Official Languages Committee on Feb. 24th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Lussier.

Mr. Samson, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Gauthier and Mr. Lussier. I met you on a number of occasions in my former career. I have always spoken well of Canadian Heritage. That is why I am not here to criticize you.

I would like to ask you six quick questions. So you will have a minute to answer each one. Let's keep things moving quickly. Basically, I would like to know what has been done.

My first question is about consultation. My previous career was in education. You mentioned consulting school boards during the trip that the committee will be undertaking. Unfortunately, too often, they are not invited to our table. That is difficult to understand, because school boards are actually independent and established under constitutional legislation.

Very briefly, can you answer that question about consultations?

[Hubert Lussier]

Since I have taken part in the consultations that have been undertaken, I should point out, Mr. Samson, that some provinces allow us to invite school board representatives into the room where we are in discussions with the officials from provincial and territorial departments of education. Others are more reluctant, which does not prevent us from having discussions with school boards through associations like the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones. Of course, we are very happy to have a three-way dialogue, when that is possible.

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

Thank you very much.

That means that we have to do something to strongly encourage provinces to invite school boards or perhaps to adopt some strategy that will require them to do so.

What mechanism is in place to make sure that the money allocated to provinces for official languages ends up in official language minority communities? It is not always clear. What is that mechanism? Do you have something in mind for the next four years of the next agreement?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

A mechanism is built into the agreements that we reach with each province and territory. The bilateral agreement asks the province or territory to provide us with an action plan showing how they intend to invest the money we are giving them. Basically, the province or territory gives us a list that matches the priorities that we and the province or territory have agreed on together. As representatives of the federal government, we are also comfortable with that.

Accountability for the action plan is done every two years. Every two years, the provinces and territories provide a report showing us what they have done with each of the initiatives in their action plan. Clearly, that allows us to monitor the investments that we have made in terms of the objectives that we had established.

We do not follow the money; that would be difficult to do. We turn the money over to departments of education; they distribute it to school boards who in turn distribute it to schools. So we do not follow the flow of money downstream, for a very simple reason: this is an area of provincial and territorial jurisdiction and we are not actually authorized to require details beyond what we are doing at the moment.

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

That is a good answer, but we could still invite school boards, communities and associations every two years to tell us their point of view. The Senate invited me to do that before. That is another mechanism we could use.

Moving quickly to my third question. I would be grateful for a very concise answer. You talk about immigration, but this is a major problem in official language minority communities in Canada. If we want to ensure the survival, the vitality, and the sustainability of our communities, we must have many more francophone immigrants settling in them. What is the department doing or going to do in order to give us a hand there?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

To follow up on the immigration debate, it would be interesting to invite our colleagues from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to explain the situation in more detail. However, I can quickly give you the broad strokes.

Immigration involves three major objectives: recruitment, which includes overseas promotion to attract people to the country in the best sense of the word; reception, to make sure that they settle in communities and successfully become integrated in an appropriate way; and retention, so that they stay and invest in the communities, rather than assimilating into the majority or moving elsewhere in the country. They have freedom of movement, as we know.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is investing heavily in welcome and integration. There are major challenges in recruitment. The department is establishing initiatives such as Destination Canada. Under that initiative, officials from the department go to Paris each year to try and convince potential immigrants to come and settle in Canada, particularly outside Quebec. I mean francophone immigration.

So we are making efforts in recruitment but we cannot say that we have achieved the objectives we wanted. I discussed this yesterday with our colleagues in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, because I guessed that we would be talking about it. They told me that they are in the process of considering how to increase their efforts to try and meet the targets that have been set for the communities.

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

Thank you.

The long-form census is going to be reinstated. For the one in 2021, we really have to get to work quickly in order to draft the questions that will allow us to better understand the demographics in our communities. In fact, the data that we have available do not give us enough information to respond to the needs of the official language minority communities.

[Hubert Lussier]

That is a suggestion that would likely please our colleagues in Statistics Canada who are responsible for matters like that. That said, if you have very specific suggestions to make, we would be pleased to hear them because we have discussions with the people over there on this kind of issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Choquette, you have the floor.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to our guests for joining us today.

There has been discussion about the mandate letter sent to Minister Joly, laying out her priorities.

Have you already received directions in line with that mandate letter?

