problems in trucking for years and so on.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

We should not just think about the needs of big cities, but rather the sectors where we still need workers.

[Anne Hébert]

Absolutely.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

At the end of the day, New Brunswick is active in terms of the provincial nominee program.

How does your organization work with the province to recruit immigrants?

[Anne Hébert]

So far, we have not been of service to business in immigration matters. However, in light of the change in the direction of the RDEE program, we are currently working with the Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick and with the Association francophone des municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick. We committed to covering the economic aspect and to working directly with businesses. We have just started, but that’s the direction we are going in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay. Thank you.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Day.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would first like to welcome the witnesses.

On March 17, I submitted a notice of motion that reads as follows:

That the Standing Committee on Official Languages ask the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to provide it with statistical data on the new “Express Entry” application management system, which began operating in January 2015, particularly regarding the number of people currently in the Express Entry pool, the number of people who have come to Canada since the system was implemented, their country of origin, their languages spoken, including their proficiency in one official language or both, and their education level, before the appearance of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

To avoid going in camera and thereby not being able to benefit from our guests’ presence, I will not ask that we discuss this notice today. I will therefore move to my question, which is for Ms. Hébert.

On March 2, 2015, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said he was disappointed with the francophone immigration in the country for 2013-2014. He recognizes that there are significant barriers to francophone immigration. An article from the Conseil économique du Nouveau-Brunswick was published on October 28, 2014. According to the council, the federal government should not have changed the temporary foreign workers program and should not have eliminated the francophone significant benefit program since it was meeting the pressing needs of the business community.

In this program, do you think there are gaps in terms of incentives for hiring francophone workers?

[Anne Hébert]

That is our position precisely: since we do not start on a level playing field, we need positive measures to encourage francophone immigration. That will not happen on its own. We will have to make additional effort. The francophone significant benefit program was one of those positive measures, but it was eliminated, unfortunately. Perhaps it was not working as well as it should have been and the intention may have been to replace it with something else, but we don’t know whether there is something else to replace it with. We talked about express entry, but we don’t know what priority will be placed on language in this program.

In terms of the temporary foreign workers program, the situation is completely different. Those people come to work for a limited period. However, some major companies took advantage of the program to fire the Canadian workers who were in those positions. They misused the system. The fact remains that the small and medium-sized businesses were using it correctly, that they needed to have access to it the most and that they were the ones that were penalized. The criteria have therefore been changed. The program was not eliminated, but the new conditions no longer allow our entrepreneurs to have access to it.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Earlier, you said that the retention rate within your francophone community was 80% when you were looking after newcomers, which is a rather interesting number.

Have you felt any changes ever since the express entry program was implemented?

[Anne Hébert]

It was implemented too recently for me to be able to know how it works and whether its impact will affect us in a different way.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

The minister will soon appear before our committee and we hope that he will tell us more about the issue.

I think Mr. Boileau said earlier that he didn’t have any statistics on internal migration. What I am about to say might be a tad simplistic, but I think young people from the eastern provinces are migrating more towards Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. I don’t have the right numbers with me, but if I had them, I could confirm this statement. In my case, half of my family lives in Ontario right now, and the same is true in the case of one of my friends. In a nutshell, lots of young people are leaving.

Could you obtain statistics on the migration within the country?

[Mohamed Ghaleb, Project Manager, Investigations, Research and Monitoring , Office of the French Language Services Commissioner]

In fact, I think we pretty much know who comes to Ontario. As everywhere else in Canada, the francophone immigration rate is 2%. However, we no longer have access to some of the details we used to access before through the demographic profiles prepared by the Government of Ontario. That was done based on the data collected through the census, but that is no longer being done. The idea was to determine exactly where the immigrants came from. There are cases of immigrants coming directly from abroad, but there are also interprovincial immigrants.

However, we know that 70% of francophone immigrants in Canada, basically three-quarters, are in Ontario.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I don't remember which one of you said that you could not assist those who came here as temporary workers. I think Mr. Corbineau said it.

Under the express entry program, we help people come here and they will be able to become immigrants after a certain time. If we cannot help integrate those people into francophone communities, can we expect Canadian duality to be undermined in terms of immigration?

[Gaël Corbineau]

Yes. Among the economic class newcomers, these temporary workers make up the majority. The temporary visa process is faster, actually. For an employer, it is much easier to recruit someone in a few weeks instead of waiting for months on end. Entry express promises that the waiting period will be six months, but it remains to be seen whether that will be the case. The waiting period used to be one year or a year and a half. Most of those people came with a temporary visa.

However, if we are not able to assist them, it is very difficult to attract them to our services and to keep them in our communities.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I imagine that the legislation would need to be amended for foreign workers to have access to temporary visas.

Have the organizations been asking for that?