Official Languages Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

It would be interesting to see what works and what does not. I agree with you.

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Meddri, you discussed interprovincial migration. I know that the subsidies follow people depending on the place where they arrive. Can you tell us how many francophone immigrants from Quebec wind up in Alberta or Manitoba?

[Salwa Meddri]

That is hard to quantify in any objective way for two reasons. The first is that, if they are still permanent residents, they are eligible for the settlement services and programs offered in the community even if they change provinces. However, if they change provinces and have become Canadian citizens or naturalized citizens, they are no longer eligible for those services. They still need support and assistance to integrate more fully because the provinces are not all the same and the realities are not identical, but unfortunately they do not receive those services as a result of the eligibility criteria. So that does not provide a clear idea of the rate or number of interprovincial migrants.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Meddri.

That brings this first round of consultations to an end.

Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson, Ms. Laurin, and Ms. Meddri.

We have heard some very good presentations. You have provided the members of the committee with some invaluable information.

Thanks to all of you.

We will break for a few minutes before moving on to the next group.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Dear friends, we are resuming our study of the roadmap and immigration in the francophone minority communities.

In the next hour, we will hear from the Société franco-manitobaine, represented by Bintou Sacko, francophone hospitality manager.

We were supposed to hear from Robert Thérien, from the Conseil de la coopération de la Saskatchewan, who withdrew at the last minute as a result of a schedule change.

We will therefore conduct this study with the Société franco-manitobaine. We welcome Bintou Sacko, who is with us by videoconference.

Madam, you have five minutes to make a presentation. Then we will go around the table and committee members will speak, ask you questions, or make comments.

Madam, we are listening.

[Bintou Sacko, Francophone Hospitality Manager, Société franco-manitobaine]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On behalf of the Société franco-manitobaine, I want to thank you for your invitation. It is truly a pleasure for me to appear before the committee this morning.

My name is Bintou Sacko, and I have been the francophone hospitality manager since 2005.

I will address the points that are outlined on immigration in the roadmap since I have been the person responsible for that file for the Société franco-manitobaine from the start. This is a very important file for us. From that perspective, I will explain to you why immigration is one of the five strategic focus areas for the growth of the francophone space in Manitoba. French-speaking Manitoba has made great advances in this direction in the past 15 years. The provision made for immigration in the roadmap would definitely make a major difference for francophone immigration, particularly among francophone refugees. This year we were fortunate to take part in the 2016 cross-Canada consultations on official languages. That had an impact on the francophone community and is important for linguistic duality in the communities.

In the past few years, francophones have chosen to come to Manitoba precisely because the French language is spoken there. That is what encourages them to come to Manitoba. The various bodies that took part in the consultations all agreed that French-language services should really be supported.

There is a major challenge for minority immigrants. What we see is that services are not often of the same standard in both official languages, and some services are not at all provided in French for francophone newcomers. It would therefore be quite appropriate to put a little more emphasis on the importance of the two official languages and to determine how they can be brought to the same level.

There have definitely been some successes. I will discuss Manitoba's bill 5 to enhance and support the francophone community and the estates general that were held by the Société franco-manitobaine a few months ago. That really enabled the francophone community to redefine itself and to review what it is lacking so that we can include certain aspects and enhance the francophone community here in Manitoba. In fact, other structures also need support, in areas such as early childhood, the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine and the Université de Saint-Boniface, so that more technical and occupational programs are offered in French in more specific fields since they are virtually non-existent in Manitoba.

With respect to minority francophone immigration, the establishment of the Accueil francophone structure, which I manage, has truly enabled the franco-Manitoban community to make immigration a priority. That structure has obviously helped us take in immigrants and support them in their integration process by providing all the services they need, whether it be administrative services for housing or social services, and the connection they can establish with the francophone community from the outset so they can access services in the language of their choice.

Unfortunately, the changes made by the last government had a considerable impact on recruitment, particularly the recruitment of newcomers, and on certain files such as immigration. Consultations were recently launched with IRCC, and we can really see all the support we are receiving in immigration. We can see that the files are beginning to grow in scope, to become important, and to advance.

There are definitely still some challenges.

With respect to recruitment, as I noted, it is important to target recruitment zones more effectively so many more francophones come to us here. Since we live in the minority, as we constantly say, people become anglicized much more quickly as a result of several factors, particularly access to English-language services there. Consequently, we should be strategic about recruitment and match recruitment strategies with those of Canada's embassies abroad.

As regards intake, we must really strengthen existing intake structures. Since the number of newcomers, especially refugees, is sharply increasing, we need far more resources and support in order to help them integrate.

There is also a major challenge in housing, especially social housing.

It takes an enormous amount of time to integrate these newcomers, three to five years, and even up to seven years in some cases for them to integrate fully into Canadian society.

As for socio-economic integration, we must increase upgrading efforts for both languages. We must of course offer language training in the areas of expertise of certain newcomers who arrive here with quite high education levels. They often simply need language training that really targets their areas of expertise so they can enter the labour market.

Support programs, in particular, should be developed with the professional associations so that they are slightly more amenable to recognizing newcomers' skills and experience.

With respect to socio-cultural integration, it is really important to create spaces so that minority francophone immigrants feel even more included and integrated.

This year, Manitoba made an effort to take in Syrians, a project that was really a priority for the federal government. Accueil francophone is the only francophone structure in Canada that has an agreement in place with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to take in refugees. We were fortunate to take in more than 160 Syrian refugees from December 2015 to March 2016.

It was an initial success, but I can tell you it involved many challenges. They were neither francophone nor anglophone, but rather allophone. Many interpretation services were necessary, and we are still working with those Syrian refugees.

