Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify as part of this study.
My remarks today will focus on the impact of the proposed regulations on the francophone community outside Quebec. More specifically, I will focus on part 2 of the draft regulations—that is, on regions with a strong francophone presence and on the obligations for businesses towards their consumers in those regions.
On the one hand, the draft regulations rely on data from the 2021 census to identify regions with a strong francophone presence. I have reservations about basing a legal framework on the results of a single census. Official language minority communities are dynamic, and they are often those most underestimated by censuses, particularly those with newcomers and bilingual or multilingual households. The selected criteria prioritize population density at the expense of community vitality, which will have consequences for the very communities this legislation is meant to protect.
Furthermore, it is unfortunate that the draft regulations did not draw on the mechanism found in the official languages regulations relating to part IV of the Official Languages Act to determine where there is significant demand. It stands to reason: if there is significant demand for French-language services in a region, it is most likely because there is a strong francophone presence. However, at present, for essentially the same objective, the draft regulations under consideration are based on a new definition of the regions where federally regulated private businesses will have language obligations. This creates a complex system in which citizens may be unaware that they are in a region designated under the draft regulations, especially when it involves a list of census tracts, as is the case with our friends in Manitoba. For the average person, this is a rather obscure geographical determination. To potentially address this situation, section 15 of the draft regulations stipulate the following:
A federally regulated private business that carries on business in a region with a strong francophone presence must clearly indicate to consumers in that region […] that they may communicate with and obtain services from the business in French.
In my opinion, this language is far too weak. We should require these businesses to make an active offer of service.
In fact, I must admit I was a little surprised not to find any mention of “active offer” anywhere in the draft regulations, even though it is a well-established principle. Numerous research studies and reports have been written on this principle. I will not cite them all, but we can still identify a few best active offer practices. I'll list them quickly.
First, services—whether in person, by phone, in writing, online or on social media—must always be offered in both languages, starting from the very first contact and continuing thereafter.
Second, we must ensure that services are of equal quality in either language. The choice of language must not affect the quality of the service received, nor should it result in any additional delay in obtaining the service.
Third, people must feel comfortable specifying their preferred language when the service is offered. This means, among other things, that service should be culturally appropriate.
In short, the purpose of the active offer of services is to ensure that people can actually use the official language of their choice. Numerous studies have shown that in minority contexts, if institutions have the freedom to choose without being required to actively offer services in the minority language in addition to the majority language, the resulting social dynamic favours the majority language. This is all the more true in the present case, where we are seeking to change the status quo. We must ensure that users feel no hesitation or embarrassment about requesting services in the official language of their choice.
Finally, in Quebec, the proposed regulations call for applying the law to businesses with at least 25 employees; however, outside Quebec, in regions with a strong francophone presence, it calls for applying it only to businesses with at least 100 employees within those regions, or 500 employees nationwide. This asymmetry is significant. Small federally regulated businesses—with which francophones outside Quebec most frequently interact—may well fall below this threshold. A consumer in northern Ontario or on the Acadian Peninsula might find that the businesses serving them on a daily basis are entirely exempt from these requirements. I therefore invite the committee to examine how these thresholds were set, and whether they are based on evidence or are arbitrary.
Thank you and I look forward to continuing the discussion.