:
Good morning, Mr. Chong, and members of the committee.
It's a pleasure to be here. It's been a while since we've come and we're glad to assist you in your study around the economic situation of Canada's linguistic minority communities.
For those of you new to the committee, the QCGN is a not-for-profit representative organization that acts as a centre of evidence-based expertise and collective action on the strategic issues affecting the development and vitality of Canada's English linguistic minority communities. We collectively refer to these as the English-speaking community of Quebec.
The QCGN's 41 members are not-for-profit community groups, most of which provide direct services to members of our community across the province. Some members work regionally providing broad-based services while others work in specific sectors: arts and culture, health, etc.
English-speaking Quebec is Canada's largest official language minority community with over 1,000,000 citizens whose first official language spoken is English. Although 84% of our community lives within the Montreal census metropolitan area, more than 210,000 community members live in other Quebec regions.
Bilingualism rates are high in our community compared to other English-speaking Canadian cohorts with an overall rate of 66% reporting knowledge of French and English during the 2011 census. That percentage increases to more than 80% among our English-speaking youth, reflecting the investment our community has made to ensure our children can live and work in French in Quebec.
These numbers also demonstrate that there are more than 360,000 members of our community without a knowledge of French and 20,000 English mother tongue youth between the ages of 18 and 24 without the ability to work in French in Quebec. That's a pretty big number even at 20,000.
The economic and employability impacts of these figures are profound. We urge the committee to invite community-based employability and entrepreneurship sector organizations like Youth Employment Services to provide detailed information on the challenges faced by young English-speaking Quebeckers.
YES will also be able to provide evidence regarding the challenges faced by English-speaking youth from outside the province and outside the country who come to Quebec for their education and fervently wish to stay in Quebec to live and raise families, but because of their employment situation they have to go somewhere else.
The Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation, CEDEC, is also a community leader with experience to assist you in this study.
Economic prosperity is one of the six priorities identified by the English-speaking community of Quebec in the 2012 to 2017 community development plan, which we previously presented to committee. Economic development and employability are woven throughout the plan and indeed are central to the vitality of any community.
The Government of Canada has committed significant resources to support our community's economic development, most recently in the road map for 2013-2018. Employment and Social Development Canada's enabling fund, the OLMC literacy and essential skills and social partnership initiatives, and the Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions at $10.2 million are examples of important investments that are providing direct benefit to members of our community.
The investments being made by the Government of Canada in our community's economic development are being leveraged to enhance our community's vitality. We feel there is some room to make these resources more effective, however, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
We would like to highlight the successes of regionally based community groups like the Council for Anglophone Magdalen Islanders, CAMI, and the Coasters Association living on the lower north shore. These groups have established effective coordination through a cooperative network of partners for the economic development of their communities. The committee is encouraged to invite them to testify for this study and they have best practices to share and exciting stories.
The committee might consider inviting Quebec Essential Learning Alliance that amongst other things is working with public and private partners to qualify aboriginal youth in Quebec's north as commercial pilots. This is a very exciting initiative that demonstrates the direct contribution community groups can make to economic development and employability undertakings.
In January, the QCGN participated in an excellent dialogue session between ESDC and sector leaders from our community. Many topics of interest to the committee’s current study were covered, and we would like to highlight a few aspects.
First, the QCGN remains very interested in the evolution of the enabling fund, particularly following the recommendations of the fund’s summative evaluative findings regarding program relevance and performance, and the operations of the national committees that govern the resources. Best practices from the ground demonstrate that economic development and employability efforts are most effective when partnered and coordinated with a community’s overall efforts. Whereas these links do exist, they are by no means universal. Furthermore, there is room for improvement in the link between the enabling fund and its implementing partner and our community priorities and enabling strategies; we recognize that. For example, public consultation for the Canadian plan for economic development, CPED, for OLMCs—it's alphabet soup, I'm sorry—is now under way. This is a major policy initiative in a critical area of our community’s vitality, which could have far-reaching effects on a number of sectors. We must ensure that the link between the CPED and our community development plan is considered during the consultation’s planning and implementation.
