LANG Committee Report

The two preceding sections represented the culmination of the Committee’s reflections on the themes of health and immigration as engines of development for the official language minority communities. These sections incorporated the perspectives of community representatives, political and administrative representatives of the government, specialists, and other interested organizations.

The current section focuses essentially on the needs of the communities, as expressed during the meetings held in the nine cities that the Committee visited in November and December 2006, and in other meetings held in Ottawa between spring 2006 and February 2007. The themes contained herein are those that were a priority for a large number of the organizations that the Committee met. The themes on which there was a clear consensus are: education, from early childhood to the postsecondary level; the vitality of community networks; infrastructure; the inclusion of linguistic clauses in federal transfer payments to the provinces and territories; the budget cuts of September 2006 (Court Challenges Program and literacy); the promotion of French; the media; the arts and culture; justice; economic development; and research. All these elements will be considered during the follow-up to the Action Plan for Official Languages beginning in fiscal 2008-2009, which the communities urge the Government of Canada to begin studying immediately.

4.1. Education: from early childhood to university

“French is taught, but English is caught.”

4.1.1. Minority-Language Education

Education is certainly one of the sectors in which the most significant progress has been made, in the past twenty-five years, on matters affecting community vitality. There is no question that section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Supreme Court rulings based on it were the elements that triggered this progress (see section 1.2). In the early 1980s, half of Canada’s provinces had no French-language schools. After section 23 came into effect in 1982, the Supreme Court confirmed that the right to minority-language education gave the official language minority communities the right to govern and manage education and educational establishments.

These gains highlighted the Supreme Court’s importance as a counterweight to the provinces’ resistance to honouring their constitutional obligations under the Charter. Most of the decisive cases benefited from the support of the Court Challenges Program and, as we will see in section 4.5, this program to some extent became the symbol of the possibility that the federal government could continue to play the role of Constitutional guardian in areas outside its jurisdiction and the authority of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

The development of schools and school-community centres has been the main advance made by Francophone minority communities in Canada. Future progress in this area will occur at a more moderate pace and will depend essentially on the impetus that can be given to early childhood services, which represent the main condition for recruitment that could serve to maintain, and then increase, enrolment in minority-language education. The problems of recruitment at the primary level will thus be discussed in the section on early childhood.

Almost everyone mentioned the gains in education as the greatest source of community pride. Some of the evidence was particularly eloquent, such as that of the Director General of the Société Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, of Prince Edward Island:

[Our] schools and centres [are] probably our biggest success. And we see it spreading. We are recovering a lost generation, and even two generations in certain regions.

In Souris and Rustico, for example, we owe the survival of the language to grandparents and, in some instances, great-grandparents, who are Acadians, because Francophones have not had the opportunity for a number of generations to be educated in French. But these people are proud. We see it in their faces, just as we see it in the communities. They register their children in French schools without knowing a single word of French, but that's what they want for their children. They take French courses so that they can have conversations with their children in French.

These parents enrol their children in a school that's completely inadequate, when, just opposite, or nearly opposite, another school has everything, but is virtually empty because of declining birth rates. All this belongs to us as Canadians.[148]

4.1.1.1. Federal Government Support for Minority-Language Education

Financial support from the federal government, through bilateral agreements with the provincial and territorial governments, has also made a decisive contribution to the communities’ gains in education:

I can say right away that the contribution we get through the bilateral agreements has always amounted to 13 or 20% of our budget. Was this a great help to us? Yes, absolutely […] This money helped us to survive, and, I believe, to provide first rate education to our youth. We could not have implemented all the enhancements in our schools, for early childhood, for instance, without these programs. There would have been no junior kindergartens for three- and four-year-olds but now there is one in every school.[149]

These agreements are substantial and represent the federal government’s biggest investment in the official language minority communities. In 2005-2006, Canadian Heritage spent $283.9 million on its education programs, including $179.4 million (63.2%) on minority-language education. In 2002-2003, the figure was $213.1 million, with 69.5% of spending going to minority-language education. The remaining 30.5% went to second-language instruction at majority schools, including immersion programs.

