Official Languages Committee on Feb. 14th, 2022

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dalton.

We will continue with our colleague Arielle Kayabaga.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to direct my question to Mr. Laplante.

Mr. Laplante, what you think are the current deficiencies in the Official Languages Act? How do you think they can be corrected?

[Robert Laplante]

The main defect is that it puts Quebec's anglophone minorities and Canada's francophone minorities on an equal footing. That's a major defect that has spawned a succession of measures and provisions that fail to take into account the sociological reality of the communities.

I think that programs that are subject to court challenges often lead to lengthy or interminable struggles essentially as a result of this misunderstanding, particularly when the judgment is ultimately declaratory. No implementation is therefore required. However, the act should include, perhaps in part VII, provisions that would render binding the findings that the courts or the minister might make. Otherwise our friends from British Columbia may have to fight for 10 more years to achieve actual results.

There's a distinction between a legal victory and a societal change.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

You have 10 seconds left.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Ms. Kayabaga.

The next questioner will be Mario Beaulieu, who will have one minute.

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

On the one hand, Mr. Laplante, Quebec is trying to make French the common language within its borders. It tells newcomers to learn French and to fit in. It respects the English-speaking minority, but French is the common language. On the other hand, the federal government asserts that there are two official languages and two common languages, and one may use the language of one's choice.

What do you think of that?

[Robert Laplante]

We're in the midst of a conflict of legitimacy.

Who has authority over the Quebec National Assembly for language planning in the province? The competition sustained over this issue by the Canadian government's political choices can only sustain social tensions that are entirely undermine both the future of French and harmony among all of Quebec's decisions.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Laplante.

Ms. Ashton is the next and final questioner.

Ms. Ashton, you have one minute.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you.

I have a comment for Ms. Crist, but I also invite the other witnesses to give us their advice.

It was clear from the consultations with the former minister, among others, that the communities had already identified the problems in the Official Languages Act.

Please tell us how important it is for the new act to reflect the communities' priorities and concerns.

[Lily Crist]

Our province has neither language legislation nor a French-language services policy. Consequently, we risk systematically losing French-language services. This new act may afford us the opportunity to establish French-language services in our community.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Ms. Crist.

Ms. Crist, Mr. Laplante, Mr. Power and Mr. Bossé, thank you for being here.

Should you wish to add any information, please feel free to forward it in writing to our clerk, who will distribute it to all the members of the committee. Don't hesitate especially if you feel you didn't have time to address any particular points.

Thank you for coming and happy Valentine's Day.

We will suspend for a few minutes to allow the next panel of witnesses to arrive.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

We will resume now.

Welcome to the second panel of witnesses.

In the second hour of the meeting, we have, via videoconference, Frédéric Lacroix, Essayist, As an individual; we also have, from the Quebec Council of Employers, Karl Blackburn, President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Denis Hamel, Vice President, Politics and Labour; and, lastly, from the Société de la francophonie manitobaine, we have Angela Cassie, Chair of the Board of Directors, and Daniel Boucher, Executive Director.

Each of the groups will have a maximum of five minutes for your presentation. I will let you know when you have roughly one minute left.

We'll begin right away, and Frédéric Lacroix will be the first speaker.

Mr. Lacroix, go ahead for five minutes.

[Frédéric Lacroix, Essayist, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

An unusual linguistic dynamic has taken shape in Quebec in the past 15 years or so. Since 1871, the demographic weight of francophones in Quebec had never fallen below 80%. Now it is 78%, having declined 3.4 percentage points in 15 years, a record. It is also falling quickly with regard to the language spoken in the home. Statistics Canada's demolinguistic projections suggest that the relative weight of francophones in Quebec will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.

Fundamental changes will have to be made to the Official Languages Act in order to halt the decline of French in Quebec.

The act was passed in 1969 and its purpose is to “ensure respect for English and French as the official languages [and to ensure] equality of status” and “support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities.” The Official Languages Act declared English and French our official languages and put those two languages on a strict legally equal footing, without however taking into consideration the sociological situation of English and French in Canada, a reality that is actually based on a demographic power relationship, as a result of which English is the dominant language across Canada, even in Quebec.

Book 1 of the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism states that, according to the 1961 census, English, relatively speaking, was assimilating other languages nearly five times faster than French in Canada. In other words, English was already far more vital than French. The Official Languages Act, which was passed by Pierre Elliott Trudeau's government, did not take that elementary reality into account.

Anglophones in Quebec assimilate approximately half of allophone immigrants, whereas they represent only 8.1% of the population, which means that, all other things being equal, the anglophone group's assimilation power is nearly 10 times that of the francophone group in Quebec.