Second, social financing was championed by the QCGN to this committee during its evaluative study of the previous road map. We were very pleased by the current road map’s social partnership initiative, and look forward to partnering with ESDC for the program’s implementation in our community. Social financing is a complex yet promising idea that could redefine the relationship between the public partner and the community sector. The committee might consider conducting a study on social financing within OLMCs once we have collectively developed expertise with this idea.
Third, labour market development is topical. We note our strong support for the Canada job grant program being delivered through Service Canada, since this is the only way to guarantee these services will be accessible in English to members of our community in Quebec.
We conclude our remarks by noting that successful economies are linked. The economic situation of our communities cannot be studied without understanding the economies of Quebec and Canada. When Quebec prospers, we prosper, and the corollary is true. Our community is an integral part of the economies of Canada and Quebec, and we are always seeking research that helps us demonstrate our contribution.
Thank you. We look forward to your questions.
I welcome Ms. Martin-Laforge, whom I have known for a number of years, and Mr. Thompson.
[English]
When the committee decided to do this study I was very pleased about it. The government could say that we did not say no. I think it goes hand in hand. We have minority communities across the country. We talk about culture and all kinds of stuff, and how do you go to school and keep your language, but at the end of the day you want a job. I think this study is important and I want to thank you for appearing in front of this committee so that we could discuss different things.
Where is it at now, for example, in your community? We could say about Montreal that there is a big difference if you look at the anglophones in Montreal compared to those of Rivière-au-Renard, Fox River. I remember when I went to Quebec to Rivière-au-Renard and they were talking about Fox River, and you could see the presence there. But I think you could compare a place like that with a francophone minority in Alberta, for example, or a francophone minority in B.C. or in Nova Scotia.
What do you see that the government could do in those regions to help youth stay in the region and have a job, or to do economic development in the region so the youth can be at ease and have a job and stay at home? Is your group close to them there? Do you find that the government is doing what needs to be done for them?
:
First I'd like to say that Stephen Thompson, the director of policy, will be helping with some statistics along the way and in our answers to you.
Unemployment among youth and English-speaking Quebeckers generally is high. It's high not only in the regions; it's high in Montreal as well. We often say that Montreal is doing okay, but for youth, when we talk about them, there is a big issue around unemployment and underemployment. We can talk about statistics in a moment.
In the regions in Quebec, they are very interested in retention issues. You know, we can't keep our kids tied to a table in the basement. In Quebec, as in other OLMCs, parents expect their kids to have to go to school elsewhere, to have to go and study elsewhere, and to maybe find jobs elsewhere. The need for people in the region is to come back to jobs. Jobs have to be in the regions. They have to be good jobs, and they have to be jobs that take them somewhere.
I think you will have examples of work being done if you meet with the Coasters. There's a small population of Coasters close to Labrador doing some work in creating jobs. They do things around the berries, and they do innovative things around creating jobs. CAMI is the same thing.
The regions have a different kind of perspective around keeping their youth and their folks there. They know that they have to work with the majority community to create jobs for the region, not just for the anglophones but for the region. They are working together. We have some very good practices in the regions demonstrating how a municipality will be working with the majority community and with the minority community to create jobs. People have to speak French and people have to..... People work it out. In la Beauce they have to speak English as well.
We have a unique situation in Quebec around what we do in our regions around employment, employability, and entrepreneurship. That's one of the big areas that I believe the regions are working on—how to create the jobs through entrepreneurship.
:
I think Stephen has stats. Generally, as well, our school system and our career guidance system need to ensure that English-speaking youth feel they have a future in Quebec and that they will be a part of Quebec. Of course one part is the job. But also, you have to feel that you are welcome, that you can stay and make a living here and you are recognized as being valuable to the community. It starts early. It starts early in a small community like Thetford Mines where the English-speaking community is a valued member of the majority community, where there is good interaction with the majority and the minority communities, where the school is strong. They have good services, and they have a basketball team where the children can really thrive in their setting.