		2002-2003	2003-2004	2004-2005	2005-2006
	MINORITY LANGUAGE EDUCATION	$ 148 185 461	$ 135 580 116	$ 162 519 146	$ 179 393 341
Federal/provincial/territorial agreements on minority language education		$ 144 819 060	$ 132 538 505	$ 159 443 027	$ 175 139 639
	Regular Program	$ 144 819 060	$ 122 763 505	$ 116 238 066	$ 107 365 771
	Action Plan for Official Languages		$ 9 775 000	$ 43 204 961	$ 67 773 868
Complementary Support for Language Learning		$ 2 257 351	$ 2 278 568	$ 2 285 619	$ 3 063 702
	Regular Program		$ 2 190 478	$ 1 662 819	$ 2 361 702
	Action Plan for Official Languages		$ 88 090	$ 622 800	$ 702 000
	Summer Bursaries for Francophones outside Quebec	$ 515 226
	Official Language Monitors (minority)	$ 1 742 125
Co-operation with the Non-Governmental Sector			$ 763 043	$ 790 500	$ 1 190 000
Language Acquisition Development Program		$ 1 109 050

The federal-provincial-territorial agreements account for the majority (97.6%) of spending by Canadian Heritage on minority-language education. The total amount of spending for these agreements increased by $30.3 million (20.9%) in fiscal year         2002-2003 to $175.1 million in 2005-2006. This increase may seem modest in comparison to the $209 million over five years for minority-language education called for in the Action Plan, which was to be added to the amounts set aside for the regular programs. Canadian Heritage has spent $120.8 million through the Action Plan over the course of the past three fiscal years, 57.8% of the funding allotted over five years. However, this major investment was counterbalanced by an almost equally large reduction in the amount in the federal-provincial-territorial agreements set aside for regular minority-language education programs, which went from $144.8 million in 2002-2003 to $107.4 million in 2005-2006, a 25.8% decrease. In other words, to date, overall investments in minority-language education programs have been well below what was announced when the Action Plan was launched. The agreements that the government has signed since November 2005 to renew a number of these agreements, and the Estimates for 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, do not indicate a substantial increase, but we will have to wait for the 2006-2007 report from Canadian Heritage and Public Accounts to see the real expenditures.

Using the amounts spent on minority-language education in the federal-provincial-territorial agreements in 2002-2003 — that is, $144.8 million—as a reference point, and maintaining the undertaking in the Action Plan that, in addition to the investments made through the Action Plan, “the Minister of Canadian Heritage will renew the Framework Agreement and federal-provincial-territorial agreements under the Official Languages in Education Program at current funding levels,”[150] the amounts spent or to be spent would be:

§         $144.8 million a year for five years starting in 2003-2004, that is, a total of $724 million for the regular program;

§         97.6% of $209 million of new investments announced in the Action Plan, that is, $204 million, the rest going to the bursary and second-language monitor programs;

§         For a total of $928 million over five years that should have been allocated to the federal-provincial-territorial agreements for minority-language education;

§         Since, of this total, $467.1 million has been spent during the past three fiscal years, there remains $460.9 million to be spent over the last two fiscal years of the Action Plan to ensure that the initial undertakings with regard to minority-language education are respected. That would mean an average of $230 million per year, well above the current level of $180 million in 2005-2006, which according to recent announcements is expected to be maintained for the next three fiscal years;

§         The announcement of $1 billion for education agreements for fiscal years 2005-2006 to 208-2009, which includes both minority language education and second language instruction, would mean an average annual investment of $250 million. To live up to the undertakings in the Action Plan, $230 million would have to be spent on minority language education alone. In other words, the announcement of these investments confirms that the Government of Canada will not be able to live up to its initial commitments in the Action Plan, unless it makes a substantial investment in order to offset the shortfall accumulated in the first three fiscal years of the Action Plan.

Had they not been accompanied by a reduction in the budget for the regular minority-language program, the Action Plan investments would have restored the funding levels that followed the awarding of the right to governance to Francophone parents. In a number of provinces, this relative drop in investments was clearly felt:

When we, in Alberta, obtained the right to manage the school boards in 1994, we had between 940 and 950 students. Today, we have approximately 2,300 students; that is an increase of more than 100%.

During the last five years, we have received additional funding which has allowed us to establish a management system. However, it must be noted that management alone is not enough to retain our students. We need to provide our francophone students the equivalent of what is offered in the local anglophone school.

If equivalency does not exist, making the choice between French language and English language education becomes moot. Students will prefer [to] enrol in the other system, where there are more and better programs.[151]

Investments thus prove necessary to ensure that the services offered the minority community are of equivalent quality. The Committee thus recommends:

Recommendation 11

That the Government of Canada fully respect the undertakings made in the Action Plan for Official Languages and increase the amounts in the federal-provincial-territorial agreements for minority-language education so that they reach $ 460.9 million between April 1, 2007 and March 31, 2009.

