Debates of April 1st, 2022

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, if the government's responses to Questions Nos. 333 to 336 could be made orders for return, these returns would be tabled immediately.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

Is it the pleasure of the House that the foregoing questions be made orders for returns and that they be tabled immediately?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Question No.333—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

With regard to the federal government’s actions to increase hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) capacity across Canada since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic or March 2020: (a) what is the total amount of all federal government funding provided to provinces or territories meant to increase the permanent hospital and ICU capacity; (b) broken down by province or territory and by month, how much did each receive to permanently increase hospital and ICU capacity; (c) what was the total hospital and ICU capacity in Canada as of March 1, 2020; (d) what is the total hospital and ICU capacity as of February 14, 2022; and (e) what is the breakdown of (c) and (d) by province or territory?

(Return tabled)

Question No.334—

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

With regard to government funding provided to BC Ferries and to East Coast Ferries, since January 1, 2019, and broken down by year: (a) what is the total amount provided to BC Ferries; (b) what is the total amount provided to BC Ferries through (i) the Safe Restart Agreement, (ii) other programs, broken down by program; (c) what is the total amount provided to East Coast Ferries for their service between Deer Island and Campobello; and (d) what is the total amount provided to East Coast Ferries, through (i) the Safe Restart Agreement, (ii) other programs, broken down by program?

(Return tabled)

Question No.335—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

With regard to asylum seekers who entered Canada at the unauthorized border point at Roxham Road since the government lifted the crossing ban on November 1, 2021: (a) how many asylum seekers have crossed the border at Roxham Road; (b) how many of the individuals in (a) were (i) fully vaccinated, (ii) not fully vaccinated; (c) were asylum seekers who were not fully vaccinated returned to the United States; and (d) were the individuals who entered through the unauthorized border at Roxham Road subjected to the same public health requirements related to COVID-19, including the requirement to present a negative PCR or molecular test result taken within 72 hours prior to entering Canada, and, if so, how many (i) presented the required negative test, (ii) did not present the required negative test?

(Return tabled)

Question No.336—

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

With regard to polling data obtained by the Privy Council Office since January 1, 2016, concerning Canada Post: what are the details of all such polling including, for each poll, (i) who conducted the poll, (ii) the start and end dates of when the poll was conducted, (iii) the number of participants, (iv) the complete results of the poll, including the questions asked and the responses received, (v) the value of the contract related to the poll, (vi) the date the polling data was shared with Canada Post, if applicable?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Official Languages Act

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 seeks to amend the Official Languages Act, which was enacted by Pierre Elliott Trudeau's Liberal government in 1969 and then amended once by Brian Mulroney's Conservatives in 1998 based on the same principles.

Before that, for almost a century, the so-called equality of languages established by the Constitution of 1867 never really existed, except in theory.

It was nothing new when Gilles Duceppe said that there are two languages and that bilingualism in the federal government means English and translated English. In fact, French has remained the translated language, and in the past, francophone members who wanted to make themselves understood had to speak English because there was no simultaneous interpretation.

Anglophones were responsible for the important economic portfolios and held the vast majority of management positions in the public service. That too has not changed very much, but until the 1970s there were almost no francophones at all working in the federal public service.

For nearly a century, there were laws that banned French in all the provinces that are now predominantly English-speaking. Ontario's Regulation 17 is just one example. Unfortunately, it was not an exception, and it caused nearly 70% of Canada's francophones to become anglicized. These are the figures from the last time this was measured.

However, objectively speaking, I have to admit that there has been some progress, such as the adoption of bilingual stamps in 1927, bilingual bank bills in 1936 and bilingual federal cheques in 1962. Of course, with such dizzying progress, many people were not happy in Quebec, where things were moving and shaking. The Quiet Revolution was under way, Jean Lesage's “maîtres chez nous” was on everyone's lips, and the modern independence movement was gaining traction. I am not suggesting things were better outside Quebec. Speaking French outside Quebec remains a daily struggle. It is an act of resistance.

Getting back to the Official Languages Act, people say it is the result of the work of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Laurendeau-Dunton commission. That is not quite true. The Laurendeau-Dunton commission was set up at the urging of André Laurendeau, who wrote an editorial calling for a commission of inquiry rather than debates about bilingual cheques and other trivial concessions to French Canadians.

