Official Languages Committee on Feb. 12th, 2018

[Margo Legault]

Even citizens on the Island of Montreal tell me that depending on where they live they have difficulty going to their local library and finding books in English. You wouldn't think of that, but it does happen. It goes back to what Linda is saying, the English community is very strong on paper, but when you look at in reality on the ground there are still challenges.

[Linda Shohet]

Maybe the other piece in the larger urban area is that we have immigrants seeking English services. Politically they are going through francisation programs; they're in French services.

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

They have no choice.

[Linda Shohet]

Yes. But for many of them their first or second language is English. So they are still coming for services in English at the same time; it's very complicated.

One of the arguments that a lot of the English organizations have made is that if they deal with second-language speakers in English they transfer those skills to French. They're still integrating into Quebec. They are still becoming part of Quebec. If you're serving people in the language they're most comfortable in initially and supporting them, they make that transition. You become part of the solution, not part of the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Ms. Shohet.

Mr. Vandal, you have the floor.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

I will give my time to Mr. Lefebvre.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

That's fine.

Mr. Lefebvre, you have the floor.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Madame Shohet, thank you for being here. You are very interesting.

[Linda Shohet]

Thank you for the invitation.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

In 2014, when the federal government cut the funding, they said they were only going to be funding useful projects.

[Linda Shohet]

Useful projects, that's right.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Those were the words you used.

[Linda Shohet]

No, those were Jason Kenney's words, not mine.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Okay, sorry.

Do you believe your organization that was cut was getting the results you set out to achieve?

[Linda Shohet]

I want to give a nuanced answer to that.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Sure.

[Linda Shohet]

I think that things could have been done better than they were being done at the time. I think we were at a point pan-Canadian, where we had recognized that. We were working toward building a new kind of collaborative model. We were working

through languages.

We were doing a lot of collaboration across language groups, CDÉACF, RESDAC, the centre, HPD. We were sitting together around a table and talking about how we could work more collaboratively.

From my own point of view, was the Centre for Literacy getting results that we wanted? We were getting pretty good results. Was the entire sector getting all the results we wanted? I think we were getting some; they weren't as good as they could have been. They could be better, and we were trying to get there.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you. That's one of the main things, too, how we get the data.

[Linda Shohet]

How do you get there?

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

How do we evaluate the data, and based on that data, how do we improve?

[Linda Shohet]

Yes, I agree.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I think that's what was kind of missing, Do you agree with me?

[Linda Shohet]

Yes.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Data gathering and evaluating....

[Linda Shohet]

I think it's probably deeper than what we could discuss here.