4.1.1.2. Early Childhood

More than health, immigration or any of the other themes raised during the meetings, early childhood was most frequently cited as the linchpin of the communities’ future development. After a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1990s gave the communities the right to govern their schools, a network of educational infrastructures developed and helped strengthen the communities’ sense of belonging. Once these infrastructures were in place, there was impressive success, but there are still only some Francophones who avail themselves of their right to send their child to French-language school. The establishment of infrastructures made significant development possible and at the same time revealed a major recruiting challenge.

The main problem lies in the fact that the large number of parents who send their children to daycare do not benefit from services of equivalent quality in French, if they exist, or have no choice but to enrol their child in an English-language daycare. Since this English-language daycare is normally attached to a school, the transition between the daycare and school is effortless, compared to the difficulties involved in transferring the child to a French-language school after being in an English-language daycare: fears that the child will be behind in French, the loss of well-established routines for transportation and the parents’ schedules, fears the child will be isolated, etc. All these fears are added to many others that already exist when parents must choose to educate their child in French or in English.

The link between this recruiting problem at the primary level and early childhood services was confirmed during the creation of school-community centres. These centres — which combine a school, community and cultural spaces, and offices for organizations in a single building — revealed that, when they also contain an early childhood centre, primary school recruitment increased significantly. The same easy transition that prevented parents from taking the child out of the English-language daycare to enrol in the French-language school favoured the retention of children in the French-language schools.

Professor Rodrigue Landry, of the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, described the main impediments to the recruitment of Francophone students:

The first point concerns early childhood. In our opinion, this is the biggest challenge for the Francophone and Acadian communities. Currently, at least 40% of child rights holders under section 23 are not attending French-language schools. One of the decisive factors is exogamy, which is increasing. Approximately two-thirds of these children come from exogamous couples; they have a Francophone parent and an Anglophone parent. In most cases, unfortunately, those families choose English as the language spoken at home. French is the spoken language for one in five children.

Our research shows that exogamy isn't a direct cause of assimilation. The choice made by parents is the direct cause. Some parents make an informed choice. For example, all parents transmit their knowledge of their language to their children, who go to French-language school because that's the school where the minority studies. That enables children to be bilingual. Our research also shows that the children of exogamous families who attend French-language schools are the best bilinguals in the country.[152]

In other words, the most decisive element is the attitude of Francophone parents in exogamous families about the importance of enrolling their child in French-language school. This attitude will itself be reinforced by the education they receive:

People have said that they [mixed or exogamous unions] are a disaster, because as soon as francophones marry anglophones, they start to use English. However, research shows that francophones who are more inclined to use English within an exogamous couple, have, in many cases, already shown a significant interest in English, be it from a very young age, or at least since the age of 15. So previous behaviour is important.[153]

Parents who want their child to become bilingual and have the best prospects for the future choose immersion school or English-language school, while making sure that French is spoken regularly in the home. These parents are well-intentioned, but they don’t know that the research[154] has shown that the people who are the most fluently bilingual are those who attend French-language school in a minority setting. Since the majority of families will send their children to some form of pre-school institution (daycare,
pre-kindergarten at three or four, or kindergarten at five, it is essential that families have the choice to enrol their child in French-language pre-school and that parents be made aware of the importance of their attitude to language transmission:

Francization efforts must be made as soon as the child is born, so that when it comes time to begin school, parents do not have to worry about their child's linguistic abilities.[155]

The Action Plan for Official Languages includes a budget of $22 million for early childhood development, but in an envelope separate from the agreements on education that the federal government signs with the provinces and territories. This $22 million is intended essentially to support literacy services ($7.4 million), fund pilot projects and research projects on the influence that French-language daycare services have on children’s future development ($10.8 million) and help national organizations to disseminate best practices for early childhood services ($3.8 million). These funds were never meant to be invested in the development of the services themselves, but in laying the ground work for future investments in the development of services.

