Official Languages Committee on Sept. 25th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

All right. I note that the other members of the committee also give their consent.

So, we'll move on to the next question, which comes from the Bloc Québécois.

Monsieur Beaulieu, you have the floor for five full minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to come back to the question of post-secondary institutions. A recent Statistics Canada study shows the close link between attendance at French-language post-secondary institutions, for example, and language of work. We can therefore assume that the underfunding of universities outside Quebec harms French as a language of work, on the one hand, and that, conversely, in Quebec it benefits English and harms French, on the other.

[Mariève Forest]

Language retention is, in part, about the enjoyment of speaking French and feeling that your French is good enough to go and work in French. That is heavily dependent on post-secondary education. Adequate funding for the education system, from early childhood to post-secondary, would help address the challenges related to language retention and language transfer. We know that underfunding contributes to higher rates of language transfer and lower retention, as do issues surrounding immigrant recruitment.

In Canada, almost 100% of population renewal is from immigration. However, for more than 50 years, the Government of Canada has not recruited enough Francophones. It's clear that these measures, programs and policies directly contribute to the demographic decline of francophone communities.

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

I would add that Canada doesn't recruit enough francophone immigrants because it hasn't adequately funded French-language schools.

[Mariève Forest]

That's why we need retention. Retention and demographic renewal are two sides of the same coin.

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

For allophones outside Quebec, almost all of the language transfer is toward English. For francophones, I think it's 40%.

[Mariève Forest]

At the moment, there is no active offer of service in French, particularly for refugees. Even if the offer were there, there aren't enough resettlement services available in French. That's something that could boost allophones' interest in choosing French in Canada.

[Valérie Morand]

I would just add that, for students from immigrant families who attend a French-language school and choose post-secondary education in French, the most important factor is a strong francophone identity. That's a product of identity construction in our schools, which all the federal funding supports. If the federal government gives us less, we can't do as much work on that. It has a domino effect.

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

The study of language policy models around the world shows that the territoriality principle has the biggest impact on protecting minority languages. According to this principle, a given territory has an official language. Territorial bilingualism is one example; it can be called different things.

Mr. Simard, as a representative of the Collège communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick, you know that New Brunswick has one of the lowest francophone assimilation rates outside Quebec. Do you think that francophone immigrants who settle in New Brunswick, especially in more francophone surroundings, are more likely to integrate into life in French and are more likely to complete a language transfer into French eventually?

[Cyrille Simard]

There's no doubt that, if that's how it worked, the likelihood of integration and retention would be higher. That said, we need to recognize that we are in a bilingual province and that it's up to us to ensure the retention of newcomers.

For example, we give students from Africa extra English training to make sure they stay. Even if they want to preserve their French, which we all want, they could end up leaving the province and going elsewhere if they can't find work. So we have to strike some kind of balance to create conditions that will make it possible for them to continue living in French while giving them the tools, such as some mastery of English, to better integrate into the labour market.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Simard.

Ms. Ashton, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Simard, I'd like to give you the opportunity to share your advice and recommendations for addressing the labour shortage in French-language and French immersion education. That's what I would like to hear.

[Cyrille Simard]

Thank you.

At the risk of repeating myself, as I said in my presentation, there should be more funding to help international students settle here. That would be a good way to improve things. We believe there should be a new pathway to permanent residence specifically for international college and university graduates outside Quebec. Such a program would enable us to achieve better results.

We also talked about work permits for students. Work permits should be associated with study permits so people don't have to jump through the same hoops twice. In addition, the duration of work permits for college students is an important factor, particularly in industries like construction. If a student is in a one- or two-year program and gets a post-graduation work permit that is too short, they'll have a hard time getting into the labour market. An electrician sometimes has to wait three years for access to what are called blocks, or apprenticeship courses, so they can rise through the ranks in the profession. Blocks aren't always available on the ground. A longer post-graduation work permit would give them a better chance to get into the labour market.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Morand and Ms. Saumure, I'd like to discuss settlement and the challenges you talked about, particularly in terms of housing. I live in the west, but I'm also further north, and housing is very expensive, particularly rental housing. We're not a big city like Toronto or Vancouver, though. We've been told that's a challenge for newcomers, including those who come to teach in our schools.

What do you think the federal government should do? Should it give new teachers and educators financial assistance for housing so they can come and stay in our communities?

[Valérie Morand]

Yes, there are certainly solutions that should be implemented. Right now, some employees host new teaching staff in their own homes, which is not a good solution. Some school boards have bought buildings to convert into residences for new staff, but I'm sure you can see that isn't ideal. Managing employees is one thing, but if employers also have to attend to their well-being, their accommodation, and so on, where does it end? It's starting to get a little onerous for them.

Over the past 30 years, we've seen all levels of government disengage from their investments in social housing. That's how we ended up in this situation. How do we fix it? I don't have a solution to offer, but housing definitely needs to be part of the conversation about francophone immigration policy. People talk about inclusive communities that welcome the people we bring here. Well, it starts with housing, it starts with a job, and it starts with a school for their children, because parents want a better future for their kids than for themselves. That's often the main reason why they choose a new homeland.

I don't have a specific solution to offer, but it's certainly something that will have to be taken into consideration because it's part of the equation for the successful integration of these newcomers into francophone communities.

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

Ms. Forest, you talked about the challenges around access to early learning. Can you tell us about those challenges and explain how they contribute to the decline of French in Canada?

[Mariève Forest]

I haven't done any recent studies on that. It's more of a general principle related to vitality. As you can imagine, if child care from zero to four or five years—depending on when school starts—is in English, that undermines linguistic security, which is hard enough to maintain as it is, even when kids are fully educated in French.

An underfunded school system means that extracurricular activities sometimes take place in English, for example. That, too, undermines children's linguistic security, and may get parents thinking it's just easier to enrol their children in English schools. Perhaps their child throws tantrums because they don't want to go to school in French because they're embarrassed. That's a personal decision, a decision nobody can criticize. Going to day care in French can be complicated.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Ms. Forest.

We have just under 10 minutes left in the meeting, so I want to thank today's witnesses. As I said, if they have relevant information that they didn't have time to share with us, be it paper documents, fact sheets or statistics, they shouldn't hesitate to send it to the clerk, who will forward it to the members of the committee.

I would also like to tell members that the matter I wanted to discuss—the information from Ms. Lecomte and the Library of Parliament—has been resolved. We'll have access to that information next week, as usual.

Finally, I'd like to say that I won't be here on Wednesday. This is the first time in seven years that I absolutely have to leave Parliament Hill. Mr. Godin, the committee's first vice-chair, will preside that meeting. In addition, there has been a slight change: the minister who was scheduled to appear this Wednesday has agreed to appear on Wednesday, October 4, and the witnesses who were scheduled to appear on October 4 will appear this Wednesday.

I don't see any more questions or comments, so I'll adjourn the meeting. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.