Official Languages Committee on Feb. 25th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Yes, in 15 seconds, please.

[François Côté]

Thank you.

The charter of the French language actually does that. It imposes a burden of proof on the employer to prove that there is a necessity to speak in English, to alleviate the burden on any plaintiff to have to prove that his language rights were infringed. By transposing the legal regime of the charter of the French language into the federal legislation, it would achieve precisely that objective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much, Mr. Côté.

Thank you, Mr. Duguid.

Mr. Beaulieu, you have the floor for the next two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the proposals we've been hearing about is to amend the Official Languages Act to meet Quebec's demands. It's important to understand that the territorial model Quebec is trying to implement is designed to make French the common language in the workplace, the common language in the province, and the language of newcomers. However, this is not the objective of the Official Languages Act, which instead offers a free choice and guarantees a form of bilingualism. This proposal is impossible in the rest of Canada, where francophones really are in the minority.

The reason why preference should be given to the intent of Bill 101 rather than bilingualism, is that its goal is to make French the common language. By promoting bilingualism, the message sent to newcomers is that they don't need to learn French to integrate into our society, because they can do so equally well through English.

What are your thoughts on this, Mr. Côté?

[François Côté]

I completely agree with you. That's the essence of it. It's central to the proposals we submit to the House of Commons. A territorial model is required to genuinely confer a specific and distinct status on the French language. We are proposing it in Quebec, but nothing prevents it from being extended elsewhere.

In Quebec at least, the French language really needs to be the common language, and not simply an individual entitlement. It's the territorial model that will enable us truly to defend a collective language spoken by the majority, while it remains a minority within the federation.

We need to make a clean break with the idea of symmetrical bilingualism and espouse asymmetrical bilingualism, with a territorial structure, in keeping with the intentions of Camille Laurin and the Charter of the French Language. It's the only true way of achieving language protection in Quebec.

[Érik Labelle Eastaugh]

I'd like to add a comment, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

You have 10 seconds.

[Érik Labelle Eastaugh]

I simply want to say that Mr. Côté is giving a rather unrealistic picture of the impact of Bill 101. I worked for almost two years in a large firm in Montreal and I can tell you that the pattern described earlier by Mr. Arseneault is very widespread among private companies. It's therefore inaccurate to claim that Bill 101 is clearly more effective than the Official Languages Act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Labelle Eastaugh.

Mr. Boulerice, You have the floor for the next two minutes.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We've certainly seen that the witnesses today are presenting different visions. That's okay, and only to be expected. But I'm glad to see that our two witnesses agree on one thing, and that is the asymmetrical status of the two languages. I believe that it's interesting, and that we should be able to put it to good use in this study in connection with the forthcoming report.

Mr. Labelle Eastaugh, we recently looked at the minister's proposals and working paper. They deal with the language rights of francophone workers outside Quebec, but with due regard to concentrations of francophones, that vary in size from region to region. Some people find this worrisome.

Mr. Arseneault, I recently met some francophone Acadian artists from New Brunswick who did not want New Brunswick to be divided up into small regions, because the rights of francophones would become unequal.

Mr. Labelle Eastaugh, you spoke about federal criteria. What could be proposed to ensure that francophone workers in minority language communities have their rights complied with to the greatest extent possible?

[Érik Labelle Eastaugh]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Boulerice.

For workers, the federal government could begin by drawing upon the existing system in the public service. Under the Official Languages Act, some regions are designated bilingual, which is to say that people have a right to choose to work either in French or English. It seems to me that this system could be adapted for private companies. Since a system already exists, I don't see why we wouldn't use it.

We would be worried if the federal government suggested conferring these rights only in majority francophone regions. This would exclude a very significant segment of the Canadian francophonie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you.

That's all the time that we had—

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Go ahead, Mr. Arseneault.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

What it be possible to remind the witnesses that if they have additional information, they shouldn't hesitate to pass it on to the committee?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

There, you've just heard the message. Please don't hesitate to send any information to our clerk.

Do you have a point of order, Mr. Beaulieu?

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

Well, Mr. Perreault seems to be there now, so I was wondering whether he was going to be able to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

We have another group of witnesses waiting for the second hour, and we need to do some sound tests. Unfortunately, we have to manage our time carefully.

Mr. Labelle Eastaugh and Mr. Côté, On behalf of the members of the standing committee on official languages, I would like to thank you sincerely for your evidence. It's important for the study that we are conducting.

And thanks to you too, Mr. Perreault, even though we didn't get to hear you.

I'd like to remind you that ^x Mr. Labelle Eastaugh is the Director of the International Observatory for Language Rights, and a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Moncton. He is also a member of the Association des juristes d'expression française du Nouveau-Brunswick.

Mr. Côté^x, who is representing Impératif français, spoke to us in the absence of Mr. Perreault, who was experiencing technical difficulties.

