Official Languages Committee on Nov. 29th, 2018

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Do you agree that the new change to the official language regulations will do much to help on this issue?

[Michel Carrier]

Yes.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Our federal government will support that.

Immigration is also a very important issue. Mr. Carrier, you said there had to be a linguistic balance. Mr. Boileau, you discussed the importance of implementing the regulations. I don't know whether it was you who said it, but Ontario's francophone population is increasing, even though its percentage is declining as a result of immigration. That's the crucial aspect.

Do you want to comment on that, Mr. Boileau?

[François Boileau]

Francophones currently represent 4.7% of Ontario's population. That figure will fall to 3.9% in 10 years. If we want to reverse this trend, we need two important things: an education continuum that runs from early childhood to the postsecondary level and even including adult education, and francophone immigration. Consequently, we need selection, intake, integration, training and retention strategies.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Thank you very much.

You really touched me earlier, and that doesn't happen to me every Thursday morning, but I was captivated by your description of the commissioner's role.

Listening to you, I thought that, if I was the head of a government, I'd like a commissioner to do all that for me: promotion, protection, convening and active offer.

As you said, you don't go into meeting rooms to force people to do any particular thing. We often don't see those problems. Perhaps 75% of difficult cases are resolved even before they become cases. If I were a party leader or prime minister, I would have you on my team. You could eliminate problems from my life. Problems associated with governance, but if you eliminated one of the major problems, the problem of our two official languages, that would be outstanding.

[François Boileau]

Last year, we submitted a study on designation to revitalize the principle of organizations designated under the French Language Services Act in Ontario. As its implementation had been delayed, we discreetly provided the Government of Ontario with a draft, as a basis on which the Office of Francophone Affairs, now the Ministry of Francophone Affairs, could rely so that we could now have more designated organizations, particularly in the Toronto area, where only three organizations are designated in whole or in part. There have been only 3 out of 230 over the past 30 years. That's not a lot.

We advised the government on how to achieve the objective of having more organizations providing French-language services and ensuring they do so on the ground.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

I have a final question for you, Mr. Carrier, and it's very important.

You met with the premier as soon as he was elected two or three weeks ago. Imagine you, the commissioner, having a 90-minute face-to-face interview with the premier upon his election.

Tell me how your meeting with the premier went, and that with the leader of the People's Alliance?

[Michel Carrier]

The meeting with the leader of the People's Alliance is scheduled for tomorrow.

The meeting with the premier went very well. Like every politician, he made no major commitments, but I think we had a chance to speak in a frank and candid manner. On the ambulances case, the government wanted to withdraw the application for judicial review. Personally, I encouraged him to continue because the arbitrator's decision contains enormous weaknesses in its interpretation of language rights.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

For 90 minutes, you talked about...

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Samson.

Now we will turn the floor over to Mr. Clarke.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Commissioners, there are two aspects to our great crusade to modernize the Official Languages Act. I think "crusade" is the right word.

First, there's the act as such, and we'll want to change a lot of words and sentences to strengthen it, regardless of the government that's in power in 2019. Second, there are more general issues, such as whether a tribunal should be established, how governance should be centralized and so on.

We've addressed these more general issues during the question period, but I'd like to hear you talk more about the act as such, about the minor details that change matters every day for the minority linguistic communities. For example, representatives from Power Law came and presented a lot of very specific recommendations, such as replacing the word "may" with the word "shall" in part VII of the act. Do you have similarly specific recommendations for amendments to the present act?

[François Boileau]

We have some specific wording in our brief, but I'm going to take this opportunity to move away from the brief.

I think it's time for a little more imagination. There's a lot of confusion between part IV, which concerns communications and services, and the objectives of part VII.

For example, there are 14 sections in our Ontario act, but nothing about active offer, and we obviously don't have an equivalent to part VII.

I took up my position on September 4, 2007, and I met all the deputy ministers together 10 days later, on September 14. I told them that the speech was still relevant today. There was the communications issue, which we hoped to resolve, and we ultimately resolved it by means of a mandatory directive on French-language communications. However, there was also the services issue. We wanted to ensure that services would be adapted to the needs of the francophone communities in certain key sectors.

When we proposed that as part of the revision of the French Language Services Act two years ago, we wondered who could help determine what those key sectors were. Well, it was Minister Mulroney's Provincial Advisory Committee on Francophone Affairs, the PACFA, that helped determine which key sectors had priority.

In other words, if the Ministry of the Environment has a used tire recycling policy, that's fine if it's in both languages and is communicated efficiently on government websites, but, if we're talking about policies that affect women victims of family violence, policies that concern children's aid societies or access to justice...