Thus, contrary to what the Official Languages Act would have us believe, there is no situation of egalitarian bilingualism in Quebec. The situation is more one of inegalitarian or competitive bilingualism.

The Official Languages Act is based on the idea that language is the result of an individual's preference: this is the principle of personality. The personality principle was, and still is, a nonsensical proposition. Language is not an individual characteristic; it is a medium of exchange with others and is, by definition, collective.

Note that the Charter of the French Language is based in large part on the principle of territoriality, the principle that, over a given territory, a single language serves as a language of convergence or common language. There is thus a clear conflict between the federal and Quebec approaches to language planning.

In my view, the principle of personality must be abandoned if we truly want to achieve genuine equality between English and French in Quebec. The Official Languages Act should consider and acknowledge that Quebec is a French-language province. That proposition would have numerous practical consequences. For example, immigrants seeking permanent residence in Quebec would have to demonstrate their knowledge of French, not of French and English.

Now let's consider the double majority.

Within a framework of symmetry, the Official Languages Act institutes a double majority in Canada in which anglophones form the majority outside Quebec and francophones the majority within Quebec. This double majority is real only if one considers that the linguistic dynamic is determined by provincial borders. However, this is false. The linguistic dynamic is determined by the country to which Quebec belongs, which is Canada.

The Official Languages Act thus fosters the development and vitality of Quebec's anglophone minority. However, that minority is not a minority. It is in fact an integral part of the Canadian majority and possesses all its attributes, including linguistic vitality.

This concept of a double majority must be abandoned in the Official Languages Act.

That means abandoning grants in support of the vitality of English in Quebec, such as those made under the Canada-Québec Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second Languages Instruction, funding that enhances the status and vitality of English in Quebec.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

You have one minute left.

[Frédéric Lacroix]

I would like to make two recommendations.

The discrimination that the federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration has shown toward francophone immigrants undermines Quebec's efforts to attract francophone and francotrope immigrants who will integrate well into French-speaking Quebec. In my opinion, temporary immigration authority, which includes foreign students, should be transferred to Quebec.

Furthermore, the grants that the federal government makes to Quebec universities put French-language universities at a definite disadvantage. Nearly 40% of funding that Ottawa provides to Quebec is allocated to English-language universities. Approximately one third of federal funding goes to McGill University alone. Systemic discrimination is exercised against French-language universities in federal funding allocation.

Funding allocation based on so-called excellence criteria in fact rewards past winners and penalizes past losers. In other words, that funding rewards universities that are already the richest, such as McGill. Different criteria should be introduced in federal grant programs.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Lacroix.

Now we will go to the Quebec Council of Employers, represented by Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Hamel.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Karl Blackburn, President and Chief Executive Officer, Quebec Council of Employers]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to inform you that my colleague seems to be having connection problems. That's unfortunate because he's highly qualified and could have assisted the committee by answering questions. I'll do my best to answer them.

Members of the committee, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karl Blackburn, and I am the president and chief executive officer of the Quebec Council of Employers, the QCE.

Our organization, which was established in 1969, is a federation of nearly 100 sectoral associations and a number of corporate members that represents the interests of more than 70,000 private and parapublic employers of all sizes from all regions of Quebec.

Like the entire Canadian francophone population, Quebec employers are eager to promote French as a language of work, commerce, business and external business communication.

Our organization actively supports the efforts of Quebec employers striving to make French the language of work, commerce and business within their enterprises. For example, we have worked for many years with the Office québécois de la langue française, the OQLF, to promote French in the business sector. We have assisted in developing tools for employers, now consolidated under the title “Mémo, mon assistant pour la francisation”. We distribute those tools to our members with OQLF's help.

The approach that OQLF uses, which is based on self-evaluation, support and the provision of business tools, is consistent with the one we advocate for promoting the French language and encouraging companies to do business in French. We would obviously be pleased to be able to perform a similar role by cooperating with the Department of Canadian Heritage to support federally regulated businesses in their francization efforts both in Quebec and across Canada.

We believe that our language puts us in a privileged position to forge ties with other countries. Last August, QCE signed, on Quebec's behalf, the Paris declaration on strengthening the economic francophonie. The aim of that declaration is to create a privileged space, similar to the Commonwealth, for trade among francophone countries, as there are more than 300 million French speakers in the world. The goal is to increase business opportunities around the globe and to attract foreign businesses to Quebec. The francophonie also has considerable potential as a labour provider, since three quarters of the world's francophones will be less than 30 years old in 2060. In short, we believe that our language can become a springboard for our economic development.

Against this backdrop, QCE wishes to draw the federal government's attention to the support it could provide to the economic space of francophone and Acadian communities by promoting connections with employers in francophone and francophile countries.

