Official Languages Committee on April 11th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 93 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3) and the motion adopted by the committee on September 20, 2023, the committee is commencing its study on federal funding for minority-language post-secondary education.

I won't read all the instructions since, after two or three years, everyone knows the drill. However, a brief reminder for Mr. Cormier, who is attending the meeting remotely: Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name, and keep your microphone on mute when you are not speaking.

I would like to welcome the witnesses. From the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne, we have Martin Normand, director, strategic research and international relations, who is attending the meeting in person; and from the famed Université de Moncton, we have Gabriel Cormier, vice-president, administration and human resources, who is participating in the meeting by videoconference.

Mr. Normand, you are a regular with this committee, but I believe this is the first time that Mr. Cormier has appeared before us.

Consequently, Mr. Cormier, I'm going to explain to you how we proceed. All witnesses have five minutes for opening statements. I am very strict about speaking time because that leaves more time for the members to ask questions. There will be two rounds of questions.

Mr. Normand, you have the floor for exactly five minutes.

[Martin Normand, Director, Strategic Research and International Relations, Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne]

Thank you very much.

Under the new amendments to the Official Languages Act, the federal government is responsible for taking action to ensure the presence of strong post-secondary institutions in francophone minority communities across the country.

The preamble to the Official Languages Act now states that the federal government is committed to enhancing the vitality and supporting the development of French linguistic minority communities. That commitment is restated in new subsection 41(1) of the act.

The preamble also acknowledges the importance of protecting and promoting the presence of strong institutions that serve those minorities. It is also important to note new subsection 41(3) of the act, under which the federal government commits to advancing opportunities for members of French linguistic minority communities to pursue quality learning in their own language throughout their lives, including from early childhood to post-secondary education. Subsection 41(6) even provides that education is one of the essential sectors for enhancing the vitality of French linguistic minority communities.

These commitments echo concerns expressed by various stakeholders, particularly during the États généraux sur le postsecondaire en contexte francophone minoritaire, which we organized in partnership with the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada. On the one hand, the precarious state of francophone post-secondary education is a concern for francophone minority communities, which need to be able to rely on strong and agile institutions. On the other hand, post-secondary institutions want to expand their program and service offerings for their local and international clientele. For that reason, there is an urgent need to clarify the federal government's commitments.

Our first recommendation is that the Treasury Board Secretariat expedite the production of future regulations for the implementation of part VII of the Official Languages Act in order to provide a clear indication of what the federal government's new obligations are and to clarify the role the government will play in the francophone minority post-secondary sector.

Those indications will help define the federal government's ability to act in the post-secondary sector, including its funding. Post-secondary institutions need permanent support in order to develop over the long term as strong institutions that are there for francophone communities.

The funding announced in the action plan for official languages 2023-28 in support of the post-secondary sector are welcome and will help offset the underfunding of minority language post-secondary institutions, as the federal government has stated in the action plan. However, that funding does not meet expectations. As the government itself states in the action plan, efforts are needed to further support the sector in the long term.

Given these circumstances, our second recommendation is that the federal government create permanent funding of $80 million a year to support post-secondary educational institutions in official language minority communities.

The Liberal Party of Canada promised that funding during the 2021 election campaign, but it has yet to materialize. The main political parties across Canada had also committed to supporting the post-secondary sector during that campaign. A permanent, fully funded program would send a clear signal as to the federal government's intention to perform its proper role in sustaining post-secondary institutions while respecting provincial jurisdictions. It has become clear that greater collaboration among actors in the post-secondary sector seems necessary. However, existing collaborative mechanisms among the federal government, the provinces and territories regarding education and the francophonie have no mandate to address post-secondary education issues or are simply not interested in doing so.

Consequently, our third recommendation is that the federal government support the creation of a collaborative structure that brings together representatives of Canadian Heritage, other federal departments, provincial and territorial governments responsible for post-secondary education, post-secondary institutions and other sector stakeholders.

