Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
To begin, I wish to thank you for your invitation to address the committee examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the government's ability to provide information in both official languages.
As you know, 2020 has been a very eventful year because of the COVID-19 crisis. First, we want to acknowledge the Government of Canada's efforts to maintain continuous and efficient communications with our network since the onset of the pandemic.
Throughout the crisis, we have worked to identify the problems faced by the Franco-Ontarian community. Alone or in partnership with other organizations, the AFO has conducted three surveys on the situations that Franco-Ontarian organizations are facing during the pandemic. We have also been monitoring the French-language services provided by both the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario.
As a result of this work, today we submit to you, in both official languages, a report containing our observations during the crisis, as well as nine recommendations. This report discusses federal services only. We are currently preparing a similar report on provincial services in Ontario.
Regarding federal services, our observations concern the following areas: travellers returning to Canada; government press briefings; labelling of consumer products; funding levels for Franco-Ontarian organizations; and translation and social media presence. Before I briefly discuss each of these points individually, I would like to state the general conclusion, namely that the pandemic has heightened the urgency of modernizing the Official Languages Act. In fact, the first recommendation in our report invites the government to modernize the act and, in doing so, to take the AFO's recommendations into account.
Both the AFO and the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages have noted that designated airports, as well as the Public Health Agency of Canada, have not fulfilled their language obligations when serving travellers returning to Canada. Airports designated to provide bilingual services failed to serve their customers in both official languages, and the Public Health Agency of Canada did not provide active offer and truly equal service in its telephone monitoring of travellers in self-isolation.
Our report also notes that the AFO supports recommendation 2 contained in the report of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages on government services in times of crisis, which asks the Treasury Board to implement a crisis preparedness strategy including communications plans and procedures for every federal institution.
In our monitoring of government services, we have also observed that the Government of Canada's press briefings, especially in the early days of the pandemic, were largely limited to English, while the chief public health officer's press briefings were totally in English. In the context of a pandemic, francophones rely on the government's press briefings to stay informed about the restrictions and the best practices to follow. Those breaches could be catastrophic and a life and death situation. To ensure the equality of communications in both languages, we recommend that the Government of Canada designate the position of chief public health officer of Canada as bilingual.
Regarding press briefings, we also noted that Radio-Canada was not living up to its mandate, because the Government of Ontario's press briefings were rarely provided with simultaneous translation. Some Franco-Ontarians have told me that they are relying on Quebec government press briefings or English CBC channels to obtain information on COVID-19. Radio-Canada has rebuffed our recommendations concerning its television broadcasts, despite the fact that the service we demanded is part of the corporation's mandate. Our report therefore reiterates two recommendations drawn from our brief to the CRTC regarding the renewal of the CBC's broadcasting licence.
During the pandemic, we also observed that bilingual labelling standards were not being met. It is easy for the government to avoid its language obligations in this area, as Health Canada demonstrated on March 19 and April 27 with its directives to rescind bilingual labelling rules for certain products used to lower health risks, such as disinfectants and antiseptics. It is therefore vital that the government set out its labelling requirements within the Official Languages Act. Flouting language rights is too easy when all you have to do is to suspend part of a regulation.
The last in-depth update of the Official Languages Act goes back to pre-digital times. This means that the act is silent on concerns relating to social media.
We were taken aback when Professor Stéphanie Chouinard stated on November 26 that 80% of the Government of Canada's social media communications during the pandemic were in English. This is far from true equality of service. The Government of Canada should seize the opportunity that modernizing the Official Languages Act would provide to ensure true equality of French and English in social media communications.
There are also problems in the area of translation. The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has received a number of complaints regarding the lack of communications or services in both official languages, as well as language-of-work rights. We wish to express our support for the Commissioner's first recommendation on this issue, which includes creating an express translation service, among other measures.
I will conclude with this final observation about problems that predate the pandemic, but have greatly impacted our organizations in recent months. Franco-Ontarian organizations are chronically underfunded compared to similar organizations across the country, and this has greatly weakened our network during the pandemic. Ontario is home to 55% of Canada's francophone population and one-third of francophone non-profit organizations outside of Quebec. Yet Ontario's share of the federal funding provided to francophone community organizations outside of Quebec is only 23%. The pandemic has amplified the impact of this underfunding. Our studies show that approximately 10% of our Franco-Ontarian organizations are confronting a critical situation that could force them to close down in the near future.
Like many others, our network has been shaken and weakened by COVID-19. However, we were already weakened by years of underfunding, and that has become all the more obvious during the pandemic. It is important that the federal government move to correct immediately the inequality of funding between provinces, without penalizing other province's communities in any way.
I thank you, members of the committee, for your attention and consideration.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.