Thank you.
As you mentioned, I have been executive director of the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, the CIRLM, since 2012. Rodrigue Landry, who is also here today, was executive director of the Institute from 2002 to 2012.
The institute was created in 2002 with funding that Canadian Heritage granted to the Université de Moncton. Its mission is to work together with its partners in conducting relevant research that can support the various stakeholders, the official language minorities and the framers of public language policy.
My presentation will focus on three points: the importance of research and data in formulating government official language action plans and developing public policy, the importance of engaging francophone populations and the need to clarify part VII of the Official Languages Act.
I will not be presenting figures or analyses to show how fragile the francophone communities are since that has been done on many occasions. We know that the communities' demographic weight is slowly declining, that the vitality of French is low in certain regions and that their institutions are fragile. We also know that there is an associative sector striving every day to combat the pressures of assimilation and that thousands of francophones and francophiles are helping to make French a living language.
What is missing, in my view, are research-based public policies. We lack any genuine official languages planning that includes clearly defined objectives and means or measurable results that are to be achieved. We must be able to measure more accurately the impact of action taken by government and francophone actors to address the communities' vitality. There must also be more transparency and accountability for the communities.
Consider, for example, the Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023: Investing in Our Future. That plan provides for official languages investments totalling $2.7 billion. It states: "Our new Action Plan will help Canada achieve measurable, evidence-based goals supporting the vitality of official-language minority communities and the bilingualism of Canadians."
Two measurable objectives from the action plan are presented. First, the action plan's measures are designed to stabilize the proportion of francophones in the country at 4%. Second, the aim is to work toward a target of 4.4% of all immigrants by 2023. I don't think that's enough to determine whether the $2.7 billion investment will have any real effect on the communities. Other indicators seem to be needed. I am thinking, for example, of indicators of the number of parent rights holders who send their children to French schools, educational infrastructure needs, the language young people use on social media, how they consume French-language cultural products and so on.
To live in French, young people and adults need a French-language social environment and well-established francophone institutions. They need francophone workplaces and educational spaces, childcare centres, sports, organized recreation, media and social media. They need a French-language public and media landscape. Have we analyzed the communities' sociolinguistic environment? Have we based the measures we take on those analyses? As far as I know, that has not been the case. This is one of the limits of government intervention. Government invests significant funding without basing its intervention on rigorous and precise planning that produces measurable results based on research, analysis and conclusive data. A community of researchers can assist government and the action it takes. We have extensive expertise in official languages. Many individuals, including Rodrigue Landry here, have contributed to this effort a keen understanding of the factors that influence a community's linguistic vitality.
Now I will discuss public engagement.
Canadian government intervention should increase public participation in developing government action plans for official languages and government action as a whole. Public engagement should be based on consultation activities and discussions on the needs and priorities of the communities. And it should start with communication. It is important that francophone actors and the Canadian government inform the public of progress that has been made. We are in the third year of the Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023: Investing in Our Future. Where do we stand today? No progress reports have been released. The government and francophone organizations must do a better job of reporting their actions and achievements to the public.
Efforts must be made to work more closely with the public, who are the first ones affected by these measures. When I say the public, I am thinking of citizens. Consultations must not be restricted to francophone professionals. I believe it is dangerous to limit consultations to organizations because an organization, by definition, will always advocate a point of view related to the very purpose of its existence, mission, objectives and so on.
Of course, there are also benefits to consulting the public because those organizations have developed expertise in their spheres of action. That expertise should not be overlooked, but there has been a tendency to overlook citizen expertise in recent years. Many experiments are being conducted around the world to involve citizens to a greater degree in the democratic life of their country. A recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, reveals that a wave of formal discussion is under way. Promising ideas are waiting to be explored in order to urge francophone and francophile populations to engage with the francophonie relying on their collective intelligence.
I think we should encourage the creation of citizen deliberation spaces to determine the needs and priorities of the communities and to propose ways of addressing them, but, more broadly, to determine a society-wide project for the francophonie.
In closing, I will address part VII of the Official Languages Act, which directly concerns the communities. Part VII requires the government to take positive measures to enhance the vitality of the minorities and to assist their development. It is essential that part VII be clarified in order to minimize room for interpretation. For the government, it must be construed as narrowly as possible.
As lawyer Michel Doucet has said, part VII of the act has "a remedial character" and "its purpose is not to maintain the status quo but instead to remedy the historic and gradual erosion of the rights of official language minorities."
Thank you for your attention.