This collaborative effort will help increase awareness among the authorities involved in francophone post-secondary-level issues and assist in better coordinating actions in support of post-secondary education by the various orders of government in a manner consistent with each party's areas of jurisdiction.

Clear indications that the Official Languages Act is being implemented, comprehensive funding and intergovernmental collaboration will help consolidate the institutions and make them more agile and attractive so that they are in a better position to recruit and retain a local and international clientele. A comprehensive range of additional measures should be considered on a co-operative and collaborative basis once all these pieces have been put in place. Thank you.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Normand. You stayed within your allotted speaking time. You even took less time.

Mr. Cormier, welcome, for the first time, to the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

I have no conflict of interest here, but Mr. Cormier comes from my alma mater. Both of my university degrees are from the Université de Moncton.

Mr. Cormier, you have five minutes.

[Gabriel Cormier, Vice-President, Administration and Human Ressources, Université de Moncton]

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you today.

I'm going to provide you with some background on the Université de Moncton. The Université de Moncton is the biggest French-language university outside Quebec. It is based in Moncton and has campuses in Edmundston and Shippagan, New Brunswick. We have slightly more than 5,300 full-time students, 35% of whom are international students.

Our institution is the only francophone university in New Brunswick; it has a general education mission and offers university training in many, highly varied fields such as drama, nursing science, engineering, French-language common law and others. It has 135 undergraduate programs, 46 master’s programs and 8 doctoral programs. It also offers French second language training, summer immersion camps for high school students and many training programs in English and French.

As it is the only francophone university in New Brunswick, its mission is to provide access to a post-secondary education in French for the Acadian population in the Canadian and international francophonie. Access to French-language post-secondary training is thus a very important factor in guaranteeing the survival of French in minority communities.

The general education mission of the Université de Moncton entails significant financial challenges. We have many programs but low registration. Annual funding received from the Department of Canadian Heritage through the official languages in education program is approximately $4.9 million. That amount hasn't changed since 2002. While it made up approximately 5.5% of the university's revenues in 2002, it now represents 2.5%. With salaries and costs rising since 2002, we are facing increasing costs. We will have to cut either our services or our scholarships.

Stable and predictable funding is very important for the university. However, it's extremely important that the funding we receive be indexed so we can maintain the same level of service as we provided in 2002. Based on annual indexing since 2002, the $4.9 million we still receive should be $7.9 million in 2024; that's a shortfall of $3 million.

We also receive annual grants from the Consortium national de formation en santé. That funding, which has been stable since 2009, will be increased starting next year.

In 2022, we also received a significant grant of $18.5 million over 3 years for modernization purposes. That major grant enabled the university to make some investments that we had previously been unable to make for lack of funding. We also receive special grant funding for additional projects such as updating our community rooms, developing specialized programs and modernizing our classrooms.

Our priority is to offer French-language training to the entire public. Most of our graduates are able to work in both of Canada's official languages. We have the highest graduate retention rate, for both Canadian and international students, among all New Brunswick universities. Access to French-language post-secondary training vastly increases students' opportunities to work in French and the chances that our language will survive. We also cooperate with other institutions, such as the Université Sainte-Anne, with which we share faculty development training courses.

Federal investments help us maintain competitive tuition fees and offer high-quality training. However that funding should be indexed. Special programs are absolutely welcome, but stable basic funding would enable us to improve long-term financial planning.

Our infrastructure is another major challenge. Deferred maintenance at the Université de Moncton represents $136.5 million over the next 10 years; that's nearly equal to our annual budget. Most of the university's buildings were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s and are now in need of major renovations. We have to improve our buildings' energy efficiency and climate resilience, but that requires planning and significant investment.

To sum up, it is very important for us to have stable funding, which must be indexed because it hasn't been since 2002. I would also mention that infrastructure needs are becoming increasingly acute for the Université de Moncton.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier.

We will begin the first round of questions. Each of the political parties will have six minutes.

Colleagues, please use the timer on your cell phones because I will be very strict on time. I want us to be able to have a second round of questions.

We will begin with the first vice-chair of the committee, Joël Godin, who represents the Conservative Party.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being with us.

