Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Cyrilda Poirier. I am President of the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador, or FFTNL. Beside me is our director general, Gaël Corbineau. First, we want to thank you for your invitation to appear,

Official Languages committee  You said earlier that things are not going well. The description we provided was accurate. That said, we will never lose hope. If we did, we would shut up shop.

Official Languages committee  Going back to the roadmap and to answer your question, we are hopeful that it will be launched in 2018, as scheduled. Given all the consultations we have held, I feel that things augur well for the future—and I think that is Gaël's opinion too.

Official Languages committee  In the case of the federal-provincial agreements, I would not say that there is no accountability. I would say that accountability is at a minimum, and it is difficult, even for an organization like ours, to find out where that money goes. I will use the Official Languages in Ed

Official Languages committee  It includes young people too.

Official Languages committee  To my knowledge, the FCFA has not received an explanation. When we were told about the amounts—it seems to me that it was last winter—it was like a $3.5 million present, or like manna from heaven.

Official Languages committee  We got the impression that the department had found the money at the back of a drawer and realized that it had to get rid of it quickly before the elections. That’s our impression, anyway. We only had a very short time in which to decide what to do with that $3.5 million. That i

Official Languages committee  As I said in my presentation, networking is one of the things that we really need. It is something we have to be able to do. We also need to be able to identify judges, even lawyers, who are bilingual. We know that they are out there. The question is knowing how to keep track of

Official Languages committee  Do you want to talk specifically about official language programs in education?

Official Languages committee  The agreements are bilateral, and federal-provincial. We are not involved in them at all.

Official Languages committee  Let's say that the funding or receipt of the amounts has greatly improved in recent years. As Mr. Corbineau said, since the funding no longer goes through the Ministry of Education, the school and community centres that were funded through federal-provincial agreements actually r

Official Languages committee  There is no doubt about that.

Official Languages committee  Just having emerging communities indicates that there is some dynamism. There is a certain need and desire to live in French in the communities that are not necessarily structured the way the three western communities, Labrador and even St. John's are.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  I'll let Mr. Corbineau answer.