André Laurendeau was a federalist. He thought the French‑Canadian nation could co-exist with English Canada. He would have wanted Quebec to be given special status as the heart of French‑Canadian society. He wanted to create an egalitarian partnership between French Canada and English Canada. To him, bilingualism was a secondary tool. He wanted a new division of powers between the central government and the francophone province.

Prime Minister Pearson made the commission of inquiry an electoral issue. He was elected. He said he wanted “to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races”, but it did not happen that way because André Laurendeau died in the meantime and a new Liberal leader arrived. He was a fiercely anti‑nationalist Quebecker. His name was Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Contrary to what is often written, the key recommendations of the Laurendeau‑Dunton commission were cast aside by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who rejected the idea of two peoples and two national cultures and kept only the idea of having two languages associated with individual rights and multiculturalism, rather than biculturalism, which reduced Quebec culture to one culture among many.

It is important to consider the historical context because the fundamental principles of the Official Languages Act have not really changed, despite the fine declarations offered up in Bill C‑13 and in the Speech from the Throne.

In the study of language planning around the world, language policies are grouped into two major categories based on whether they are founded on the principle of territoriality or the principle of personality.

Virtually all experts agree that only an approach based on territoriality and collective rights can ensure the survival and development of a minority language.

It is also interesting to note that André Laurendeau talked about the Belgian and Swiss models, which are examples of how effective the territoriality principle can be in defending minority languages.

In Flanders, in Belgium, everything is done in Dutch. The entire public service and education system, from kindergarten to university, operate in Dutch. This does not prevent people there from learning five or six second languages, often very capably.

The same thing goes for French in Wallonia, but the central government in Brussels is bilingual, and that is where most of the problems have been, but that is not the subject of today's debate.

The Quebec model is based on the principle of territoriality, with the Charter of the French Language, which aims to make French the only official and common language in Quebec, while respecting the historic anglophone community and recognizing the right of first nations to maintain and develop their original language and culture.

In fact, Quebec treats the anglophone community eminently better than the Canadian provinces treat the francophone and Acadian communities.

In response to the rhetoric I hear from the Liberals, I would say that the principle of territoriality could very well apply outside Quebec, in territories that have a large concentration of francophones or Acadians, as we heard from an expert who recently testified before the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

This does not mean that we could not maintain some form of institutional bilingualism, as already exists in regions in which there are fewer francophones and they are more spread out. This would be a nominal gesture towards righting all of the wrongs done by the Canadian government's assimilation policies.

The Canadian model, with the Official Languages Act, is based on the principle of personality. It establishes individual language rights that can be transported across the Canadian territory. It claims to guarantee equal access to federal government services for people who belong to either of the two big linguistic groups, yet it limits such access to areas where numbers warrant.

This personality-based approach ultimately ends up creating a situation in which the strongest of several official languages develops at the expense of the other, more vulnerable ones. All over the world, models like Canada's non-territorial institutional bilingualism result in minority languages being assimilated.

This is what we have seen over the past 52 years with the Official Languages Act. The assimilation rate of francophones outside Quebec has steadily increased. It was 40% in 2016, which means that 40% of francophones outside Quebec now speak English at home. As for language of use, it went from 4.3% in 1971 to 2.3%. This drop in the use of French is a result of the Official Languages Act.

The Office québécois de la langue française is predicting a drop in the demographic weight of francophones in Quebec from 78.9% in 2011 to 69% in 2036. That prediction was made based on a high rate of immigration, but there has been a lot less immigration under the Liberal government.

Federal bilingualism is also territorial to some extent, because, as I was saying earlier, it is limited to regions where the numbers warrant it or there is sufficient demand. That does not make any sense at all. When French declines, the government cuts services in French. That is a bit like having a law to support employment that provides for cuts to employment services when there is a high rate of unemployment. People would be inclined to inflate the numbers to hide the real unemployment rate so that employment services would not be cut. That is more or less what is happening here.

Francophones outside Quebec have an incentive to inflate the numbers, to seem more numerous because they do not want their French services taken away. This is good for Ottawa, which makes it look like all is well. However, the consequence is that the federal government has, until very recently, denied the decline of French despite all the obvious signs. It has found all sorts of ways, all manner of indicators to send the message that French was doing just fine and, ostensibly, to help Francophone and Acadian communities.