That slightly alters the data. The francophone community does not just want to be a service supplier in that sense. It also wants to be able to integrate those Syrian refugees into the francophone community so they can really grow and develop and so this effort in a way works to the advantage of the francophone community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Sacko.

[Bintou Sacko]

That brings my presentation to an end.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

All right.

We have covered the two topics, the roadmap and immigration. I am also going to ask committee members to speak on either of those topics.

We will begin with Ms. Boucher.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Good morning, madam. Thank you for being here this morning.

Your presentation was very interesting. You talked about francophone refugees as opposed to francophone immigrants. I would like to know what differences there are in the way the immigrant group and the refugee group integrate. Are you dealing with the same types of problems? Do the organizations in general have different approaches to the two groups?

[Bintou Sacko]

Thank you for your questions.

It is very interesting. There are two different ways of integrating immigrants.

Economic immigrants arrive in our province prepared. They have had a chance to choose the province they want to live in and have a good reason for having chosen one province rather than another. As a result of their preparation, they are able to take various factors into account. They have communicated with people, obtained information, and made a choice.

Refugees unfortunately have not made that choice. They knew they were going to Canada, but they had virtually no idea of the province where they would have to integrate. Consequently, they do not understand the concept of bilingualism or even that of the francophone minority community. The majority of those people were not selected based on a point system, and we have no idea of their level of education when they arrive here.

Some refugees never went to school, and others have fallen far behind in refugee camps. Others have experienced so much trauma and have never had a chance to overcome or understand what they experienced. It is only when they find themselves in Canada, in a situation in which they feel safe, that they begin to reflect on their experience and remember everything.

The process is much slower and longer for refugees. We offer them all kinds of resources. First, they are financially supported by the federal government for one year. They are also supported psychologically, emotionally, and morally. For some, it is like dying and being reborn, since we teach them everything.

In the case of economic immigrants, the debate takes place at a certain level because they have well-established objectives when they arrive here, even if they do not always understand the concept of living in a minority as a francophone. We explain it to them, but the approach takes place at a certain level.

That is the difference between the two. Was I clear?

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Yes, very clear. Thank you very much.

I am going to ask you a question on the roadmap.

What would be the first demand that you, as an organization, would make of the federal government that would help you most and that you would like to see in the roadmap?

[Bintou Sacko]

There are many. I took part in the consultations and had to emphasize several points. I will not restate them all here. If I had to choose one case among so many others, I would talk about the Syrian refugees who have arrived in Canada. As a francophone organization, we were involved in taking those refugees in. We welcomed them and we had interpreters, but unfortunately we were forced to redirect them to English language training. In fact, our franco-Manitoban school division did not have adequate resources to integrate the Syrian children who arrived. Manitoba is an anglophone majority province, and English therefore dominates.

To integrate, those immigrants therefore needed to learn English, which is the majority language. However, they also needed to learn French, although we were not even able to give them the choice since some of the services and resources are not provided in French. We were forced to direct them immediately to the anglophone sector and to register them for language courses. That is a danger for us as a community because we risk losing them over the long term, whereas we did all the preliminary work.

That is one example among so many others.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Ms. Sacko.

Now we will hear from Mr. Arsenault.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Good morning, Ms. Sacko.

[Bintou Sacko]

Good morning, sir.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you for being with us today.

Earlier you explained that, with the change in government, you had seen repercussions from the roadmap. In particular, files are growing in scope and beginning to advance. What you mean by that? What is beginning to advance more than previously or differently from what was happening under the former government?

[Bintou Sacko]

Here is a specific example. Under the previous government, we witnessed the cancellation of a program that was very important for francophones, the Entrée express system. We had to do a great deal, but a lot of noise was made for that program to be restarted. The program helps support francophone communities in recruiting immigrants by assigning enough points to francophone immigrants who decide to come and live in the francophone minority communities here in Canada. It was a very important program that had previously been cancelled. It was restored in other forms in order to support the francophone communities in recruiting and selecting immigrants.

The second aspect concerns the consultations that have been conducted and enormously appreciated. The new government has finally made us feel that it needs to hear from the people in the community, those who are on the ground and who can genuinely share their ideas and say specifically what they need as a community for services to be up to scratch. All the groups were united. Here in Manitoba, for example, more than 30 groups were consulted in several fields, including official languages and immigration. Series of consultations have been launched based on the various programs offered. It was really good.

So we are experiencing those changes and we really feel that we are being listened to.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I see.

You called that francophone immigration program the express system. Is that correct?

[Bintou Sacko]

It was Entrée express, yes.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Entrée express, pardon me.

You say the program is no longer in existence but is still around in other forms or other ways. Is that what you are saying?

[Bintou Sacko]

Yes, that is correct.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

However, is the funding sufficient to achieve its goal?

[Bintou Sacko]

As for funding, that is another matter. The francophone community definitely still needs funding in order really to move the file forward.

To date, the recruitment target set by the francophone minority communities has not been achieved. Far more resources are definitely needed. For example, there is a program called Destination Canada, which is very important for recruitment and promoting the minority communities. Unfortunately, however, the program is not 100% funded, and not everyone has an opportunity to take part in it. The program currently targets only two European countries, whereas there is a pool of francophone immigrants outside those countries in which we could do much more promotion.

We obviously need more financial resources to conduct much more promotion in those countries, or those zones, in order to recruit francophone immigrants. That limits us somewhat, and so far the target has not been achieved. The financial question is therefore a factor.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I see.

[Bintou Sacko]

We definitely need much more financial support to achieve our objectives.