Official Languages Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

There is no question that I'm in favour of enumerating rights holders and anything that supports the establishment of adequate schools.

What I find odd about how the Official Languages Act works is the expression “where numbers warrant”. That implies that, if the francophone community were to diminish anywhere, services would be cut back, even though that's the opposite of what should be done. I don't know how each province applies the expression specifically.

Does it vary from province to province? How is it applied specifically?

[Marie-Pierre Lavoie]

I can tell you that, in British Columbia—Ms. Morand said this earlier about the entire country—French-language school boards are on the rise. We need this data to prove we are growing and we can provide programming.

I cited the Pemberton school example earlier. The judge held that we were entitled to a school for 55 students even though it already had 59. That's four fewer students than the school already had.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

What basis was used to justify 55 students?

[Marie-Pierre Lavoie]

According to the judge, the number of places should have been 55, but there were already 59 students by that time.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

There was no objective test?

[Marie-Pierre Lavoie]

No.

[Sheila Risbud]

May I interject for a moment? The Supreme Court compares the number of known requests, in other words, the number of students already attending the school, and the number of potential requests, meaning the total number of rights holders.

What we're saying is that the potential number of students isn't calculated properly, so the numbers are too low.

[Valérie Morand]

I'd like to add something, if I may, Mr. Beaulieu.

I'm fortunate enough to wear two hats at the same time, one as director general of Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones and one as the executive director of Regroupement national des directions générales d'éducation, or RNDGE, which is made up of 28 school board directors from all over the country.

The lack of data not only hurts school boards, but it also annoys provincial governments a lot—education being a provincial/territorial responsibility, of course—because they don't exactly take pleasure in opening up schools that fail to meet the demand and that require the use of portables. Better planning is a must. It costs a lot less than adding 23 portables after the fact. It doesn't make anyone happy—not the provincial government, not the school board and not the clients, meaning parents and students.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Are portables temporary structures?

[Valérie Morand]

Precisely.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

These so-called temporary spaces are in use for quite a long time.

[Valérie Morand]

They are temporary spaces, but they'll conceivably be used for—

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

That doesn't quite answer my question. On what proportion was the decision based? As far as the case is concerned, was it 5%? Was it 10%?

The availability of French-language federal services, for instance, is based on a certain percentage. When the numbers hit 10%, more services are offered. In Quebec, it's very different.

[Denis Chartrand]

To my knowledge, there is no magic number.

[Valérie Morand]

There isn't.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

That puts pressure to try to increase the numbers. When we increase the numbers, we give the impression that everything is going well, whereas when we look at the language transfers for francophones into English in the other provinces, it's quite worrisome.

At the same time, we do not want to give the impression that the numbers are not high enough because we do not want services to be cut. I think that this system is fundamentally not working.

That does not take away from the fact that we need to count the rights holders.

[Marie-Pierre Lavoie]

In our legal case, the judge decided on the figure of 55 students in Pemberton, but she established figures—which I would call random—in other communities based on paragraph 23(1)(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, without the data.

There's no number in the charter on this, but the courts are imposing them, and that hurts us because we don't have the evidence we need. Let me repeat: our communities are growing.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

That sounds a lot like a matter of political will. It often goes all the way to the Supreme Court and then the follow-up is not always done by the provinces. Sometimes, the federal government does it by setting up community education centres or something else.

[Marie-Pierre Lavoie]

If the necessary questions are not on the short form, we'll still be in court 10 years from now. We will still be fighting to get the schools we are entitled to. The money will not have been allocated and we will not have provided the services to the students.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

In Quebec, if one generation of children does not go to English school, the next generation still has the right to study in English. The right to go to an English school is not taken away.

Is it the same elsewhere as well?

[Valérie Morand]

In some provinces, it is on a case-by-case basis.

In Nova Scotia, for example, there is a grandfather clause that allows the lost generations to register their children.

In the case of a couple whose children apparently attended English school because they were not able to send them to French school as the services did not exist, their grandchildren could be enrolled in French school. This is a remedial provision.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Ms. Morand.

Mr. Angus, you have the next six minutes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for the good discussions.

I'm very frustrated with the topic at hand. It's clear that section 23 of the charter is about minority language education rights. The need is clear, and I do not understand the government's refusal to address this concern.

Year after year, this issue keeps being discussed, and all members of the committee support your claims. The government needs to put in place the changes required to support your school systems.

I will now change hats. I represent the Timmins—James Bay area, which is largely francophone.

Prior to my career in politics, I was a trustee in the anglophone Catholic school system. I realized that it was very complicated. When I was young, the francophone school system was for francophone Catholics, the anglophone Catholic system for anglophone Catholics, and the public system for the rest.

When I was a school trustee, it was not during the baby boom. There was a lot of competition between boards to accommodate students. We invited people of other faiths to choose the English Catholic system, and the French system invited anglophones to send their children to its schools. The francophone public system invited the Catholic francophones to choose the new francophone public system.

My question is simple. Because of the complexity of the regions, particularly in northern and northeastern Ontario or in the Ottawa area, is the francophone school system able to invite students to join?

[Denis Chartrand]

I want to make sure I understand the question.

In francophone public schools, the door is open to all rights holders. In addition, students who are not rights holders but who speak French and whose parents are able to help them can be admitted. It is not a right, but they can be admitted if they take an entrance exam, a French-language test.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

It's a big change. When I was young, if your parents weren't francophone, you didn't go. If you weren't Catholic, you didn't go. However, now you're saying “get”, so it does change the dynamics in terms of numbers, and that adds a complexity, but also an opportunity.