This adversely affects Quebec because organizations like the QCGN and Canadian Heritage use indicators such as FOLS, first official language spoken, which they manipulate somewhat to inflate the figures. As a result, the QCGN advocates for the rights of anglophones who are defined in this way, many of whom are newcomers whom Quebec should, in fact, integrate into the francophone community.

Our big problem is that, in order to maintain the demographic weight of francophones in Quebec, 90% of the language transfers must be to French. At the moment, it is a little more than 50%, and this is mainly because of an agreement that enabled the Quebec government, for a time, to select more francophone or francotropic immigrants. However, that is happening less and less because the federal government adopted a two-stage strategy whereby immigration is increasingly based on temporary study permits. As we have heard in the media, the main sources of francophone immigration are experiencing abnormally high rejection rates. At the same time, the federal government has, until very recently, always denied the decline of French.

Another principle underlying the Official Languages Act is the symmetry established between anglophones in Quebec and the francophone and Acadian minorities. This is another absurdity that has been criticized by the Bloc Québécois, in particular, but also by a number of authors and journalists in Quebec. It is very easy to demonstrate that this does not correspond to reality.

Even the Laurendeau-Dunton commission showed that in Quebec, not only did anglophones have considerable privileges, but there were fewer francophones graduating from university, and that is still the case today. Francophones also had lower incomes. They ranked 12th out of 14 linguistic groups. Although there has been some catching up, there is still a decline, and the average salary of francophones, for example, if we do not use the doctored Statistics Canada indicators, is still well below the average salary of anglophones in Quebec.

The very principle of official language minorities is highly questionable, since as long as Quebec is in Canada, it will unfortunately be subject to the will of the federal government, which is controlled by the English Canadian majority. We have seen the results. This government had no qualms about changing and imposing a Constitution in which the principles of the Official Languages Act were enshrined, against the will of Quebec. It never worked. No Quebec government has signed this. It is locked up, so to speak.

In 1993, even the UN Human Rights Committee stated that anglophone citizens of Canada could not be considered a linguistic minority in the Canadian context, where they are in the majority. Still today, the sociolinguistic reality is that English is used in Quebec as a majority language in Canada and not as a minority language in Quebec.

As in the rest of Canada, language transfers disproportionately favour English. This symmetry that is at the very foundation of the concept of official language minority communities has another adverse effect, in that it has divided Quebec from francophone and Acadian communities. As a result, the federal government has ignored French language advocacy groups, claiming that they represented a majority. A study was done on the status of French at the Standing Committee on Official Languages, the first in 52 years.

Despite all these criticisms, the Official Languages Act has maintained this fictitious symmetry between the anglophone community and the francophone and Acadian communities. This has allowed the federal government to justify providing massive funding to anglophone institutions and lobby groups, thereby contributing, as several researchers have noted, to the anglicization of Quebec.

Let us come back to Bill C‑13. After the Canadian government announced that it would modernize the Official Languages Act, the Government of Quebec stated its expectations. It asked that the Official Languages Act recognize that of the two official languages, French is the only minority language across Canada.

This seems to have resonated because the government mentioned it in the Speech from the Throne and in Bill C‑13, while maintaining that the federal government has a responsibility to protect and promote the anglophone minority in Quebec. The federal government acceded to the Government of Quebec's request to some extent, but upheld the same principles.

There are no specific measures in Bill C‑13 for defending the French language in Quebec. It is a little contradictory. We will see how things develop.

A month before the first bill to modernize the Official Languages Act was presented, the Quebec government detailed its position and presented five guiding principles.

The first was recognition of the minority status of French. As we saw, the bill offers some very ambiguous recognition and maintains the principle that the anglophone minority in Quebec needs support. We understand this to mean that all of the money from the official languages programs will continue to be devoted to defending English in Quebec.

The second request was that an asymmetrical approach be adopted. However, no such approach can be found in Bill C‑13, which maintains a symmetry between anglophones in Quebec and francophone minorities outside Quebec.

The third principle was that the Official Languages Act should recognize that Quebec is the sole architect of language policy on its territory and that the Charter of the French Language must take precedence. The bill does not incorporate this at all. In fact, it does the contrary, with measures that will have an impact on French as the common language and that will hamper the Quebec government's efforts.

