Mr. Chair, members of the committee, on behalf of the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité du Canada, RDEE Canada, I want to thank you for the invitation to come and speak with you today.
RDEE is composed of a national office that is responsible for coordinating and representing its members, who are located in all provinces and territories with the exception of Quebec. Our members are the experts on the ground. They offer services in entrepreneurship, employability and community economic development. We are talking about approximately 250 professionals with special expertise in economic development and employability in francophone communities in Canada. This is an existing structure that has the expertise and a presence throughout the country, a skilled network that almost always answers the call when the time comes to do more, as long as it is given the resources.
I have held this position only since June 8, but so far, I have had the chance to travel to seven provinces to gain a better understanding of the situation on the ground and meet with entrepreneurs or people who use our services. I am excited by what I see. From a veteran who has become a cheese maker in Alberta to the Bottle Houses of Prince Edward Island; from the village of Ste. Agathe in Manitoba, which has developed an industrial park, to Cielo Glamping in New Brunswick, which offers accommodation in open-air domes, I have met some inspiring people who show how dynamic, close-knit and full of potential our francophone communities are.
That brings me to the vision I want to present to you today: let's go on the offensive and see the economic Francophonie as an opportunity to be seized. I was a panelist at the Toronto Global Forum a few days ago, with three other organization heads, and that was the message we all brought, in English. Yes, it was in English, because it is important to also make our anglophone fellow Canadians understand that there is an ocean of mutually beneficial opportunities. Some projections say that there will be approximately 700 million francophones on Earth by mid century, or double today's figure. That represents an extraordinary market for Canada, both for trade and for recruiting workers or entrepreneurs.
We have to realize that not only do the francophone and bilingual immigrants we bring to Canada help to solve the labour shortage, but they also bring with them their own network of contacts in their country of origin. Their employers will be able to benefit from that if they want to do business abroad. For our small and medium-sized enterprises, there is also the potential to be included in multinational supply chains that are already here, as LMS Rail Equipment Services, for example, a francophone company based in Hearst, Ontario, is doing.
When it comes to the idea of mutual benefit for francophones and anglophones, I would like to refer to a study entitled "Two languages: It's good for business". That study, which was cosigned by Pierre-Marcel Desjardins and David Campbell, points to a series of benefits from economic bilingualism, including attracting businesses, immigrants, international students and tourists, and developing language industries or sectors like engineering and telecommunications.
I would like to highlight an example that is found in the study. A big corporation opened a call centre in New Brunswick. When you call the customer service department and hear that you have to press 1 for service in French or press 2 for service in English, it means that some of the employees who answer customer calls are unilingual and others are bilingual. What the study showed, in fact, is that 31% of the company's employees were francophone or bilingual, while 66% were unilingual anglophone. The company then continued to develop its information technology from its service centre and was able to create more jobs. That is an excellent example of how the importance of a business providing services to its customers in French also created jobs for the anglophone population.
In September 2022, RDEE Canada organized a summit on the francophone economy in Canada. Two hundred key actors came together to exchange findings and ideas, with the aim of promoting economic growth. Their discussions were compiled in a white paper published by RDEE Canada that we have submitted to the Committee and that we hope will contribute to your study.
The point that was most often noted in the discussions was the desire to see the creation of a government plan dedicated to the francophone economy in minority communities. In fact, the mandate letter for the former Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency dated December 16, 2021, gave us considerable hope in that regard.
In closing, I would like to reiterate my key message: let's go on the offensive when we talk about the economic Francophonie, and let's see the economic Francophonie and bilingualism as an opportunity to be seized.
Thank you. We will be happy to answer your questions.