[Hubert Lussier]

That letter tells us very precisely about the type of activities that we are going to have to focus on during the mandate. It is very clear.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Very well.

The FCFA recently appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance. I am sure that you have had the opportunity to make yourselves aware of that appearance. One of the things they mentioned is the importance of indexing funds that have been stable for almost 10 years. I think that you have already talked about unblocking roadmap funds in the 2016-2017 financial year that have still not been unblocked.

So am I wrong to think that the second objective will be achieved starting in 2016-2017?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

First, in terms of revisiting the level of investment, we are continuing to implement the current roadmap. So the current plan is continuing. The consultations will certainly be the ideal time to bring up those issues and those questions. It will be part of the recommendations to the minister. We will have to see how she wants to intervene, in terms of her future plan, with cabinet support.

Currently, we have funding available that we are going to have to account for in the annual report. We are going to continue to administer the program as best we can in order to make sure we maximize the impact of the funding available to us at the moment.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Your annual report on official languages deals with 2013-2014.

Will the 2014-2015 report be published next July?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

That varies from year to year. We think we will be able to publish it at the beginning of the summer or a little earlier. We are going to try to publish it perhaps a little sooner each year, but the end of the year is when the data are collected. We have to wait for them to be confirmed in the financial systems.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

As I understand it, you are responsible for implementing the roadmap and a mid-mandate evaluation is in progress. We are wondering how that evaluation is proceeding, what consultations are being held to determine the evaluation criteria and what consultations will be held in connection with this mid-mandate evaluation.

I feel that it will be very important to see you again at that time. We are being asked a lot of questions about who was consulted in order to determine the criteria, what the criteria are and whom you are going to consult thereafter.

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

Let me give you a two-part answer.

The evaluation period is indeed happening right now. The roadmap has three types of evaluations. There is the evaluation of each of the 28 initiatives. We call them individual evaluations, and each department is responsible for them. Of course, departments can arrange various aspects into groups, so that a number of them can be evaluated together. That basically gives about 15 evaluations. They are all done individually. The second evaluation deals with the coordination function. That essentially is all about us. The third is the horizontal evaluation of the roadmap; it tries to determine the outcomes of this overall strategy. These three types of evaluations are in progress. The departments have prioritized them differently, each according to its own rhythm.

In terms of the evaluation parameters, they are provided by Treasury Board. They tell us specifically what their expectations for the evaluation are. The policy on evaluation established by Treasury Board tells evaluators how to proceed.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Are you saying that you did not consult the major organizations working in official languages?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

That is not an option. However, when we do the evaluation, it is important to consult the key stakeholders to find out their point of view about the roadmap. In that context, the key stakeholders are very much in demand. At a certain point, they may well feel that they are too much in demand. After all, 17 or 18 evaluations will be going on at the same time.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

What is the timeline for that?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

At Canadian Heritage, we start by working in the field with researchers. We have already hired consultants to do the evaluation in the coming weeks. Some departments are a little less advanced than we are. In the coming months, my impression is that, to varying degrees, a constant barrage of interviews will be starting up. That will allow us to collect the data for our evaluations.

[Hubert Lussier]

Mr. Choquette, you mentioned the mid-mandate evaluation. The evaluation starts halfway through the mandate because it has to provide information for use after the roadmap. Basically, this will be the evaluation of the roadmap.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you. I understand.

With a new investment logic, Canadian Heritage took steps to refocus the community support program so that it better matched the department's objectives. At that point, you transferred files to other departments and federal institutions.

The department committed to working with groups and federal institutions in order to help them to open doors so that the organizations could continue to do their work in the community by receiving real support from the other federal institutions.

What steps were taken and with which federal institutions to make sure that the community organizations have real access to the programs of those institutions?

[Jean-Pierre Gauthier]

We addressed that matter with the communities in order to see the extent to which we could maximize the impact of the money we currently have available. It caused a great deal of concern. When we finished evaluating our program's investment logic, we told them that, before transferring the file to any other department, we would make sure that the other department would be able to take it on.

During the summer, I met with six different federal institutions to see whether each of them was able to take on recipients who previously did business with us. I did not have a lot of success in that regard. It depends on the way in which the programs are structured in the other departments and the amount of money available. We are a little more hopeful about another approach, but it will not help a lot if it affects only two or three recipients out of the 350 we have. That is the maximum.