Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
It is a real pleasure and privilege to appear before you this morning to share the point of view of the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario.
This unifying organization speaks for more than 611,500 Ontario francophones. It is on their behalf that we are speaking this morning.
We appreciate this opportunity the share the point of view of our organization on behalf of the Franco-Ontarian community regarding the renewal of the roadmap, which could also be called an action plan, as well as on francophone immigration.
I am joined this morning by our executive director, Mr. Peter Hominuk, and our analyst Mr. Bryan Michaud, who joined our team recently.
We recently released the Community Strategic Plan for French Ontario, which you already have in hand. The comments we will be making this morning are informed by this document. This was research we conducted with more than 2,500 Franco-Ontarians; we wanted to identify their aspirations and priorities for the next ten years. Behind these comments lies a great deal of research, a public consultation, which took place during the summer of 2015. We are very proud of the results and inspired to further action by the aspirations of our fellow francophones of Ontario.
As I said previously, our community includes 611,500 Franco-Ontarians. This is the largest francophone community outside Quebec. Its numbers make it unique, of course, as does its geography. We are present in isolated regions in Ontario, and in urban ones. The Ontario francophonie is unique because of its origins, and as is the case for other communities outside Quebec, because of its isolation. All of these elements make providing French services a challenge.
According to the last census, 41% of the Franco-Ontarian population resides in eastern Ontario. 117,000 francophones live in Ottawa. The 2011 census also shows that 28.7% of the population lives in south-central Ontario. However, as Bernard Derome pointed out, if the trends persist, that area will soon be home to more francophones than eastern Ontario, mainly because of the influx of francophone immigrants.
However, south-central Ontario, the region from Toronto to Windsor, presents some major challenges. Despite the fact that there are many francophones in the area, they are submerged in the large, dominant anglophone community. Providing services to this francophone population is thus a considerable challenge.
22% of our community resides in northeast and northwest Ontario. Member of Parliament Mr. Lefebvre knows the area well. We are happy that he is at your table.
When I speak about the needs, the roadmap or the Ontario francophonie, I am inspired by a comment made by the Commissioner of Official Languages when he presented his report to your committee in 2013.
He said this:
Our official languages are a defining characteristic of our Canadian identity. We need to feel that both languages belong to us and are a part of our sense of national identity, even if we don't speak one of them.
To that I would add that the French language could be in danger if we don't take care of it.
In that sense, the importance of a roadmap, government support and community engagement leads us to stake our claims and to work for the development of the language so as to ensure its survival and that of our culture in all its diversity. We recognize that the Ontario francophonie, like the Canadian francophonie, is diverse because of its origins and we accept the challenge. The common denominator is the language we want to protect.
And in fact, it is interesting to note that the last survey done by the Commissioner of Official Languages showed the popularity of both official languages in our country. I attended the Ontario consultations conducted by the minister and the parliamentary secretary, who conveyed the Canadian desire to support both official languages very well.
It matters little what name the government chooses to call it, be it an action plan or a roadmap. I remember well that in Mr. Dion's day it was called an action plan. Then it became a roadmap. I heard the minister and parliamentary secretary refer to an action plan. The important thing, I think, is to act. That is the meaning of the plan.
For us as for many others, it is important that the roadmap support francophones outside Quebec in order to allow them to live in French daily, be it in Regina, Victoria, Yellowknife, Windsor, Timmins or Toronto, Thunder Bay or Ottawa.
The government's investments in policies and public practices that further linguistic duality are very important. If it did not make them, French could disappear. This is always a concern for us.
We have to help francophones in minority communities to live their francophonie on a daily basis. We have to broaden the spaces and the active offer of services in education, health, community environments, the legal system, cultural areas and so on. In minority situations, government support and examples and models are crucially important, as is the roadmap.
You have to understand that minority communities do not always have the social and economic infrastructures of the majority. Consequently, we have to compensate by providing spaces and environments. Schools, for instance, are in my opinion the cornerstone for the development of our language and communities throughout the country.
All through my mandate as president of the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, I have advocated what I may repeat a few times this morning. It is the idea that we have to promote the “francophone reflex”. For instance, in the context of its services, the federal government has to promote this “francophone reflex”.
Too often we assume that francophones in our country speak the second language. However, I think that in any society that claims to have two official languages, there is a duty to provide an active offer of services, which you will have heard before and will probably hear again. We have to support communications, arts and culture and social activities in French. We can say unequivocally that in Ontario, the federal action plan and funds are levers to get the provinces to act.
That is the case for Ontario. As a former educator in Ontario, I can state that roadmaps and bilateral agreements concluded in the framework of the Official Language in Education Program and the Ontario-Canada Community Agreement allowed the provincial government of Ontario to play its role, sometimes even beyond what the contributions made possible. This is the type of leverage the federal government can always provide, which is why having a roadmap is important.
Let's move on to our topic of concern in Ontario. Our population is vast and diverse. We have the advantage of having some very well populated cities and some very isolated areas. Comparisons either dismay or console you. I will not go through the history of the cultural centres that exist in many places in Ontario.
In the past, these cultural centres benefited from important amounts, in my opinion, of $40,000, whereas the cultural centres of another province might receive a subsidy of $150,000. We have trouble understanding such disparities and we hope to work on improving those aspects.
We are of course aware that minorities outside Ontario are smaller, and there is a cost to providing service to smaller communities. I would say however that there is also a cost to providing service to more numerous communities that are dispersed throughout a given area.
We can't neglect that aspect. I did not go into it, because it is not as directly related to official languages. However, you can provide leverage to further cultural infrastructure.
In Ontario, our community is interested in three projects, among others.
First, an arts centre is being planned in Sudbury. It is important that this community group work with the federal and provincial governments to make this cultural centre project a reality. What I say to the people of Sudbury is that if Hearst can have an arts centre, Sudbury can have one as well.
If you follow current events here, you probably know the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario. That is another example of a cultural infrastructure project.
In Toronto, francophones want to open a permanent maison de la francophonie.
That is the type of thing that should be created through the roadmap, and it can be done with investments.