Of course, if you live in Thetford Mines there's no university there. You have to go closer and programs have to be available. They have to believe that by coming back—I keep using Thetford Mines as we have a small group there called Megantic corporation—and they worry about keeping their kids. Then they say that they won't keep them but we'll have them be so attached to the community and the environment that they will go away but want to come back. Partnerships with the municipalities to have jobs there are important.
Mr. Gourde, it's a collective effort on behalf of communities to be sure that their kids, not only the anglophones but the young francophones, come back to regions.
[Translation]
The regions are emptying. It is important to find ways to ensure that both the anglophones and francophones in those regions do not leave.
[English]
Stephen, did you have something that you wanted to share in terms of statistics?
:
I think, in terms of the question, there's just not enough time to answer that question; it's very complicated.
Let's look at where anglophones work. Anglophones in Quebec are overweighted in management occupations; business, finance, and administration; natural and applied sciences and related occupations; arts and culture; and sales and service. Those are urban jobs, jobs principally in Montreal. That's where the economic opportunities are.
Where are anglophones under-represented in the workforce? Trade, transport, and equipment operators; natural resources, agriculture, and related production occupations; and occupations in manufacturing and utilities. So in the sort of manufacturing, medium-sized businesses that you're likely to find in the regions, anglophones aren't trained for those jobs. Anglophones are trained for the jobs that are in the cities. Why is that? Part of it is tradition. Also, because of the way funding works in all provinces—in all jurisdictions I know of—the English school system, the minority school system, doesn't get the resources that the majority school system gets to get that type of trades training. It's not equitable.
The third thing—and there's evidence on this—is that there is systemic discrimination against anglophones in the trade union movement in Quebec; we know that. So the places where there are likely to be unions, there are going to be fewer anglophones. In urban jobs there are going to be more anglophones. How do you keep anglophones in the regions? Train them for the jobs and give them the economic opportunities that are there. I don't really see it as a federal challenge; I really see this as a provincial challenge.
Ms. Martin-Laforge, you were right to talk about the Thetford area, which is 45 minutes away from my riding. I know a lot of people from my area who have English-speaking families and who were fortunate enough to go to elementary and secondary schools in the Thetford area. That was a real benefit for them.
Today, people from those communities are English teachers in our francophone schools. Some are also farm machinery representatives serving large areas. Since they were relatively good or very good in English, they could easily do their post-secondary training in other provinces, or even in some U.S. states, and then pass on their training to the francophones in Quebec.
There is no denying it: the international market is predominantly English-speaking. Our region needs young people with a strong command of the English language so that they can impart the knowledge they have acquired in other parts of the world.
Mr. Thompson, I appreciate the fact that you brought this up. Our committee takes careful note of how the training must be structured to keep our young people in their regions. These young people are our wealth and our future.
I am very sensitive to the fact that our young people are learning both official languages. I am the father of five children who are all pursuing post-secondary studies right now. It is very interesting to see the life choices our kids make. It is very important to keep them in our regions. They must have access to the best possible tools that will offer them a better quality of life and improve the community life in our regions.
Thank you for your testimony.
I will now give Ms. St-Denis the chance to speak.
:
That's correct. Anglophone Quebeckers, English-speaking Quebeckers, have a lower median income, to use my words carefully here. There's always controversy around income because of median and mean incomes, but median income, which is the accepted term, is lower among anglophones. Rates of poverty are higher in the anglophone community. It's absolutely true. Anglophones are 5% more likely to be unemployed than francophones.
Having said that, there is perhaps room for hope. Anglophones are 2% more likely to be self-employed. This is probably true in other minority communities generally. Minority communities tend to be very entrepreneurial. Because they don't have equal access to the majority economy, they do things on their own in their own communities and with other ties that they have, to generate their own income. So there is definitely room there to support entrepreneurship.
We have two outstanding organizations that we mention in our brief—YES, the Youth Employment Services in Montreal, and CEDEC, the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation—which we recommend the committee invite to testify.