The communities were particularly happy to see the 2005 agreements for the development of early childhood services contain a clause guaranteeing them a definite percentage specific to each province.[156]

The announced investments and the obligation to reserve money to develop French-language services produced a rapprochement, in certain provinces, between the communities and the provincial governments, such as in Saskatchewan, where the model for integrating early childhood services with elementary school was well received:

The province said that it was open to our model for intervention: it would even like to implement it throughout the province. We believe that learning and childcare go hand in hand […] We will certainly not stop promoting our early childhood development strategy, but if we had the federal government contribution that was promised in the agreement, we would be able to move forward much more quickly and we would be able to ensure a much more institutional and organized approach.[157]

Similarly in Alberta, a province grappling with enormous infrastructure needs:

The agreement enabled us to start negotiating things with the province of Alberta right away. The provincial representatives sat down and tried to find ways to develop concrete services […] When you insert a clause that accommodates francophones in Alberta, you give us the tools we need to continue to develop.[158]

It is clear that the decision to redistribute the amounts provided for in the agreements for early childhood services was a hard blow for the communities that had made it their priority. The announcements had created expectations and launched projects that had to be suspended.[159] What the communities are asking for is not a massive reinvestment in the development of infrastructures for early childhood, but simply an improvement in the services offered. In other words, the communities would like to be able to offer services of comparable quality to those currently offered without an additional reinvestment in the majority communities. Parents would thus have a real choice and the impact on the communities’ vitality could be significant.

If we can't afford to put our own structure in place, the subsidies will be used by Francophone families to put their children in Anglophone child care. That's the greatest tool for assimilation. When children are in an Anglophone environment at the preschool stage, in the vast majority of cases, they remain in that situation until they enter English school.[160]

It is not so much the decision to prefer direct subsidies to the families that the communities were questioning as the disadvantages to a Francophone family of receiving the money if the existing services are not equivalent:

[The recently announced measures are] working very well wherever there are majority groups. However, for our minorities, where parents don't know where to go or where there are incredible waiting lists for child care, it's not working. It's essential to have infrastructures in place.[161]

The problem thus relates to the lack of infrastructures for the Francophone minority community equivalent to the services available to the Anglophone majority community:

But the problem is the lack of infrastructure. Francophone daycare centres just don't exist. There is one in Edmonton, but I don't know if there are any elsewhere. We need help in setting up these centres, and this is what we used to get under the early childhood plan. We got money to build the necessary infrastructure.[162]

The other problem is the major differences that exist between the various provinces:

In Quebec, people can not only access childcare at $7 a day, but they can also get $100 a month. Personally, I have two young children, one daughter goes to school, and I have to spend about $1,000 a month for childcare. The $100 is welcome, but I would rather have access to an adequate childcare program.[163]

The construction of school-community centres integrating early childhood services also revealed the extent to which, when services were offered, it became clear just how much of a demand there was:

Today, we see that schools that have Francophone child care are guaranteed of being able to recruit student rights holders, and our kindergarten classes are overflowing. However, this essential service is not offered in all our communities.

We believe that the future of our Francophone community depends on our ability to reach our children, from the cradle, and that francization must occur as soon as possible, since everything in child development occurs before the age of five.[164]

The same phenomenon occurred in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the provincial authorities were not even sure there would be any demand for French-language early childhood services:

Last year, we had the privilege of opening the first francophone daycare here, in St. John's. We now like to open more, whether home daycares or daycare centres.[165]

In some cases, the federal government’s investment in education made it possible to upgrade preschool services and produced immediate results:

Within the school board itself, our greatest achievement has been the establishment of full-time kindergarten. The provincial government funds half-day kindergarten. Through the funds earmarked for official languages, we are able to finance full-time kindergarten. This allows us to integrate our children, and make considerable francization efforts. So when the children begin grade one, they are linguistically ready to take on the task ahead of them.[166]

That success remains very fragile, however, because it is impossible to meet the growing demand for preschool and early childhood services:

Currently, preschool services are being offered by parent volunteers. Our fear is that some children will not be able to attend French-language preschool, and parents are worried that their child will not have the linguistic ability needed to register in the French-language program.[167]

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 12

That the 125,000 daycare spaces, whose creation the Government of Canada announced in the 2006-2007 Budget, include a specific number for Francophone minority communities, in a proportion that is at least equivalent to the proportion of Francophones living in each province or territory.

The Committee also recommends:

Recommendation 13

That, when the education agreements with provinces and territories other than Quebec are next renewed or when the budgets for minority-language education are not spent completely, these amounts can be used by the provinces and territories to fund the upgrading of French-language early childhood and preschool services.

4.1.1.3. Retaining Students Enrolled in Primary

We have seen that the offer of early childhood services could be decisive to parents’ choice to enrol their child in a French-speaking institution, and that this choice has serious repercussions for the child’s entire future development. Yet, the offer of services alone will not be enough unless it is accompanied by a growing awareness among those known as rights holders, that is, the families who, under section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have the right to enrol their child in the minority language school and to participate in school governance. For example, many parents think that French immersion is sufficient to maintain language skills, while the best guarantor of bilingualism is full-time French-language education:

Immersion courses have served the francophone population, for better or for worse, before schools were established and before we had French-language education in our communities.

