Evidence of meeting #90 for Official Languages in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was organizations.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Margo Legault  Executive Director, Literacy Quebec
Linda Shohet  As an Individual
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Christine Holke

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Please be seated.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108, we are continuing our study of literacy and numeracy support programs in Canada.

Today, we are pleased to welcome Ms. Margo Legault and Ms. Linda Shohet.

Welcome.

3:30 p.m.

Margo Legault Executive Director, Literacy Quebec

Thank you.

3:30 p.m.

Linda Shohet As an Individual

Thank you.

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

As usual, we will have presentations lasting about 10 minutes, and will then go around the table so committee members can ask their questions and make comments.

Who would like to begin?

3:30 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

I will begin.

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Go ahead.

3:30 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

Would you like me to begin with an introduction or remarks?

February 12th, 2018 / 3:30 p.m.

The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Christine Holke

You may begin with your presentation.

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Begin with your presentation.

3:30 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

As I am speaking on behalf of the anglophone minority of Quebec, I'm going to present my remarks in English. I've been asked to keep the remarks very brief with the hope that we will have time to explore some of them in more depth during question period.

I bring a long history to this file, because I've been involved in the field for more than 30 years. I was the founder and executive director of the Centre for Literacy, which many people called the pre-eminent research and resource centre in Canada for many years until we closed in 2015. I've done research and written widely about this topic for a number of years.

I've just completed a study and inventory with Marc Johnson regarding literacy and essential skills, and the needs of minority language populations around literacy and essential skills. We're going to be doing presentations on that two weeks from now, each for our own communities, and then I expect that the office will share the report with people. I'm not at liberty to discuss any of the recommendations, but I will probably draw on some of the findings, because the study has been done in the last six months to a year.

The main message that I bring today is that the literacy and essential skills needs faced by the anglophone community in Quebec are not currently being well met by the services that are there, and that they face a number of barriers—some of them are quite similar to those faced by francophones outside Quebec, but some of them are unique to Quebec.

The large-scale impacts have been felt because of the changes in policy and funding from the federal level in particular, because the minority language groups are very dependent on federal funding that comes through Quebec. Quebec also has—in some ways, I would say—the privilege of having some core funding that goes to its community groups.

Anglophone groups in Quebec get some core funding. It's easy to take that to mask the reality, because the reality behind that core funding is that it's too small to really allow the groups to reach capacity or to serve the populations that they have to serve. I will leave that to Margo to speak about more fully.

I guess the other major impact that's been felt by the minority language community is the same as that has been felt by all the organizations across Canada, and that was the end of core funding for this activity in 2014 by the federal government. It said at that time that it was no longer going to fund research and organizations. It was only going to fund useful projects. What that essentially meant was that 30 years of work across the country was wiped out within a year or two.

Most of the major organizations that provided infrastructure imploded—there are almost none left. There is one that I think you met with last week, Le RESDAC. I still manage to sit on their conseil d'administration, but it is on the verge of collapsing as well. I hope that at least its mission will be carried forward.

Almost all of the English groups have disappeared except for one that is just a shell of itself. What it essentially means is that there are no grounds for doing research or providing networking opportunities, or spaces for people to meet and share best practices and knowledge, and so on.

There was also a great loss of collective knowledge and collective wisdom. Internally, what has happened over the past decade is a narrowing of policy focus at the federal level. When literacy first came onto the federal agenda at the end of the 1980s, when the National Literacy Secretariat was founded, there was a very broad vision of adult literacy and adult learning that tied it to citizenship, participation in society, participation in one's family, and participation in the workplace, so it was a very broadly focused vision.

Much of the funding, for many years, that came across the country came to the provinces through agreements that were signed. They were called federal-provincial agreements. There was money transferred to the provinces, but there were also matching funds with the provinces. A lot of the infrastructure, both at national and provincial levels, was based on those federal-provincial agreements.

Those ended in 2007, and the National Literacy Secretariat ended in 2007, and a new entity was created—the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills—which is still in place today.

What happened over that time was that the focus of balance between workplace, family, and community narrowed to be almost exclusively workplace, jobs, and employability. Today, the main focus of work in literacy that has any federal funds attached to it is workplace and employability.

The impact of these changes has been particularly hard felt by the minority language communities, because so much of their funding either came federally or through federal transfers. I hope we'll get a chance to talk about that a bit more.