Mr. Cormier and Mr. Normand, you are here at 8:15 this Thursday morning. Two early risers, and that's all to your credit.

I'm going to start with Mr. Normand.

I believe you were here not long ago, Mr. Normand, when you mentioned regulations. Yesterday the Minister of Official Languages announced that the future regulations implementing part VII of the Official Languages Act would be made over the next 18 months.

As the President of the Treasury Board told the committee, you have to allow between two and a half to three years, which once again puts us in that same production window. If you add 18 months to the year already wasted since the act received royal assent, you come up with a timeline of two and a half years.

Are you hoping those regulations mean gains for your institutions? If so, what kind of gains are you hoping for?

[Martin Normand]

Thank you for that question.

We expect a great deal from the regulations to implement part VII of the Official Languages Act, particularly because we expected certain amendments to the bill that ultimately didn't make it into the final version of the act. We hope the regulations will clarify some of the federal government's new obligations.

We think that the interaction between federal and provincial jurisdictions isn't clear enough in the Official Languages Act. Confusion arises when the federal government announces that it wants to take action in areas of provincial jurisdiction, whereas, further on, the act provides that the provinces take precedence in the way language regimes must be implemented in Canada. We believe there are conflicting interpretations here. We know that post-secondary education is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction. However, the act specifically states that post-secondary education is a key sector where the federal government must act.

The regulations must clarify how the federal government can intervene in areas of provincial jurisdiction without that causing new conflicts. We want the federal share of responsibility to be clearly delineated.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Has your association been consulted as part of the Treasury Board's regulation drafting process?

[Martin Normand]

Not yet. As far as I know, there has been no consultation on those regulations to date. We hope to be invited when it happens. Don't worry, we'll be ready.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much.

What you're saying indirectly is that Bill C-13, which has officially become law, doesn't necessarily meet the needs of your institutions. You don't feel better equipped to protect the French language. Let's be honest: French is the more vulnerable language.

Do you agree with that statement?

[Martin Normand]

I would qualify it slightly. There are significant keys for us here. This is the first time the post-secondary sector has been mentioned in the Official Languages Act, but there are flaws in the regulations that must be corrected to ensure that our expectations of the act are actually met in the post-secondary sector.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

In your opening remarks, you talked about creating a structure including the provincial government and other stakeholders.

I think that may not be necessary. We have other tools we can use to move forward in a more pragmatic way.

Do you sincerely believe that an additional structure won't complicate and delay efforts to put tools in place to help make you more effective in promoting French and halting its decline?

[Martin Normand]

On the contrary, we think a structure is absolutely necessary at this stage, precisely to prevent conflicting interpretations and priorities regarding the post-secondary sector. If there were more federal-provincial collaboration, we wouldn't find ourselves, for example, with budgets announced by the federal government to support post-secondary education that contradict either the provinces' internal processes or priorities established within the provinces for their own post-secondary sector. We need a space where we can have that collaboration to prevent conflicting jurisdictions and priorities, which then would help avoid competing budgets being inappropriately spent by either party.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Normand, I'd like to hear your opinion based on the fact that your institutions are situated at one end of the education continuum. We know there are two clienteles: students who are in Canada's present system and immigrant students.

Do you think that enough Canadians are interested in pursuing their education in French, from one end of the continuum to the other, that you can establish a clientele large enough to make you effective and, ultimately, profitable because that generates funding? Can anything else be done to stimulate the Canadian incubator system?

[Martin Normand]

It's kind of the chicken-and-the-egg paradox in this case. We think that a significant pool of students attends our schools, from kindergarten to grade 12, but what happens at the post-secondary level? The pool is there. The challenge is to retain students and to make institutions attractive enough for potential students to decide that studying at the post-secondary level in French is a plan or an effective option.

If we want to take action in this area and make post-secondary education as attractive as possible for francophones in the francophone systems, we have to make sure those systems can offer the programs students are looking for. There are fewer science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs in our institutional system because it's very costly to offer them. We have to be able to support our institutions in offering the programs that the student clientele request.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Normand.