There are still people who have the following perception. I'm thinking particularly of Quebec parents who arrive in Newfoundland. They settle here and they decide that they want their children to be bilingual. So instead of sending them to a francophone school system, they send their children to an immersion program. So in this way we lose part of our clientele, and I find that unfortunate.[168]

Moreover, from the perspective of community development, enrolling children from exogamous families in immersion programs has the significant disadvantage that it takes the students out of the Francophone community environment and integrates them into the majority system, which has the further consequence that it makes it difficult for the Francophone community to follow the progress and path of the students taking immersion programs. In other words, as we will see in the following section, immersion programs are designed for students from the majority and to create a spirit of openness in the Anglophone community, but, compared to minority-language education programs, they do little for community development:

We have to get people to understand the difference between an education in immersion, which is basically designed for anglophones who have never known French, and a francophone education, which includes a whole cultural dimension. There are still francophones who don't understand that distinction. And for some students, whose parents or grand-parents were francophone, but who have lost their language to some extent, there is some francization to be done.

It is a bit of a shame that only 15% of eligible students use French-language schools. There is definitely some work to be done. That is also more or less included in the projects proposed by the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones. We are considering the need to set up an identification, information and outreach campaign for parents. So, clearly, there is work to be done in that area.[169]

Even in those provinces where the proportion of Francophones is increasing, student recruitment is by no means a given: In Canada, the proportion of eligible students attending French-language schools is estimated to be 60%.[170] This proportion is much lower in certain provinces, however. In Saskatchewan, according to the estimate of a Director of the Conseil scolaire fransaskois, that proportion is less than 20%.[171]

The efforts must then be sustained in order to prevent primary students from migrating to English-language secondary schools:

It is difficult for us to keep our students. In many cases, they only stay until grade six. Quite a few families are mixed marriages. Once the child has finished grade six, the anglophone spouse wants to enrol the child in what he thinks is a real school. He thinks that it is enough for his child to have learned to understand the language. Now he must get on with serious things.[172]

The overall situation was summed up neatly by the Director General of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada:

Francophone school boards in minority communities throughout the country are facing similar challenges: difficulty recruiting students which leads to relatively low percentages of a potential pool of students with rights at their schools; difficulty retaining students which is expressed by a significant drop in staff, particularly at the secondary school level; mandatory provincial and territorial curriculums that are not always sensitive to the identity and community requirements of francophone schools and minority communities; the scattered nature of the francophone population particularly in rural regions; and, finally the high proportion of students with rights from exogamous families or families where French is not the language most used at home.[173]

That is why an awareness-raising campaign aimed at the parents, such as the school boards have been suggesting for many years, is so necessary:

When the federal government agreed to implement immersion courses, there was a great deal of publicity. There was publicity to promote immersion, etc. When Franco-Saskatchewanian or francophone schools were created all over Canada, not much Canadian publicity was done to stress the fact that this was the road that francophones should take if they want to remain bilingual.[174]

As Professor Landry pointed out, the Senate Committee on Official Languages adopted recommendations to that effect in its 2005 report on education.[175]

Given all these elements, the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 14

That the Government of Canada, with the consent of the provinces and territories, conduct an awareness and information campaign directed at the Francophone minority communities with the following objectives:

a)   to raise parents’ awareness of the benefits of enrolling their child in a French-language preschool and primary institution;

b) to encourage the continuation of French-language education at the secondary level as an asset in the child’s future career opportunities in an Anglophone majority environment.

4.1.2. Second Language / Immersion Programs

The federal-provincial-territorial agreements on second-language instruction tie in with the federal government’s efforts to promote Canadian linguistic duality. The most striking results of these investments are felt in the climate of the relations between the two official language communities: “The results that [immersion school] yields are understanding, acceptance and cultural enrichment.”[176]

That being said, unlike the minority-language education programs, the supplementary investments in second-language instruction in the Action Plan were not offset by a corresponding reduction in the regular program. In that respect, the second-language instruction programs are the ones that, by far, benefited the most from the Action Plan’s investments. The amount of the federal-provincial-territorial agreements almost doubled in four years, from $43.8 million in 2002-2003 to $80.4 million in 2005-2006.