If you'd like further information, Madam St-Denis, we have research that we can send to the analyst about poverty in the English-speaking community.
:
We work on our relationship with our colleagues in Quebec, and I believe that what we have brought to the table over the years is a better understanding of how the English-speaking community can contribute to the economic prosperity of all Quebeckers. There's more work to be done. We need to find ways of working together. For example, there is a service agreement between Quebec and with the provinces and Canada. We need to ensure that a service agreement in Quebec between Canada and the ministries in Quebec is more inclusive of some of the issues that we want to make available.
I'll give you an example here.
We would like to make translation available to our groups for their website translation and also for some of the very important studies they put forward. If our groups are doing a study and they can't afford to translate it, that becomes not very available for the majority community. There are ways that the Province of Quebec could help us. I think we have to be innovative, as we try to be innovative with the federal departments, about how to move money from the federal government to the province. We have to be innovative with our provincial counterparts to accept the money without it being a red flag. I think there's lots of work to be done, but if the federal government recognizes that the English-speaking community needs assistance in leveraging, already that's good. We will use that to go to the province in our communities.
There are great examples. If Gaspé comes to visit, or one of the other regions comes to visit, this stuff is being done on the ground. It isn't always being done with federal-provincial agreements. It's done locally where the province sees that the community is important to them.
:
The Canada job grant is an excellent example of where you encourage young Canadians, young English-speaking Canadians in Quebec, who can get the services in English that they need to get the technical training. We've explained the sorts of occupations that anglophones work in. They tend not to be represented in the trades. If you give them the opportunities, they can access employment in their regions, in the province, and they'll stay.
Make no mistake about it, migration is an economic activity. There are other factors that may weigh on a person's decision, but people move looking for other opportunities. There's great research on this that we can certainly share with the analysts. The interesting thing about migration is that when you leave, you tend to do better than not only the people you leave behind but your peers on where you're going. So economic migrants in Canada....
As well, there's an economic penalty for moving back to where you came from, and it doesn't matter where you're from. In general, if you move from Ontario to Alberta, and then back to Ontario, you're statistically more likely to do worse than the people who stuck around. In other words, there's a financial incentive to leave, and there's a financial disincentive to come back. Keeping people there in the first place in terms of the economy is very important—the economy and jobs.
:
You asked what the federal government could do. There are the specific programs, but there's also the notion in Quebec—we talked about it in the opening remarks—of an economic development plan for official language minority communities. In 2008 the QCGN, with major stakeholders, prepared a report on economic development in Quebec. I could make this available for the committee. At that time, we talked about a coordinated approach in Quebec amongst us for economic development in Quebec.
At the time, we called it the “Quebec Economic Development Council”. It was a study. We'll make it available. I think one of the things that's important about what's being tried right now is that there is, with the RDÉE and the CEDEC, an attempt to have a plan for OLMCs. In Quebec, we desperately need an economic development plan for OLMCs that brings the stakeholders together, so that we can tell you better what the federal government could consider as programs and what the province could consider as programs as well. We need to work together.
And you know what? One of our groups, the Voice of English-speaking Québec, in Quebec City, is coming tomorrow to visit the Senate to talk about notions of their newcomer program and the connection to immigrants and migrants. In Quebec City, there are tonnes of people coming in for new jobs in that kind of industry. If they are coming in as English-speaking people from the rest of Canada or from outside of Canada, they want to find a community in Quebec City that can help them and their families establish themselves.
So it's about the jobs, but it's about the support that a community can give for economic development in their region as well. It's a kind of offshoot of what's important and how we can help communities thrive and build jobs by these newcomer programs. It's all connected.
:
Thank you very much for appearing in front of our committee. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
I am looking at the economic situation of Canadian minority language communities. When you look at the economic situation, are you aware of any studies we've done regarding the labour market? This is not only in the English-speaking communities but also in the French-speaking minority communities.
This is the first step. You need to find out the causes of the problems in those communities. I'm seeing millions of programs, millions of beautiful dollars going left, right, and centre, but what is the situation there? For example, how does the economic situation for minority language communities compare with that for the majority communities?
