Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, my name is Anoop Kapoor and I am the assistant deputy minister for Policy and Strategic Direction at PrairiesCan. Ginette LeBel, senior business officer in the PrairiesCan Saskatoon office, is with me virtually today.
I will speak about what PrairiesCan does to support the economic development of official language minority communities.
In the prairie provinces, there are about 112,000 individuals with French as their first official language. In 2021, this was about 1.7 % of the overall population on the prairies. There are 72 official language minority communities in the prairie provinces. Over the past five years, PrairiesCan has invested $34.9 million to assist these communities to thrive and prosper economically and culturally.
Every year, PrairiesCan invests $2.24 million in dedicated support towards enhancing the vitality of our official language minority communities. Of this amount, $640,000 comes from the national economic development initiative, or EDI.
Currently, PrairiesCan grants this dedicated funding to francophone economic development organizations, or FEDOs, in each of the three prairie provinces. The FEDOs are unique not-for-profit organizations in the prairies providing dedicated support to francophone organizations and businesses.
EDI provides francophone community organizations with access to funding for their local economic development initiatives.
In 2020, a three-year pilot project was launched to enable the FEDOs to deliver EDI on behalf of PrairiesCan, enabling them to work directly with francophone communities on economic development. With the implementation of the EDI, 35 projects for a total of $1,273,500 were funded across the three provinces. This funding assisted 195 businesses, supported 49 not-for-profit organizations and created or maintained 161 jobs. This delivery model addressed regional needs by bringing the funding decision closer to the communities. As such, the EDI continues to be delivered by the FEDOs for another three years.
Finally, since 2018, PrairiesCan has provided an additional $23.5 million to 39 projects, including eight businesses that self-identify as francophone, applying through our programs. This funding supported the creation of 200 jobs, served over 400 businesses and provided training to 1,100 people.
PrairiesCan officers have ongoing relationships not only with the FEDOs, but also with other Francophone stakeholders.
We also enhance the vitality and development of official language minority communities through our use of the official languages lens, another example of positive measures taken by PrairiesCan. The official languages lens is applied to the evaluation of all departmental funding program applications so that francophone communities also benefit from them.
Since 2018, and to date, in all programming, 186 projects totalling $115 million have been identified as extending their activities to benefit francophone communities, by using the official languages lens.
We also fund francophone tourism organizations, given that tourism is an economic driver for francophone businesses in the Prairies.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I will be pleased to answer your questions.