Official Languages Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

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

All right, thank you, Mr. Chair. My colleague may speak if a question comes up.

Good morning and welcome. This is very interesting.

Earlier you said you had a target of 17% francophone immigration in 2015 and that you had achieved 19%. This year your target is 20%.

How did you manage to surpass your target? What means did you use?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

We established an increased presence in the francophone markets. We used social media and made online presentations. In short, we were extremely present.

We also relaxed the rules to promote the retention of international students who found jobs after completing their studies at a francophone post-secondary educational institution in New Brunswick. If they have been in New Brunswick for four or five years, have found a job, and want to stay, we make their lives a bit easier to encourage them to do just that. That is what made it possible for us to reach and even surpass our target.

We involve employers. Since we are talking about economic immigration, it is important for immigrants to be attached to the labour market, hence the interest of employers. We have managed to achieve and exceed our targets by working with employers and encouraging them to hire francophone immigrants.

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

So you mainly intervene with students and economic immigration.

A little earlier you mentioned that one-third of New Brunswick's 750,000 inhabitants are francophone. Did I correctly understand that your immigration target is 625 immigrants a year?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

No. We have 625 nomination certificates a year.

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

I see.

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

In fact, including the additional 425 express entries, that makes a total of 1,050 immigrants. Our base is 625 nomination certificates a year, and the target corresponds to that number.

Since we exercise no control over federal programs, you will understand why it is extremely difficult to set targets for programs not under our jurisdiction. Our target is therefore based on the provincial programs over which the province exercises control.

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

Thank you.

What is the retention rate based on the number of people you have managed to attract to New Brunswick? We have often heard that immigrants tend to move from province to province. Do you have an idea of the number of immigrants you have managed to retain in the province?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

We determine the number of immigrants who settle in the province based on language. First we establish the total number of immigrants, and we are currently working on a breakdown of the number of immigrants by language. The preliminary data seem to indicate that the retention rate is higher for francophone immigrants than for other immigrants, those who are anglophone, let us say, for our purposes.

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

It will be interesting to determine those numbers too, all the more so since you are making a big effort to attract these immigrants to the province.

I was speaking quietly with my colleague who represents rural areas where there seems to be a significant need for workers. You mentioned that the francophone communities were largely located in rural areas and that there seems to be a big shortage of workers in those areas. Have you targeted those people?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

Yes, we are working with the employers in all regions of New Brunswick.

This past June, the federal government announced it would implement an immigration pilot project for Atlantic Canada in 2017. That project will help employers experiencing chronic labour shortages to recruit francophone immigrants. However, before implementing the project, we will have to make the local population aware that these immigrant workers will be arriving.

We have approached the Groupe Savoie, which is a major New Brunswick employer. It is situated in Saint-Quentin, a small community in northern New Brunswick of no more than 2,000 inhabitants. The business, which has between 650 and 750 workers, began slowly hiring immigrants to avoid triggering a negative reaction by local workers to the hiring of foreign workers. The integration process has gone well. However, the business is not ready to bring 25 immigrant families into Saint-Quentin tomorrow. First, those families will have no place to live, and, second, that might cause quite a significant culture shock in the community. In small rural communities, it is important to work with employers on virtually a case-by-case basis and work one on one to increase awareness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.

Given the hour, I will have to shorten the time allotted to committee members. We have already discussed the immigration file indirectly.

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

Virtually all my points have been addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

You may proceed with your presentation on immigration. I imagine you would like to raise some additional issues. However, I ask committee members to limit themselves to three minutes during the next round of questions.

Ms. Groulx, please go ahead on the subject of immigration.

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to speak to the committee this morning.

My second presentation concerns the state of francophone immigration in New Brunswick and will address the issue of challenges and opportunities. I will speak about economic immigrants first and then address the refugee question.

The global francophone market theoretically offers enormous recruitment opportunities since, according to the Organisation internationale de la francophonie, there are an estimated 200 million francophones around the world, including 72 million people who speak some French.

In reality, it is not always easy to attract these francophones and francophiles to New Brunswick. As I mentioned in my previous remarks, New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada. That status makes our province a perfect place for future immigrants to live, work, and raise a family. That aspect is all the more interesting for francophone immigrants because most of them want to come to Canada to improve their English and give their children a chance to become bilingual. Despite that advantage, New Brunswick must work hard to promote itself and to make potential francophone immigrants realize that there are other provinces besides Quebec and that Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are not all we have in Canada.