Quebec has some promising activities going on right now that I hope we'll get to talk about as well. The Quebec government has been putting a lot of emphasis on literacy and skills right now. They've pledged that they're going to raise the levels on the next round of PIAAC international surveys in 2022. We don't know how that's going to affect the minority language community, but there is new money being injected.

I want to say that anglophones, again, have a different profile from our francophone colleagues. We perform better on PIAAC than francophones perform on PIAAC. That doesn't translate into better access to jobs or better access to any of the opportunities that are normally tied to PIAAC scores. The fact that we did better on PIAAC doesn't mean we're doing better overall.

We're a scattered community. We have the bulk of our population in Quebec, but the population has grown in the last few years. We're also a community where the numbers that are counted by Quebec and federally are not the same. Federally, you include the first official language speakers in your numbers of population. In Quebec they recognize only mother-tongue speakers of English. The difference in the numbers that are accepted becomes a difference in the long term in what's potentially available for funding.

I will just end my introductory remarks there and hope that we will come back to talk about some of these things in more detail. I would like to share with you some very specific stories that we heard while collecting data in the last six months, because they give you a portrait of a community that sometimes looks more vital than it is.

I'm going to let Margo talk about her sector, because I think it's a case in point, and then I might want to add something to what you have to say.

3:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Thank you, Linda.

We'll listen to Margo now.

3:35 p.m.

Executive Director, Literacy Quebec

Margo Legault

Thank you very much.

My name is Margo Legault. I am the executive director of Literacy Quebec, and we're the network for English literacy organizations within the province.

Our mission really is to connect and represent community-based literacy organizations. Literacy Quebec and 12 of its member organizations are recognized by the minister of education, and we receive core funding for our programs. It is thanks to this financial support that our network was able to survive the cuts to the federal funding, which Linda explained, but this isn't to say that those effects haven't been felt in our network.

For example, in 2006 the federal-provincial agreements that gave access to IFPCA funding were terminated. Community literacy organizations lost access to a valuable source of funding that allowed for the development of capacity-building projects.

Literacy Quebec has been trying to respond to this gap in support by raising awareness of literacy issues in the province and helping with the recruitment of adults with low literacy levels, assisting in the development of resources and materials, offering professional development opportunities for literacy practitioners, and providing instances of concertation.

That being said, we are working in the context of minority language within the province, and it is not always an easy task. Also, we work with very vulnerable populations where the positive impact that is felt by the people we reach cannot always be measured by graduation levels and employment placement. It can be difficult to quantify the profound effect we can have on an individual's situation. I'm talking about breaking their isolation; empowerment; self-esteem; and the ability to manage one's health, balance a budget, navigate one's surroundings, and even vote.

For literacy organizations working within the context of minority language in Quebec, there are specific challenges that we face. We are responsible for very vast territories. Our 13 member organizations are supposed to cover the entire province, so the province is divided into regions that we cover. Obviously they're not able to provide services throughout the entire region, but have to prioritize and target their interventions.

Also, the funding we receive does not meet our needs, so most of our organizations are working with an average of 1.5 staff members. They also have to restrict the number of hours they're open throughout the week.

Our members create and foster a sense of community among English speakers. They recruit and train volunteers to become literacy tutors, and this not only offers volunteers a valuable opportunity, but it allows them to contribute to the vitality of their community. It also offers a warm, welcoming, and non-judgmental environment for adult learners. They're able to cater the learning to the specific individualized goals and objectives of the individual.

It's important to note also that we do not work in a silo. We believe it's not just up to schools, school boards, and community literacy organizations to improve literacy rates. This is why we're a founding member of a network for literacy. It brings together diverse organizations across the province in an effort to introduce structural measures that address the causes and consequences of low literacy.

Our network was extremely pleased to read about the Liberal Party's recognition of the vital importance of literacy skills in ensuring success in today's society and the understanding of the vital role the non-profit sector plays in both policy development and program delivery.

Thank you.

3:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to questions and comments.

Ms. Boucher, you have the floor.

3:40 p.m.

Conservative

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

Hello. Hi.

I have two questions. It is easy in French, but I will try to ask them in English since you are from an anglophone community.

In Quebec, the anglophone community is not recognized as a minority. Do you think that has an impact on the funding you receive? That is my first question.

3:45 p.m.

As an Individual

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

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

The other one you said before is your community is stronger on paper than in reality. Can you explain to me please?

3:45 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

Can I start with the second one?

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

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

If you like.

