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.