The largest number of complaints came from the national capital and were filed at the Ottawa courthouse. In accordance with one of my recommendations, we established a pilot project on access to justice in French, which has been permanent since 2015. Do you know how many complaints we've received since that project was put in place? Zero. We've received no complaints. The people of Ottawa complain a bit. I shouldn't say that, but they're quite vehement. We have to think about services to the community that must be adapted to health and other needs.

We have French-language health service planning organizations. I'm happy to talk about that for a few minutes because they play a fundamental role in determining where needs are and who are the suppliers who can provide French-language health services.

All that involves proactive work on the ground, and that's the very essence of the commissioner's role, which is to promote this emergence.

Justice, immigration and community social services are all key issues. That's where we should show some imagination and adjust and adapt the idea of serving the needs of the community. As we saw in his judgment, Judge Gascon didn't really know what to make of part VII.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

That's why we must change certain words. Thank you, Mr. Boileau.

Mr. Carrier, do you have any specific legislative amendments in mind?

[Michel Carrier]

No. Our brief contains suggestions that you may read a little later, but I wouldn't say they're "specific". They are suggested improvements.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I see.

[Michel Carrier]

We didn't look at the matter that way.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

If I correctly understood, you seemed to be saying in the presentation you made earlier that you wanted to see some recognition of the special status of New Brunswick's bilingualism in the Official Languages Act. Is that correct?

[Michel Carrier]

Some people, some lawyers say that's not necessary.

Earlier this week, Mr. Doucet said that, if the specificity of New Brunswick were recognized, that of the other provinces would would have to be as well.

The fact remains that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes the specificity of New Brunswick. I don't think anything is lost by including it in the act.

From an operational standpoint, federal officials regularly work with the act. Why not reflect that? It's a matter of symbolism. We need that symbolism; we need it to be there and for it not to be questioned because what New Brunswick has managed to establish for itself in constitutional law is clear.

Why wouldn't that be reflected? That's another tool. We're talking about engaging the majority, dialoguing and so on. That's another message.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Clarke.

Since several people have asked to speak, this will be a round of four minutes each.

We'll begin with Mr. Choquette.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to something you said, Mr. Boileau. You mentioned the reports and studies you've done, and you noted where the Université de l'Ontario français project came from.

You said you had worked on it. Can you explain to us the work you did in connection with the university? It almost became a reality. Some appointments were made to the board of directors and programs were already developed. So the process was in the advanced stages.

How did you see that there was a need? How did you work on it?

[François Boileau]

First, there was an obvious lack of French-language postsecondary programs in central-southwest Ontario. In addition, there is strong population growth there.

So we focused on that on our own initiative because we wanted to analyze the issue in greater depth. We therefore requested all the figures. We prepared a 78-page report, which we submitted today, on the status of postsecondary education in central-southwest Ontario.

We informed the government and officials of this obvious lack in a 2012 report entitled The State of French-Language Postsecondary Education in Central-Southwestern Ontario: No access, no future—kind of a punchy title.

This is the region where the population is growing and and where the largest percentage of the student population is studying at the postsecondary level. Since there is a shortage of French-language postsecondary programs, students quite obviously study in English. They are trained in English and then wind up in absurd situations in which francophone nurses hesitate to speak to us in French because they haven't learned the terminology or the exact words in that language and are somewhat uncomfortable.

Since we were hearing this every week, it was time to advise the government to ensure that postsecondary education could be provided in French.

We lit a minor fire by publishing the report, but it was the community that took charge of it, more specifically organizations such as the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, the AFO; the Fédération de la jeunesse franco-ontarienne, the FESFO; and the Rassemblement étudiant franco-ontarien, the REFO. They organized the États généraux sur le postsecondaire en Ontario français.

A dialogue was established between the community and the government. The latter conducted two studies that confirmed our investigation report and our figures. They obviously confirmed our figures because they came from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and from the Ministry of Education. That started a discussion, and the dialogue spread throughout the community. We took a step back, thinking that it was no longer our responsibility because a dialogue was going on in the community. The university was thus created.

Currently, however, the fact that it has been abandoned concerns me in my capacity as commissioner because there is still an obvious lack of French-language postsecondary education programs in the central-southwest region.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Lastly, what can the federal government do? There have been setbacks now. Let's say it clearly. There has been a setback for the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner? Has it been in existence for about 20 or 30 years?

[François Boileau]

No, it's been around for 11 years.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

All right, 11 years.

[François Boileau]

I'm old, but not that old.