Once again, I'd like to thank you and ask you to send us your briefs or reports, because we have just barely begun our study.

We are going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes, and then welcome the next witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

The meeting is called back to order.

The committee is meeting today on its study of government measures to protect and promote French in Quebec and in Canada.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses.

Before speaking, please wait until I call your name. When you are ready to speak, click on the microphone icon to activate it. Members will specify to whom their questions are being addressed.

I would remind everyone that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Interpretation in this videoconference will work very much as it does in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either Floor, English or French.

When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly, and when you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses.

You will have seven and a half minutes for your opening remarks, followed by a round of questions and answers.

As usual, I will advise you when you have a minute of speaking time left and when your time is up.

We will be hearing from the Honourable Serge Joyal, jurist and former senator, appearing as an individual.

We also have with us the Honourable Marlene Jennings, the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, and Ms. Sylvia Martin-Laforge, the director general of the QCGN.

Mr. Joyal, you have the floor for seven and a half minutes.

[Serge Joyal, Jurist and Former Senator, As an Individual]

I will try to use my seven and a half minutes as efficiently as possible.

I would like to thank you for having invited me this afternoon.

I have 45 years of personal experience with Canada's Official Languages Act.

It began in 1976, when I filed a lawsuit in the Quebec Superior Court against Air Canada, which was a Crown corporation at the time, before the Honourable Justice Jules Deschênes. The purpose was to enable Air Canada employees to work in French, and more particularly to obtain an injunction to require Air Canada to translate all its maintenance manuals so that French could really be a language of work.

After that, I was behind the creation of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, of which you are the honourable members today. It came about when I introduced a bill in 1981 with my colleague Mr. Pierre De Bané.

I was also the architect of the Court Challenges Program for sections 16 to 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which delineate the status of French and give it the protection we know today.

I intervened in the Montfort Hospital case in 1997. There is no need for details about this since I believe most of you will remember it.

I also intervened with the president of the Treasury Board in 1998, when Francophone communities were suffering the consequences of the budget cuts decreed by the government of the day. Every single government budget item was affected, except for those pertaining to indigenous groups and for which an exception had been made. There was no exception for official language minority communities, on the other hand. I therefore intervened to have this decision reviewed.

I moved the amendment to part VII of the Official Languages Act in 2005. When our late colleague, Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier retired, we were able to continue the debate and have the amendment to part VII adopted. I will return to this later.

I intervened in 2007 to prevent the elimination of the Court Challenges Program by the government of the day. I supported the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne when it threatened to take action against the government to reverse its decision to eliminate the program.

I contributed to the study of the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages for the 2018 review of the Official Languages Act.

Lastly, in 2019, I responded to a request from the Superior Court of Quebec with respect to the application of section 55 of the Constitution Act, 1982, to adopt an official French version of the Constitution Act, 1867. We are currently defending this in court.

I therefore thank you, given my background, for having invited me here this afternoon.

I will give a brief presentation, but I would imagine that during the round of questions, we will have an opportunity to go into more detail about the points I will have raised.

I'd like to begin by clarifying things for everyone.

My first point pertains to immigration, which is to say that a critical mass of French speakers needs to be maintained. This goal is essential to the vitality of French in Canada. Why? Because the fertility rate has not been keeping pace with the death rate. This is also true in Quebec, my home province. There would be a net annual decline without immigration.

My second point is that Quebec is the province in which people are aging most rapidly. Globally, we are virtually ex æquo with Japan. According to the statistics, 25% of Quebecers will be 65 years and over by 2030. This means that 25% of the population will have left the workforce or will no longer be participating actively. It's extremely important to take this statistic into account for any workforce planning.

I would refer you to the editorial in yesterday's, February 24, Le Devoir, which reported that the Institut de la statistique du Québec had found that immigrants held 12.2% of all jobs in Quebec 10 years ago, but now held 18%. This means that 250,000 of the jobs were held by immigrants whereas the number held by residents of Quebec declined by 110,000.

It further means that without the demographic resources of immigration, the ratio of francophones to anglophones in Quebec will decline. It is going to drop so much that in some regions, everyday living in French will become extremely difficult

My view is that this is a key question if we want to understand the dynamics in which we are collectively caught up, as Quebecers and Canadians, on matters of immigration. It's essential to ensure that people who wish to immigrate have access to financially supported training, not only for workers, but also their families, and those who are part of the family unit. This could restore the balance, which in my view is essential in our country.

In closing, I believe that it's extremely important to ensure the discoverability of French works on digital platforms. The new generations are highly influenced by the English language on that instrument that every one of us uses these days. I think that the issue of anglicization is a much more important priority and that it requires government initiatives. Otherwise the few random measures we might take will not succeed in reversing the pervasive shift towards English in all spheres of everyday life.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd be happy to join your discussion this afternoon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Joyal. That's quite the track record.