3:45 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

I'm going to refer back to Margo again. I'll give you two examples, both taken from the study that we recently completed. The first one is that on paper it says that we have referral lines in Quebec, Info-Alpha and Info Apprendre, which are supposed to be bilingue. They're bilingual referral lines. They are supported by the Government of Quebec, by the Ministère de l'Éducation et de l'Enseignement supérieur, and run through the Fondation pour l'alphabétisation, the literacy foundation. They have English on their website. When you call you can get English messages and they're supposed to be referring you to more than 600 centres that provide services across the country.

We actually called the director of services there because we wanted to ask in the year preceding this one how many referrals they made through Info-Alpha, which is people at the alpha level. Info Apprendre is adult education more generally. So it could be adult education up to university, CEGEP, etc. They came back to us and said that of 886 calls they had referred from Info-Alpha from April 1, 2016, to March 31, 2017, 7% were from anglophones. That translates to 62, and he could not say where they were referred to. He thought they were referred to community organizations, which would have been members of Margo's group, the 13 groups.

I spoke to Margo; she was one of our informants and so were eight of the executive directors. Margo collects data every year from her members, and I asked her, how many did your referrals did your members receive last year from Info-Alpha? She said none. I confirmed this on the way in because I wanted to be sure because it's in my written report and it's in here as well.

I asked them about Info Apprendre. From Info Apprendre, of 1,863 calls during the year 16% were from anglophones, which translates to 298, and they could not say where they were referred. They just said they were referred to appropriate services, but they couldn't track where they were referred to and could not speak to the agencies they were referred to. In the case of the community organizations we could check because they collect that data. So that's one instance.

The other instance probably relates to the network that Margo was talking about, because one of the things that I discovered in talking to the executive directors was that their websites list a large number of activities and services that they offer. I said, “this is very exciting what you're offering”. It turns out that in fact they can offer very few of those activities for the very reasons that Margo outlined, they don't have enough resources to do it. So she said they list all the activities they could potentially offer or ever have offered, but they don't offer more than two or three of them in a year and it depends on the needs of the community.

The other thing that I guess was not clear was how many of these services were being offered to adults. The core funding that Margo referred to is offered to community organizations without a lot of strings attached. It's to pursue their own mission, and their mission can be directed to the needs of the community. Again, a number of these organizations were actually offering services such as after-school programs for children, support to youth in the community. Not all of them were offering services to adults, some of them were. Some of them offered workshops once or twice a year because the numbers who came to workshops augmented the numbers that they could report back, because that's one of the measures they report back. Those are maybe two examples.

Does that give you a little bit of a sense of what it means? On paper if you look at it you'd say, these are amazing services, look, they've got these 13 organizations that are core funded and they're offering all of these activities and services. You'd say, look at this they have a referral service that refers people to their services, but the reality is that it doesn't happen. This is true, by the way, of the employability centres as well. There was a study conducted this year not by us, but by youth employment services, looking at the employability centres in Quebec. Of 158 of them, only a small number had the capacity to provide bilingual services.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Denis Paradis

Ms. Lapointe, you have the floor.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

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

Thank you very much for being with us today.

I will ask my question in French, but feel free to answer in English.

You just talked about funding. It used to be workplace, family,

employment skills and the community. Now you receive funding for employment and employment skills only. You lost your funding for the other two components. What impact has that had?

3:50 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

You are asking what impact the loss of funding for the family and community components has had?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

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

Yes, that's right.

3:50 p.m.

As an Individual

Linda Shohet

Federal funds are not being directed towards activities that are addressing family and community needs. Margo pointed out that a lot of the needs around literacy are not solely founded on workplace and employability. There are needs connected to people's access to health. There are needs connected to citizenship. There are needs connected to people's ability to participate in society, new technologies today, the way in which we've structured our activities, including government programs. There are an amazing number of government services today where you are told to go to the website. You get a message that says that if you want more information, go to the website. Well, if people don't have the technological capacity to do that, they are excluded, so there's a lot of exclusion.

If you are no longer directing any of your funds towards the needs of family or community, it means that all of these needs are going unmet except for whatever happens to be met through other sources. An awful lot of people's time—again, in the organizations that we spoke to—was spent trying to raise small amounts of funds. They could be using 50% or more of their time in trying to find money to do the activities they need to do to fulfill the community needs.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

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

You said earlier that a mere shell is all that is left of Literacy Quebec. As I understand it, all the organizations have disappeared.

How many literacy organizations in Quebec have disappeared?