Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be joining tonight's emergency debate on the situation unfolding at Laurentian University and to say at the outset that I will be sharing my time.
We see a fairly familiar pattern when we talk in this House about the federal government's actions in areas where there is a primary role for the provincial government, and it is frustrating for me to see how this unfolds. Very often, the federal government is eager to offer opinions and direction about what other levels of government should be doing, and yet in the same areas or in proximate areas we see the federal government neglecting its own responsibility. The government members are more keen to tell provincial governments how to manage things within their own provincial affairs and how to spend their own provincial money than they are to step up with respect to their own federal responsibilities.
This is very familiar to Canadians when they see the unfolding of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister has not been shy about offering provinces all manner of advice about things in provincial jurisdiction and trying to pass off blame to other levels of government, for instance around the vaccine procurement challenges. On things that are clearly within the jurisdiction of the federal government: things like appropriate measures at the border, screening processes, resolving the absurd spectacle of their hotel quarantine policy, actually procuring vaccines in the first place for provinces to then distribute or supporting a kind of tracing infrastructure that would assist the provinces, we see these failures in areas of federal responsibility, but then a diversion of the conversation to what members of the government think the provinces should be doing.
When it comes to official languages and defending the vital linguistic duality we have in this country, of course there is a core responsibility for the federal government. Any time the government does not agree with the direction another level of government is going in this respect, the federal government and members of the Liberal caucus are very loud about it. Yet when it comes to actually partnering with the provinces, stepping up and engaging and being at the table appropriately in a federal way to defend official languages in areas of federal responsibility, there has been a lack of response.
Members of our caucus have been calling on the government to modernize the Official Languages Act, for example. The Official Languages Act is a federal statute, very clearly within federal jurisdiction, and we see the failure of the government to move on that at the same time as talking about what happens at other levels of government.
As the MP for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, I want to say that I believe very much in the importance of the French language. I am proud of the strong, vibrant francophone community that we have within my own constituency, and I have been pleased to support the work of members of that community through letters to ministers with respect to work that they are doing and projects that they are pursuing. I have benefited from French language education that is available at the Campus Saint-Jean in the greater Sherwood Park area, as we like to call it, in Edmonton.
Although the issues at Laurentian University and in Sudbury are not local to me, I can identify with and appreciate the importance of having strong programs and supports that are available, and in particular that are available to support programs for indigenous languages as well as francophone programs.
I have been looking at the numbers here because they are interesting in terms of understanding what is happening and some of the engagement of the provincial government as well as the federal government. Just one observation that I would have is that in Ontario, the provincial government allocated $74.19 million in the 2020-21 fiscal year for French-language programs in Ontario; whereas, the federal contribution was much less. The federal contribution was $14 million. Therefore, the Ontario government is substantially providing for French-language education in the province, far over and above the federal contribution.
However, it is not for me to say, and we do not have anybody from the Ontario government who is able to speak in the House to defend their point of view, but I suspect they would challenge the federal government and say that if it has suggestions or things it wants to see happen, then coming to the table and providing that support might be one way to do that.
Of course, we know that following many comments about the francophone university in Ontario, it ultimately came to pass that there was an agreement that was signed between the federal government and the Ontario government to support a stand-alone francophone university here in Ontario. The federal government engages more constructively when it recognizes its own areas of responsibility and is willing to come to the table in those areas rather than simply trying to sort of dictate and tell other levels of government what they should be doing.
Another point, which is evidenced in the numbers in terms of spending and so I think it is worth observing, is that the provincial government support accounts for 40% of Laurentian's total revenue, and that is in the last year of data available in 2019-20. This compares to the provincial average in this province of 23% of universities' revenue that comes from the province. The argument would be that Laurentian University is receiving substantial dollars in terms of provincial support, but clearly there are challenges and clearly there are needs. There is a need for discussion and resolution in getting towards addressing those issues. However, the federal government, again, while keen to point the finger sometimes, I think needs to recognize its areas of responsibility when it comes to official languages, when it comes to defending and supporting university education and when it comes to working collaboratively with the provinces on these issues.
Although is not central to the topic tonight, I think it is important for members to think about and ask the question of how the delivery of education programs is going to change with changing technology. Many people in my own circles are looking at university programs that are in other parts of the country, perhaps further away or joint programs that are happening between institutions. Their participation in those programs is enabled by distance learning and by the kind of online environments that we are all living in as a result of COVID-19.
There is one school of thought that says as soon as the pandemic is over, people are going to want to snap back to the way it was, and there will be a desire to have the same kind of on-campus presence with most programs offered in person, the way things were, not in every case, but generally speaking, prior to the pandemic. However, there is another school of thought that maybe the flexibility that is associated with the new potential learning environment with people being able to take university courses from institutions anywhere in the world from the comfort of their own homes and communities, provided they have sufficient Internet access, is another possible future world.
One of the questions we should be thinking about in terms of post-secondary institutions in Canada is how that possible adaptation will occur and how our universities could thrive by offering education programs to people all over the world who might want to participate remotely. Some may, no doubt, like to be on campus, but some would want to participate in and benefit from those programs from other parts of the country and, indeed, other parts of the world. My encouragement to the federal government and provincial governments would be to think about how to collaborate with universities in this process of innovation so that we have a thriving university sector coming out of this pandemic, kind of riding these technological trends, and offering top instruction and information to people who are interested in accessing those programs from all over the world.
It is exciting to think about the opportunities my kids may have to be able to study somewhere else and take courses in different parts of the world at the same time, so we should try to be hopeful and build toward that future, where Laurentian University and other post-secondary institutions will be a strong part of our national fibre.