In addition to its particular linguistic situation, New Brunswick is largely rural and has no major urban centres like those found in most other provinces. That characteristic appeals to some people, whereas others who prefer large cities will definitely not choose to settle in New Brunswick. New Brunswick has made major advances in francophone immigration in recent years, partly as a result of the funding received under the first and second roadmaps. That funding enabled the province to promote itself in several markets as a top destination for francophone immigrants, to offer high-quality intake services in French across the province, and to develop excellent working relations with Canadian embassies abroad for francophone promotion purposes.

As is the case in many provinces, the francophone community in New Brunswick, which is called the Acadian community, is very vocal and active. With the support of that community and of the Réseau en immigration francophone du Nouveau-Brunswick, the provincial government has established an action plan to promote francophone immigration with a target of attracting 33% francophone economic immigrants by 2020. This is an ambitious but necessary objective to maintain the linguistic balance in Canada's only officially bilingual province.

To achieve that objective, we obviously had to acquire relevant and effective tools and hope the federal government would do the same. Pursuant to its action plan, the province established new partnerships and strengthened existing ones, developed a component solely for francophone immigrants through its provincial nominee program, worked in partnership with its school and post-secondary institutions on recruitment to offer a continuum of service to families interested in relocating to New Brunswick, facilitated immigration for international students once their studies were completed, and gave settlement centres a chance to promote their services and regions as part of promotional activities such as Destination Canada and Canada Week.

We have developed and implemented Destination Acadie, which is a recruitment activity involving stakeholders in immigration, tourism, economic development, studies, the francophone community, and culture, together with the other Atlantic provinces.

During that time, the federal government cancelled the francophone significant benefit program and subsequently replaced it with the Mobilité francophone program. This kind of tool is very important because it encourages Canadian employers to hire foreign francophone workers without going through the usual onerous and costly procedures. Most of these temporary workers subsequently become permanent residents, thus helping to maintain linguistic minority communities.

However, these temporary workers do not have access to settlement services subsidized by the federal government until they have been granted permanent residency, which in itself is nonsensical because we are banking on their transition to permanent residency. The situation is the same for international students. Although the federal government has authority to issue study permits, students do not have access to services offered at settlement centres funded by the federal government, which is also nonsensical in itself since we are banking on their transition to permanent residency.

Most settlement centres in New Brunswick nevertheless provide support to international students and temporary workers since we believe they are some of the best immigration candidates in our province. Express entry has been without a francophone component since it was launched in January 2015, despite repeated demands by francophone communities across Canada and various provinces.

New Brunswick has taken the initiative of giving its express entry component a francophone aspect by omitting certain selection criteria to encourage the entry of French-speaking immigrants to New Brunswick.

The Atlantic provinces were granted a pilot project for immigration to Atlantic Canada. The project was announced in summer 2016 and will be implemented in early 2017. Its purpose is to help employers who are experiencing chronic labour shortages and are unable to recruit locally. The Government of New Brunswick has indicated that a francophone lens will also be applied to this new program.

The large-scale arrival of refugees in early 2016 is a situation we cannot disregard. New Brunswick is proud to have taken part in that national effort by taking in more than 1,500 refugees. It is hard to imagine and understand what those refugees went through before arriving in Canada.

Our first objective was therefore to provide them with a safe environment and offer children of school and pre-school age a high-quality learning environment as soon as possible.

Our second objective was to teach them one of Canada's two official languages. Obviously, since our refugee intake centres are located in more anglophone communities, the vast majority of refugees chose to learn in English.

It is important to note that a dozen refugee families were directed to more rural francophone regions and experienced mixed integration success. Some families decided to go to other regions of New Brunswick where they found a larger concentration of people sharing the same culture. Despite that fact, 20% of refugee children of school age today attend francophone schools in New Brunswick.

Since federal regulations provide that newcomers may learn only one of the official languages free of charge, we are facing a major challenge. Some parents are unable to help their children with their homework, resources to provide assistance with homework in the schools are limited, and resources are also limited in the settlement centres because IRCC has been slow to provide promised financial assistance and inflexible about the possibility of learning a second official language.

Obviously, 2016 has been an extraordinary year requiring an extraordinary response to the refugee situation. In an ideal world, the provinces would have had more time to manage that situation and take the necessary measures to ensure a better linguistic distribution of refugees. However, the refugees are now permanent residents and, as such, have access to a series of services that will enable them to access training that will help them find jobs. Language learning is still the main barrier to successful integration and access to employment.

We are delighted because 20% of Syrian newcomers of working age have now found part-time or full-time employment. We are also pleased because there is no doubt that their arrival in our province has helped generate demographic growth in New Brunswick in 2016, a first since 2012. Lastly, we are delighted because their children are the New Brunswickers and Acadians of tomorrow. We are proud of that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Groulx.