So what is the situation there, what is the economic situation, and what can we do to attract businesses, for example, to make these communities be at eventually the same level as the majority communities? But that is if they are under the majority; I don't know that. You cannot make recipes for things when you don't know the causes of the problems.
:
It's a superb question, and it's one we ask. The people most likely to have the answer right now would be either YES or CEDEC, which we've mentioned.
Having said that, we just finished a very good consultation with Employment and Social Development Canada, or ESDC, in January. There is a sense in ESDC right now that they are asking exactly the same questions that you just outlined. Why are we doing all of this? Where do we need to work? What's working, what isn't, and how do we do things better?
But they're asking that on a global scale. Here's the difficulty from a policy person's point of view: a lot of the data is not available by language. They'll be able to drill down very well regionally or geographically, but the data isn't broken out by language. We keep asking partners like ESDC...and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is another fount of knowledge and research.
There are all these little places, and big places, in government where all this information is available, but we need it by language. Then we can start answering, because we have the same questions you do.
:
There is certainly higher employment, less underemployment, less poverty, and all of that, but the attribution of the programs to the success of this is very difficult.
For us to start seeing successes, we believe that if we have a coordinated approach and we have collective action on something, and we decided amongst the English-speaking community of Quebec to do some work, for example on youth, something specific on youth, something specific on entrepreneurship, then we could develop our measures of success.
As government and as citizens, we would like to be able to say we did this, and it gave that. It's pretty difficult. Certainly within the community we don't have the resources to make the direct correlation between we did this, and that happened. But we believe, amongst our 41 groups anyway, that we are starting to see the stories come up that they have done such and such, and the youth are staying.
I'll give you an example. In CASA in the Gaspé region they are very worried about the number of youth who are not identifying themselves with the Gaspesian region. They believe that if you don't identify with the Gaspesian region, you're going to go and find jobs somewhere. You won't even look. You won't prepare for an employment opportunity. You won't make a home and a career or raise a family in that region, so they are working on identity issues. They are working to help the young Gaspesians feel happier, more identified with, and more contributing to their region.
In a way that has nothing to do with economic development, but it does, because they are starting to see more young Gaspesians interested in staying in Quebec, wanting to have jobs in Gaspé, and wanting to start opportunities in Quebec.
A few years ago what they did was they went to see Youth Employment Services, and they asked them to prepare a program. That program is now working in the Gaspé.
:
Generally, in departments, we would like departments to have access perhaps to specific funding for official language minority communities. When we are in competition in the broader scheme for regular programs, we have to have bureaucrats understand that there is an English-speaking community, and there are myths around the English-speaking community. So in a department, when there is not a deep understanding, I would say of the francophone community as well, but certainly we're talking about our community right now, there are myths about our community and when we put a project in,
[Translation]
it does not get through
[English]
because it's not targeted.
I think that the federal government has to consider more targeted funding to official language minority communities, which means, for example, in ESDC, New Horizons is not targeted funded for official language minorities. We get funding but there is no target. But there is an official languages secretariat in ESDC, or some champion.
I think the more the departments understand us, number one, either they get approved specific funding, targeted funding, for official language minority communities, or two, there is a sensitivity within the departments that something special has to be done around the communities.
They're national programs, so it's hard to get in and get a program accepted.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
I'd like to pursue some of the questions that my colleague, Madam Bateman, had asked earlier about youth and some of the employment issues relating to that. Also tied in with that is the issue about what you called urban jobs versus non-urban jobs.
Is there the infrastructure, like high-speed Internet into some of these remote communities, that would allow people to create software companies, gaming companies, all those sorts of things, and create the work in the places where they want to stay?
:
I don't think there are too many people who come to Ottawa asking for less money. There is a notion that government is the banker. Social financing is an idea that government is a facilitating partner with civil society in achieving a social return on investments. Social financing is the specialty of ESDC. This is certainly a well-developed concept in Great Britain, Australia, and to a certain degree the United States. It's developing in Canada, but it's still in its infancy here. Its regulatory legislative frameworks aren't even close to being in place to implement this.
