Canadian Heritage committee  Since this is the first time the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française, or FCCF, appears before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, I would like to give you an overview of who we are. I will then present our brief. The Fédération culturelle canadienne-française has been in existence for 30 years now.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. Firstly, I wish to thank you for allowing us to appear before you. It is a great pleasure, and it is very important for us to be here. Through our presentation, you will be able to see that the SRC indeed plays a very significant role in shaping Franco-Canadian identity.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Godin, I hope that I will be able to answer your question. When it is suggested that an official languages program for culture be established, it is specifically in the sense of strengthening all of the provincial arts and culture structures. We are very much aware of the fact that they have an enormous amount of positioning work vis-à-vis their government, their Ministry of Culture, their province's arts council and their municipality.

Official Languages committee  It's absolutely wonderful.

Official Languages committee  I will give a two-part answer. For us, working with events on the scale of L'Écho d'un peuple is one of the components of our future vision. The FCCF will have to find a way of working more closely with everyone involved in large-scale cultural festivals and events. However, we need to have the means to do so.

Official Languages committee  We have a good example of this in Ontario. The FCCF depends on strong provincial structures. Ontario cultural centres existed before the Assemblée des centres culturels de l'Ontario. Unfortunately, the association no longer exists. It continues its work in the form of an issue table, simply because it did not receive the resources it needed and the volunteers burned themselves out with all the work they were doing.

Official Languages committee  That in fact is why we were happy about the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Finance. One of the recommendations said clearly that the CBC should receive more funds. We applaud this recommendation. We feel that if the CBC were to receive additional funding, it could then really properly play—

Official Languages committee  Absolutely. I think that we could go even farther and say that it is essential from now on to clearly identify what this extra money should be used for. We need to be able to properly identify the current flaws at the CBC.

Official Languages committee  The CBC is the public broadcaster. Our public television is sick at the moment because it has over the years come to play the same role as the private networks, which is to generate funds from advertising. The end result is that the State television network depends on ratings and is thus prevented from playing its role.

Official Languages committee  I don't think that there is any duplication. We are supporting what is already being done. That is why we drew the analogy with what was happening in the education field. Education is another area of provincial jurisdiction, except that, to ensure that people living in official language minority communities rights are respected, the federal government injected some money for education in the mother tongue.

Official Languages committee  Yes, absolutely. I will ask Ms. Carrier-Fraser to speak about it, because she is the expert in this field.

Official Languages committee  The achievement that comes immediately to mind is what French-Canadian producers have been able to do with the Canadian Television Fund. They obtained an agreement that guaranteed that 10% of the $100 million for Canadian production would really be dedicated to French-Canadian production.

Official Languages committee  We need very specific clauses that would require the cultural agencies, in the same way as MUSICACTION, to factor in the special challenges of the Canadian francophonie. In addition, we are talking about the cultural industry, where very often programming criteria are developed on the basis of conditions in Quebec or English Canada.

Official Languages committee  That is one of the components. There are several parts to the current action plan, which includes health, economic development and education. We suggest adding arts and culture. This would bring the total number of components to four. There needs to be an official languages program in the cultural field.

Official Languages committee  I feel that it would definitely be logical to enhance the plan by adding the arts and culture component. The aspects that we have been suggesting could be progressive. It definitely requires some thought. The celebrated official languages program, for example, requires some thought from the cultural standpoint.