Ms. Boucher, you have the floor.

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

Good morning, Ms. Groulx, and welcome to our committee.

It is refreshing to hear you speak. You have both feet on the ground and therefore help us see things differently.

Earlier you talked about Destination Canada, in Paris, and about the fact that people wanted to come to Canada to learn English. This is the first time we have heard about that. Do you know whether other provinces say the same thing when they use Destination Canada? Are the departments of other provinces making a joint effort to understand that Canada is being represented as a place where people speak only English?

We have two official languages in Canada, and it is important, especially when we go to Paris, to be able to tell the French that we also speak French in provinces other than Quebec.

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

That is being done.

I believe Canada's embassy in Paris is responsible for 13 francophone countries. Since it does a lot of promotion for the francophone communities outside Quebec, much is therefore being done internationally to promote minority francophone communities. It is definitely different to hear that from someone who is in the same situation rather than from a woman who works at Canada's embassy in Paris.

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

Definitely.

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

We are seeing a difference.

As I told you earlier, we have started making web presentations. This is 2016, and we are therefore trying to use today's tools. However, that is not the same thing as meeting someone in person. The people we meet over the web will often come to an information session later.

New Brunswick is very active in international markets because we know we must promote ourselves. Many people, even in Canada, think there are no other provinces than Quebec, and it is a shock for them to discover that there is something else. So it is important to establish ourselves. We have established a presence everywhere in the francophone and anglophone markets. We have to say we have two linguistic communities.

Is it important for communities to promote themselves at events such as Destination Canada? Yes, definitely, because that provides more information. You have to understand that the people who want to immigrate to Canada receive a lot of information. They absorb more and more, but they can only retain part of it. Even if we tell them several times that they must know English, sometimes that is not necessarily what sticks in their minds. They remember that it is cold in winter more than they retain information on language learning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Ms. Groulx.

Mr. Arseneault, you have three minutes.

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

Thank you, Ms. Groulx. This is good information.

First, congratulations on the 20% of refugee children who will be attending French schools. I imagine all kinds of logistical arrangements must be made to organize homework supervision and all that. That must be incredible. I have a daughter-in-law who taught some of them in Moncton so I have some idea how that works.

I would like to go back to the immigrant question. Refugees are a specific topic. It was a good move for our Canadian government to take in 25,000 or 26,000 refugees. Incidentally, New Brunswick is the Canadian province that took in the most immigrants on a pro rata basis. We can pat ourselves on the back. That was thanks to Minister Landry, in particular, and her leadership.

Having said that, I want to go back to the issue of economic immigrants. They are the ones who want to come and work here, settle here, and stay here. How do we retain them when we send them to rural regions, particularly northern New Brunswick? Do you have any statistics indicating whether they are staying, settling, and really putting down roots?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

First of all, I must say we do not send them to the rural regions. It is they who decide where they want to go and settle in New Brunswick. Those who go and settle in the rural areas have found jobs in advance. All the studies show that tool no. 1 for retention is employment. As a general rule, when they have a job, they tend to stay permanently or at least stay much longer.

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

Tool no. 1 is employment. That is what we need to hear.

In that regard, is there a strategy for attracting these immigrants when we are in Paris or elsewhere in the world? When Nova Scotia promotes itself to attract immigrants, does this strategy include telling them where in New Brunswick the most jobs can be found in a given field?

[Marie-Josée Groulx]

Yes. You have to understand that Destination Canada is first and foremost a job fair. We arrive there with job offers from New Brunswick employers and to explain the situation to them. New Brunswick employers often come to Destination Canada with us. The same is true for the other provinces: Canadian employers go to Destination Canada with provincial representatives to sell their jobs.

It is first of all a job fair. That does not mean, however, that the jobs are in French. We understand that the important thing for entrepreneurs is results. Generally speaking, whether a person speaks English or French makes absolutely no difference to them. Consequently, it is really important to promote the francophonie outside Quebec and to encourage employers to consider employing francophone labour.

In northern New Brunswick, Groupe Westco, Nadeau Poultry Farm Ltd., and Groupe Savoie are francophone employers that employ francophone labour. Consequently, they are more interested in recruiting francophone workers. However, what all IT employers are really interested in knowing is whether an employee can code. They do not really care about language. It is really important to promote the benefit of having an employee who will ultimately become bilingual.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Groulx.

Ms. Boucher, you have two minutes.

Then Mr. Samson will have two minutes and that will complete the round of questions.