Official Languages Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

We'll have to come back to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Mr. Clarke.

Mr. Choquette, you have five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to come back to accountability. Mr. Arseneault was speaking about the fact that for the French-speaking community there was a problem about le par et le pour. I wonder about your perspective.

Do you have any problems with that fact, and if so, what would you say to the government so that they would understand that it's so important that services be offered par et pour the community?

Who would want to answer that?

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

I think they are pointing to me.

I know le par et pour.

The “by and for” is very important for the communities outside Quebec.

I think it goes back to your question and your remarks a few minutes ago. Le par et pour in Quebec is not the same as le par et pour elsewhere in the rest of Canada. Our institutions have become bilingual. We have integrated. Our institutions are not

by and for us, the English-speaking community.

Our institutions are

by and for the Quebeckers.

If you go to the Jewish General, you can get service in English or in French. The institutions of the English-speaking community are more and more integrated into the fabric of Quebec.

What we need for le par et pour is to be sure that the services that we should be able to give, train our youth to give, in English and in French can be continued. We need to have the governance of our institutions, so we worry when, for example—and the QESBA can speak to this—the jobs in our institutions are not taken, are not offered to English-speaking Quebeckers. You will all understand that in the rest of Canada when the francophones speak of le par et pour, it's because the governance of their institutions is by the francophones. They don't give over their governance to the anglophones.

You can have bilingual people working in your institution, but the governance of the institution is by the English-speaking community or by people in the English-speaking community who understand very clearly what it is to be in a minority language community.

I think that le par et pour is as important for us,

but that is defined differently,

it's a different demonstration, perhaps, than in the rest of Canada.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

You said that in the national point of view, only the QCGN receives funds, and there are no other national groups for the English community, if I understand.

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

To be fair, we have probably two other sectors that receive national funds. CEDEC would be one, and the health care...what am I trying to say?

[A voice]

Community Health and Social Services Network.

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge]

Community Health and Social Services from Health Canada would be the other. There are no other capable organizations to do policy work in the sectors.

[John Buck]

If I may just pick up on that, it's a very good question. “By and for” is an important concept, and we acknowledge it. I'm proud today to be wearing my

“Francophonie économique canadienne” tie

that I was happy to receive from the

Conseil de développement économique de l'Alberta, last week, when I attended the 2016 Gala des Lauriers de la PME in Edmonton. Mr. Boissonnault is very familiar with that event.

Can we talk about linguistic minority community identity? “By and for” is about all of us. This linguistic identity that exists unites us in ways that I think are innovative and important. I want to highlight that in the text I shared with you, and in all the material that you have, you have a reference to our Canadian Plan for Economic Development of Official Language Minority Communities. Our economic interests across the country unite us. When we talk about “by and for”, we're not talking about one linguistic community based on language, whether English or French; we're talking about a group united across the country. It's an important concept, and I think it's what allows us, when we look at “by and for”, to use resources that are available through the current action plan to engage the majority communities in many of the places we're in.

On Mr. Arseneault's question about the circumstances in a place like the Gaspé, we have nine offices in Quebec, one office in New Carlisle. We've spent $150,000 or so over the past four years working on something called the revitalization project.

It covers the entire Gaspé region.

We've engaged over $4 million of economic activity from municipalities, the private sector, and the province to invest in that area. That notion for us comes back to our concept of what community is about, and in many ways it's difficult for us to isolate that, uniquely based on language.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Mr. Buck.

We still have not heard from Mr. Samson today.

Mr. Samson, go ahead.

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

I didn't think I would make it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Mr. Samson, you have two or three minutes.

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

That's fine.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here today. I really appreciated and enjoyed the conversation about some of the challenges you face as a former superintendent of all the French schools in Nova Scotia. With the minority status, of course, I know there are a lot of similarities and differences.

I would have to agree with my colleague, Mr. Clarke, that it's not ideal to be comparing. It's looking at the challenges in your community, especially if you are going to compare with Ontario. Throw in Nova Scotia and see where you get in the comparison. It's a lot worse, because of the support in Ontario.

I'd like to basically understand child care better, so some of my questions will be focused on education. If I get an extra second I'll go to economic development, but in terms of education and child care, when the kids arrive at your English schools, do they already speak English? In Nova Scotia, for example, 80% of the kids who arrive in French schools do not speak French.

I'm trying to understand if there's any funding that you receive to support your community in child care.

[Jennifer Maccarone]

I would say that in the anglophone sector, most of our students arrive already speaking English, but that's the majority, because we do have a strong francophone community that frequents our schools. It depends on what region you're in.

For example, in the region of Joliette in Quebec, a significant portion of your population will actually be francophone, and they will often come to school not speaking any English, so we have maybe the reverse situation compared with Nova Scotia. However, the majority of our students do arrive already fluent in English.

We do focus, however, on ensuring that our students become as bilingual as possible. In terms of early childhood education, a priority for us would be to ensure that before the students come to the public school system, whether they start school at grade four or come to our schools earlier via the day care system, they would be bilingual. That would be a priority for us.

Most of our schools in the anglophone sector are offering 50/50 in terms of francophone and anglophone curriculum within the school system. That's not only important to your school boards as a basic school regulation for curriculum in courses, it's what the community is requesting, because these are decisions that are locally based. It's the governing boards at each of your schools that vote on what your subject time allocation will be.

I can't see that it would be any different if we're moving toward early childhood education. If that was something that would be destined to be managed by.... As Sylvia mentioned earlier, we're talking about accountability, and the reality is that within the Quebec education framework system, we don't have our own group to manage our own requirements and our own needs. Within the education ministerial responsibilities, there is no anglophone group. There is no particular distribution area for us where we can say that these are the things that we need, but that would be something that would be very important for us. It would allow us to not only improve our success rates but also improve the level of bilingualism that we've set as a priority for us in the province.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much.

Before we wrap up, I would like to make two announcements.

First, let me point out that we will be finishing Thursday's meeting at 10:15 a.m. We will go back to the schedule for the committee's work on Tuesday, when we come back. So we will hear from the first panel in the first hour on Tuesday, when we are back, and we will talk about the committee's work in the second hour.

The second announcement sort of has to do with Brome-Missisquoi. There's a statue of Lieutenant Colonel George Harold Baker just in front of the House of Commons, in the lobby.

Mr. Baker was a member of Parliament for Brome many, many years ago, because he died about a hundred years ago. Colonel Baker was a member of Parliament while going to war at the same time.

Today, the Brome historical society has a small display in front of the lieutenant colonel in the lobby, just in front of the House. I invite you all to go pay tribute to the lieutenant colonel who died 100 years ago and who was a remarkable MP for the riding of Brome.

Thank you very much, everyone. We had some fine presentations and a great discussion with the members of the committee. I hope you will come back to see us. You are welcome.

The meeting is adjourned.