We believe that, given the minority situation of the French fact in North America, the vitality of our language relies on stronger economic ties with other countries where French is the language of work. As the sole Canadian employers organization to sign the common Paris declaration, we also wish to offer our full cooperation and to make our expertise and network available to federal agencies and Canadian employers.

In closing, I would like to draw the committee's attention to two specific points.

We recently surveyed our members on the language question. Employers are generally in favour of protecting and promoting French as a language of work. A large majority recognize that our common language is fragile, particularly in Montreal, view French as a distinct cultural attribute and acknowledge that all businesses have a role to play in ensuring the vitality of our language. However, employers fear that statutory or regulatory measures may be introduced, without distinctions being drawn based on the size of businesses, that would increase red tape and be difficult to implement given the lack of resources for that purpose.

The second concern that employers expressed is that federally regulated businesses might eventually be compelled to meet the requirements of both the Official Languages Act and Quebec's Charter of the French Language. Employers should not be subject to two jurisdictions, a situation that would result in confusion and increased administrative processes.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Blackburn.

Now we will hear from the Société de la francophonie manitobaine, represented by Angela Cassie and Daniel Boucher.

You have the floor.

[Angela Cassie, Chair, Board of Directors, Société de la francophonie manitobaine]

Good afternoon.

I would like to thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.

I am currently on Treaty 1 land, homeland of the Métis nation. The Manitoban francophonie is spread over territory that is subject to several treaties and the ancestral lands of several indigenous peoples.

My name is Angela Cassie, and I am chair of the Société de la francophonie manitobaine, the SFM.

As the organization representing the francophone community of Manitoba, SFM is concerned with the advancement of all the community's areas of activity with the help of its network of collaborators and partners.

Today I would like to discuss three major themes: the urgent need to modernize the Official Languages Act, the priorities of the Manitoban francophonie and the efforts required to achieve the French-language immigration target.

First, I would like to mention that SFM supports the claims of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada regarding the act.

The work leading up to Bill C‑32, which we have been awaiting for many years, was not done in haste. On the contrary, it is the result of several studies and consultations dating back many years. Any more delays would only further weaken the position of French in our communities. Parliament should therefore begin its work immediately.

Having said that, I agree, as do all francophone communities, that Bill C‑32 still exhibits some major deficiencies that must be corrected.

First of all, the Office of the Commissioner of Official languages must be granted expanded powers to make orders and impose penalties. At the moment, the mere recommendations that he makes are not strong enough to protect minority languages.

That brings me to the next deficiency in the bill: it is vitally important to clarify further part VII of the Official Languages Act. Parts of the Federal Court of Appeal's decision in the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique case should serve as a basis for establishing the necessary mechanisms to ensure compliance with part VII and to clarify the government's expectations with regard to “positive measures”.

In addition, to guarantee a common and generous interpretation of the act, the government must designate a single central agency to coordinate the act's implementation.

Lastly, Bill C‑32 should include a francophone immigration policy in order to restore the demographic weight of the francophonie.

I will now explain the immigration issue at greater length before concluding.

In 2016, Manitoba's francophone community adopted a strategic plan based on a consultation conducted by a research team from the Université de Saint-Boniface. That plan, which was developed for a 20‑year horizon, based on 5 lines of action, and projected 33 results, is now being implemented by the network of Manitoba francophone organizations. In our opinion, to achieve the intent of the Official Languages Act, particularly that of part VII, governments must consider this action plan in developing and evaluating programs. The government must act as a partner in enhancing the vitality of our communities.

Accueil francophone, an SFM initiative introduced to facilitate the intake and settlement of francophone newcomers to Manitoba, has provided services to the vast majority of those newcomers. In spite of our efforts in this initiative and Accueil francophone's ability to act, only 4.3% of immigrants had French as a spoken language in 2019. We must have specific and bold francophone immigration targets.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Ms. Cassie. You will definitely have a chance to say more during the questions.

We will now begin the first round of questions. Questioners from each party will have six minutes to ask their questions and hear the answers.

Ms. Gladu, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being with us.

First I'll go to Ms. Cassie.

We also spoke with the Commissioner of Official Languages, who told us that there are few consequences for those who breach the act. He added that there are no consequences for individuals, just organizations. For example, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship won't receive a warning or suffer any consequences for sending an English-only email.

What do you think we can do to improve that situation?

[Angela Cassie]

That's why we want the commissioner to have the authority to make orders and impose penalties. We need more teeth. We've seen in recent years that the current approach doesn't work. It doesn't compel people to act and recognize language rights.

I also want to note that I'm here with Daniel Boucher, the executive director of SFM. I invite him to speak if he'd like to support me and add something.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

That's excellent.

I have another question for you.

You have a program for immigrants that's very successful because you have targets.

Are there targets across Canada?