There is a strong consensus in Quebec. All of the political parties unanimously adopted a motion in the National Assembly. The mayors of all of the big cities and the former premiers, including the very liberal Jean Charest, want Bill 101 to apply to federally regulated businesses.

The previous bill, Bill C-32, prevented Quebec from doing this by including a clause that made the application of Bill 101 optional. The present bill, Bill C‑13, goes so far as to raise the prospect of a separate bill that will prevent Quebec from applying Bill 101 to federally regulated businesses by allowing these businesses to choose which law will apply to them. We saw how this will play out when the question was put to the CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau. Naturally, he said that he would prefer the Official Languages Act.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois recognizes the progress made in terms of promoting and protecting the French language in francophone communities outside Quebec. That said, we feel that we could go much farther, and we will support the demands of the francophone and Acadian communities. There again, we see the value of a differentiated approach.

However, the demands of the Quebec government and the Bloc Québécois were completely ignored, both in the previous bill and in this one.

At the time of the Laurendeau‑Dunton commission, it was said that Quebeckers had two choices. They could either choose an extensive amendment to Confederation and the Constitution, or they could choose independence for Quebec. We are now in the same place 52 years later, just worse off because we are gradually losing our language and at risk of losing our political weight.

Quebeckers need to be well aware of this.

In conclusion, long live a free, French Quebec.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Official Languages]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for his work on the Standing Committee on Official Languages to protect the French language.

As a Franco-Ontarian, I sometimes have a hard time understanding the Bloc Québécois when it talks about promoting and protecting French outside of Quebec.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask my fellow francophone if he can clearly explain to me what his party is doing to support people in minority communities across the country.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois supports the demands of francophone and Acadian communities, in particular those calling for the Treasury Board to be made the true central agency for overseeing the enforcement of the Official Languages Act.

The Bloc Québécois supports all demands, as long as they do not interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have a real problem with the enforcement of the Official Languages Act in this country. We had the Commissioner of Official Languages come to committee. He said that although there was a huge increase in the number of complaints about people not complying with the act, there is not much he can do about it. He reports to Treasury Board but does not have to update the Minister of Official Languages.

Does the member believe this has been adequately fixed in the bill?

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would say no because, number one, that responsibility will still be shared between Canadian Heritage and the Treasury Board, and number two, as Charles Castonguay said, it is clear that the Official Languages Act is a real fiasco.

It has been reported that 40% of francophones at federal institutions say they are not comfortable working in French.

The Standing Committee on Official Languages heard from the vice-president of the federal public service union. He told us that he felt that there is systemic discrimination in favour of English, even in Quebec. English is always assumed to be the first language, while French is a language of translation.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île, and I hope we will be able to work together on improving Bill C-13 at the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

We agree that, when developing official languages policies, our first duty is to better protect the French language and slow its decline in—

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

I wish to inform the hon. member that we can no longer hear her. Perhaps she is on mute.

It is working now.

The hon. member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

I will continue, Mr. Speaker.

Can we count on my colleague's collaboration to strengthen the bill in committee, in particular with the creation of a central agency responsible for implementing language policies and clauses to protect the rights of francophones in minority communities and ensure that francophone immigration targets are met to help slow the population decline in francophone communities?

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Yes, of course, Mr. Speaker, as long as it does not involve any interference in Quebec's jurisdictions.

However, I do not think that is the case. We have had many interesting discussion with representatives from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, who also seem to agree that we need a differentiated approach.

In fact, the Bloc Québécois believes that the Official Languages Act should apply to Quebec as little as possible because Quebec should be in charge of its own language policy.

We know that 91% of francophones in Canada live in Quebec. If we continue to weaken French in Quebec, it will also become increasingly difficult for francophone and Acadian communities to keep French alive.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from La Pointe-de-l’Île for his speech.

This morning, in her speech, the Minister of Official Languages talked a lot about the importance protecting francophones in minority situations. I asked her a two-part question. I asked her whether she thinks French is in jeopardy in Quebec and, if so, what new measures Bill C-13 brings in to protect it. She recognized that French is in jeopardy. Her answer to me was that the government was going to protect the right of francophones to work in their language.

I would like my colleague to comment on that.

Is that something new and is it enough to protect French in Quebec?