Having said that, there's $4.1 million available in the road map over five years for the official language minority communities to work with ESDC on social financing initiatives to see what can be done. It's a big term that means a lot of things. Generally, when we think about investments, we're looking for a monetary return. In social financing, you would fund a project but you're looking for a social return on your investment.
A social financing idea might be if the community group in Thetford Mines, for example, MCDC, expanded their office. If they bought their building, owned their building, and if they expanded their office and rented it out to other community groups, it would become an asset for them. It would turn a profit that they would be able to then turn back into the community. It would be a for-profit operation within a non-profit. That's a social financing idea.
Paying for returns...the question that was asked had to do with how success is measured. Let's say you want to see a decrease of 1% in youth unemployment in a specific region and if you can achieve that, the public partner will give you x amount of dollars. The community sector would go out and work on that. If they reduce it by a certain amount, they will be paid. That's another social financing idea.
We're very excited about the concept. It has worked very well in other jurisdictions. ESDC is the expert.
Mr. Thompson, you said that Quebec was the only place where the anglophone community had no relationship with the province. I must go back to that, because I disagree with you. We must look at the situation of francophones in the rest of Canada. In several places in Canada, that relationship is not there either.
Take Alberta, for example.
[English]
When you have a company that puts a job posting through the federal government and in the request for the language there are four different languages and French is not in it, and then after that they go as far as saying, even if you don't speak French it's okay because you work by group.... I have people down home who go there to work, and they're being told that the name Clément is too French to have a job there. I'm telling you, we have a big problem in this country, not only in Quebec. I just want to correct that.
:
Okay, and I don't want to start to pick a fight over this here, but I just want to get that straight. It looks like it's kind of painting Quebec as not doing...and I'm looking across the country. I'm telling you it's shameful. It's unbelievable. It's discriminatory. It's just unbelievable, and I hope I will prove that one day, because I even had to go to the Commissioner of Official Languages to create a study on it. It's just like they're telling the francophones in Alberta, if you speak French you don't have a job. If the language here you speak is English, you have other people from other countries coming in and they could speak their language on the job, but the francophone is not allowed to do it, and we will prove that one day.
The question that I want to bring up here is about job training, and Mr. Williamson was talking about it. He was happy, but how could we be happy when all the provinces, not just Quebec but all the provinces across the country, are saying the new plan is not good, because the new plan on the training program is to give money, really, to big business, which gets money to train their people. What about the ones in the community we're talking about? What about the one in the basement who would like to have a job, and what about the people in the community who want to create jobs and have the government help to train people in the community, where the small business in the community doesn't have the $5,000 for the 20 people they want to hire?
I think that's where the program goes wrong when you remove the money from the community, because the federal government doesn't go there. It's not their responsibility to do job training, but somebody has to do it.
:
If we want to get very technical about this, routine motions state that there is an order of speaking, which you all know is on this list, but that the chair actually has discretion as to who to give the floor to despite the order of members' parties on the list.
In the last two to three minutes, I thought I would be generous and give the floor to members who may have had a question or a point of clarification they wanted to ask of the witnesses at the front. That's why I gave the floor to Madam St-Denis and that's why I gave the floor to Mr. Nicholls. But if people are going to abuse my generosity and—
An hon. member: I don't think that's the case, sir.
The Chair: —get into niggling questions about the order, then we'll just stick strictly to the script and I'll start cutting people off at exactly the time apportioned, whether it's seven minutes for the first round or five minutes for the next round. I'll start cutting witnesses off exactly at the seven-minute mark in their opening statement.
I've used my discretion as chair to try to make this committee work, and I hope that we can all work together to do that. I'd ask members on both sides to make sure that we not get into this game of counting down to the exact second regarding which member has had the floor.
So, if you please, use your time responsibly. I'll give the floor to Mr. Nicholls to ask a brief question.
Mr. Godin.