Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
With your permission, I will use my telephone. My printer decided to take a break this morning, so I have no paper version.
I am extremely grateful to the committee for coming to listen to us. It is always a pleasure for us to have these discussions with you. The discussions are important for our organizations and our community, and that is all very positive.
I am the president of the Conseil jeunesse francophone de la Colombie Britannique, an organization run by and for the young with the objective of providing opportunities to the province’s young francophones, wherever they are and at whatever level.
In terms of the action plan, the investments in and strengthening of minority communities are extremely positive for us. An effective and fully supported linguistic duality engages and strengthens communities. I personally have acquired an interest in community involvement by discovering an aspect of the francophone community. I know that I am not the only one to have had the experience.
Providing funds directly to the communities will have a major effect and can only lead to positive things. As you know, freezing funds for core programming in recent decades has forced a number of organizations to become dissipated. It goes without saying that this enhancement will re-energize them in a major way. Overall, the message is very positive for us. It is a sign that you have listened to us and heard us, and we are very grateful to you.
However, in our opinion, some avenues of research, some points, deserve further attention.
One of those points has to do with the funding of recurring projects, as opposed to core program funding. At the moment, some organizations, such as the one I represent, have annual recurring projects that have existed since the beginning. For example, we are on our 27th Jeux francophones de la Colombie-Britannique and our 21st edition of the Parlement jeunesse francophone de la Colombie-Britannique. These projects are not part of our programming, but, for other organizations, projects of this kind are funded from their core funding envelope.
We spend considerable time and effort to meet these demands over and over again, with the result that we have less time to prepare or implement new projects. It also means that the 20% increase in our programming is lower, when compared with other organizations that include these projects in their programming.
We feel that there is room for some evaluation of the reality of recurring projects, as opposed to core programming. The effects could be to unlock funds for new projects and to engage the community even more.
Now for our second major point.
Youth organizations like ours have two mandates, one in the community and the other in education. There are positive measures for the community mandate, but, as we understand it, there will be no increase in grants for the official languages in education program, or OLEP. That is regrettable because it penalizes us, and a lot of other organizations.
At the moment, we are a major partner in education, but, like the majority of youth organizations across the country, we see very little benefit from direct contributions to education. We fully understand that those funds go first to other organizations like school boards.
We see indirect benefits thanks to our fine partnerships, but having a double mandate with a single funding stream makes our development less certain and specifically slows any initiatives in the field of education.
If there is no increase in OLEP funding in the next five years, we will be spending five more years without access to funding because we are told that the envelope is empty or that it has been fully used. This is a problem that I often discuss with my counterparts in other provinces. It is of major importance for the advancement of the youth of the country.
In this regard, we want to know when the agreement between the federal government and the provinces will be signed. We would like to have more information on that.
The last point deals with a problem that was raised even before the action plan was developed. It was also mentioned earlier. It seems that the provinces do not always justify their use of education funding to the federal government. We simply raise the question of the provinces’ accountability for education funding.
This action plan invigorates us and is very positive for us, but we feel that it could go a little further. We look forward to continuing to work with you.
Thank you.