I've unfortunately run out of time. I apologize to Mr. Cormier. I would have liked to ask him similar questions about immigration, but I'm going to yield to my colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Godin. Mr. Cormier will have his turn.

Mr. Drouin, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks as well to the witnesses who are with us.

Mr. Normand, you rarely appear before this committee. You're like the Commissioner, if I may say so.

I'm especially interested in francophone research. I've spoken at length with Rémi Quirion, the chief scientist of Quebec. It's often said that francophones occupy an important position in research, but research published in French is in decline. Some francophones even publish in English.

Do your members have access to federal government research programs and funding? Could you provide us with some details on that? If you don't have the information with you, perhaps you could forward it to me later.

[Martin Normand]

Thank you for your question.

French-language research—creation, publication, dissemination and popularization—is a hot topic in the public discourse and in the academic community in Canada. French is on the decline around the world. Last fall, I attended the Semaine mondiale de la Francophonie scientifique in Quebec City, and we discussed it for a week. So it's a shared challenge in the francophone space.

Our members in particular face additional challenges. The research granting councils in Canada often have practices and programs that are better suited to large research institutions that have extensive research infrastructure and well-established research traditions. Consequently, it's hard for researchers at our small institutions to be competitive in the major competitions. We've also observed linguistic and institutional prejudices in the peer review of grant applications within granting councils. Efforts are being made to correct those prejudices, but much remains to be done on that score.

I encourage you to read the report that the Standing Committee on Science and Research prepared last year on French-language scientific research and publication in Canada. It contains a host of recommendations that are consistent with what the various actors are demanding. However, the government's response to that report was very disappointing. It more or less denied the issues that the actors sought to bring to light. Many aspects of that report could be developed to address the concerns raised by those actors as a whole.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

It may be assumed that, when students choose a post-secondary institution, those who want to enrol in a doctoral program or conduct research probably lean toward a well-known institution, but is there room for smaller institutions? Could we have more collaboration to promote the research ecosystem? I'm thinking of institutions in the north, for example, which often experience an exodus of students to southern institutions that may be more financially sound or better known.

Do you think this discussion occurs at smaller institutions?

[Martin Normand]

It does. We know there are very few postgraduate study programs in our institutional system, and that's a challenge. The University of Ottawa obviously has many. The Université de Moncton has a fairly significant number as well, but, otherwise, postgraduate study programs are very rare, and that undermines our researchers' competitiveness when they file grant applications.

Our association's strategy committee met yesterday. For many months now, it has been discussing interinstitutional collaborative projects, and the master's and doctoral programs offered are one of the priorities our members have raised to ensure we can train and retain leading researchers across the country.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You no doubt followed the debate on the whole issue of funding for the Université de l'Ontario français a few years ago. I had stated that I was opposed to the idea of the federal government being the sole funder of the Université de l'Ontario français unless the province committed to making a contribution. The reason for that is simple: In both education and health, the federal government makes transfers and the provinces shirk their responsibilities. They simply take the funding that's transferred to them and invest it in areas other than health and education, where it should normally go. So we're back to square one, and our institutions ultimately pay the price.

I won't cite the act that you mentioned, but how can we make sure the federal government has provincial partners so that some form of stable funding can be made available to our francophone institutions?

[Martin Normand]

Our third recommendation is that an interprovincial collaborative structure be established that I think would serve the purpose of forging ties between the federal government and the provincial ministries of post-secondary education. As you know, certain funding structures, such as the official languages in education program, or OLEP, flow through the ministries of education, not the provincial ministries of post-secondary education. As a result, if we established a structure with the provincial ministries of post-secondary education, we could build a tradition of co-operation and collaboration.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I want to thank you enormously for your contribution to the research, Mr. Normand; I know that you did your doctorate in French.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

Thank you, Mr. Normand.

The next round of questions is for the Bloc Québécois and the second vice-chair of the committee, Mr. Beaulieu.

The floor is yours for six minutes.