We'll now move on to the representatives of the Quebec Community Groups Network.

Ms. Jennings and Ms. Martin-Laforge, you have the floor for seven and a half minutes.

[Marlene Jennings, President, Quebec Community Groups Network]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Marlene Jennings, and I am the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network. Accompanying me is director general of the QCGN, Sylvia Martin-Laforge.

For the past decade the Government of Canada has been under pressure from official language minority communities to modernize the Official Languages Act. Led by the QCGN, English-speaking Quebeckers have actively participated in numerous consultative processes, which led to the Honourable Mélanie Joly's proposals last week on a way forward.

The QCGN's brief on modernizing the Official Languages Act, which was submitted to this committee in November 2018, was developed with the co-operation of a broad segment of the community sector serving English-speaking Quebec. We thank the organizations that took time to contribute.

What are English-speaking Quebec's expectations regarding a modernized act?

It remains that a central guiding principle of the Official Languages Act must be the equality of status of English and French. It must categorically guarantee this equality of status in all institutions subject to the act across Canada.

We're fully aware that the term “equality” has specific legal meaning. That is why the QCGN understands and supports an approach to implementing federal commitments to Canada's English and French linguistic minority communities that is adapted to the specific context and needs of different official language minority communities.

We understand that the French language requires special attention, and we acknowledge the data that demonstrates a national decline in the use of French and the demographic peril of francophone minority communities. We have just heard from Senator Joyal with regard to some of that demographic reality.

In the past, I have issued a statement, shared with the members of this committee, reaffirming our organization's commitment to respecting French as the official language of the province of Quebec and the ongoing work that we do to support and defend French in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

However, we reject the notion that in the federal sphere, protecting and promoting French necessitates restricting the language rights of English-speaking Quebeckers. Too often our community is scapegoated or ignored. Enough of this. The majority of English-speaking Quebeckers remained in Quebec after the turmoil of the 1970s. We call Quebec home, and we understand our responsibility to learn and use French in the public space.

After all, it was a group of concerned English parents from Saint-Lambert who, in the 1960s, invented French immersion to ensure that our children could remain and be integrated into French-speaking Quebec. We are so perplexed that our schools were not even mentioned in the government's plans to increase support for French immersion.

Our community institutions—hospitals, libraries, post-secondary institutions—serve all Quebeckers, both in English and in French. After all, Jean-François Lisée famously learned English by joining a Scout troop in Thetford Mines. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon attended McGill University, as did Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. Harmonium got its start on CHOM FM.

Our community is not a threat to French. We are not “the others”.

[Sylvia Martin-Laforge, Director General, Quebec Community Groups Network]

The Government of Canada's proposals capture important demands made by Quebec's English-speaking community during consultations related to the modernization of the Official Languages Act.

There is a reason for optimism around proposals to strengthen the role of Treasury Board in the coordination of the act and expand the powers of the Commissioner of Official Languages to ensure compliance.

We also welcome the transfer of the court challenges program into the act, thus securing this important mechanism for protecting language rights before the courts.

There are opportunities for increased support to our communities institutions and provisions for more transparency on federal transfers directed toward our vitality, proposals that are tempered, unfortunately, by the need for provincial co-operation in our province.

Frankly, Quebec does not have a good track record on either front. Centralizing the management and control of health and social services institutions has severely impacted community participation in the leadership of our hospitals. Bill 40 attempted to strip us of section 23 minority language education rights, a fight that continues before the courts.

Now the Government of Quebec is floating the idea of placing enrolment caps on English CEGEPs, which will have a direct impact on resources available to those colleges.

Quebec has never agreed to binding linguistic clauses or transparency provisions on federal transfers. There is no reason to think it will do so in the future.

[Marlene Jennings]

We note that the Government of Canada's proposal represents a fundamental shift in the federal commitment to official languages, and the interpretive effects of this shift on Canadian's official language rights is unclear. This is new ground and, at first blush, could imperil the rights of English-speaking Quebeckers down the road.

QCGM and the English-speaking community of Quebec are bitterly disappointed that Minister Joly's proposal document did not address the serious problems facing the members of the English-speaking community of Quebec. Our unemployment rate is chronically higher than that of the majority. We have significantly lower median incomes than French Quebeckers and the lowest median income of any of Canada's official language communities. Almost one in five English-speaking Quebeckers lives below the poverty line.

The federal government can play a positive role in addressing these realities. We desperately want your committee to recommend to the federal government that they address these issues with the modernization of the Official Languages Act. To not do so would be to tell English-speaking Quebeckers, “We're going to let you on the bus, but you gotta sit in the back.”

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their presentation.

We now have two rounds of questions. In the first round, every member will have five minutes.

Over to you, Mr. Dalton.