		2002-2003	2003-2004	2004-2005	2005-2006
	SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING	$ 64 871 958	$ 66 245 086	$ 81 320 260	$ 104 553 812
Federal/provincial/territorial agreements on second language learning		$ 43 796 843	$ 45 818 258	$ 55 861 270	$ 80 418 605
	Regular Program	$ 43 796 843	$ 45 043 258	$ 44 710 394	$ 55 081 029
	Action Plan for Official Languages		$ 775 000	$ 11 150 876	$ 25 337 576
Language Acquisition Development Program		$ 344 866
Supplementary Support for Language Learning		$ 16 750 249	$ 17 333 208	$ 22 523 101	$ 21 230 498
	Regular Program		$ 16 846 458	$ 17 745 901	$ 16 532 498
	Action Plan for Official Languages		$ 486 750	$ 4 777 200	$ 4 698 000
	Summer Language Bursary	$ 11 466 774
	Official Language Monitors (second language)	$ 5 283 475
Co-operation with the Non-Governmental Sector			$ 411 840	$ 562 160	$ 533 745
Young Canada Works (second language or both languages)		$ 3 980 000	$ 2 681 780	$ 2 373 729	$ 2 370 964

The organization Canadian Parents for French is pleased by the renewal and enhancement of the amounts allocated for second-language instruction. The results are palpable, particularly in Ontario:

With the signing of the Canada-Ontario agreement on minority language and second official language instruction in 2005-2006 to 2008-2009, unprecedented progress was made toward support and revitalization of core French and French immersion programs for Ontario schools. There are currently 968,000 students enrolled in FSL programs in Ontario, and close to 115,000 are enrolled in French immersion […]

A follow-up study by CPF (Ontario) of how the funding was spent at each school board indicated that funds went mostly to basic expenditures for these programs, such as the purchase of material resources and teacher professional development […] Currently, one individual is assigned at the Ministry of Education to the FSL portfolio, overseeing close to 970,000 students in 60 school boards across the huge geographical expanse of Ontario.[177]

In some cases, this increase in clientele created problems with access to the programs:

In some school boards, there are buildings that are closed as schools, but the school boards will not open French immersion programs in those empty buildings, and parents line up at four o'clock in the morning to sign up their children for these programs. There is, we believe, adequate funding for French as a second language through the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario. However, that funding is not reaching its destination, and that is where we need to collaborate to have some tighter accountability measures at the local level so that it transfers to pupil places.[178]

The Committee is pleased by the initiatives taken to support second-language instruction, which is an essential element in the promotion of linguistic duality. These initiatives have produced striking successes that must be sustained. However, from the perspective of supporting the vitality of the official language minority communities and, given that Part VII of the Official Languages Act has been strengthened, the Committee agrees with Canadian Parents for French that the current levels of funding are sufficient to attend the programs’ objectives.

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 15

That the Government of Canada maintain its current level of funding at the least for second-language instruction programs, including immersion programs, and support the provincial and territorial governments’ efforts to set up adequate administrative structures in order to reduce the problems with access and accountability, all with the cooperation of recognized organizations that promote second-language learning.

At the same time, the Anglophone community of Quebec’s crying need for French-language instruction must not be neglected, since this is closely linked to the community’s capacity to retain young families, but also necessarily to employment development for adults:

From our perspective, the 2003 action plan was slow in being implemented in such areas as education, economic development, and the public service. English speakers in our region have a real need for improved French language instruction in schools and for adults alike. Despite great financial constraints, the Eastern Townships School Board has increased the proportion of core courses offered in French in its schools. The action plan should be providing support for this initiative. Low-income adult English speakers do not currently have access to free or low-cost French language courses. This is desperately needed.[179]

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 16

That the Government of Canada increase the level of its investment in the agreement on English as a second-language instruction between the federal government and the government of Quebec.

4.1.3. Post-Secondary Education

The investments in second-language instruction programs contributed greatly to the development of the post-secondary institutions that provided students’ second-language instruction and then subsequently attracted the students who had taken these courses, one example being the St-Jean Campus at the University of Alberta:

Our students, some 70% of whom are immersion program graduates, are native English speakers. Our challenge is to turn these students, who are linguistic bilinguals, into complete bilinguals within two or four years, depending on their programs of study. In other words, they are asked to acquire French and English as both individual and common languages. The process is a long and difficult one, but we will achieve our ends in large part thanks to the support we receive from the Government of Canada through bilateral agreements.[180]

The Institut français at the University of Regina was asked to train public servants required to offer services in both official languages:

We have benefited from and will continue to greatly benefit from the Dion Plan, its philosophy and its concrete actions. You have to understand that we exist within a majority that has a lot of difficulty understanding why we are here. We have a vision of education which is different from that of the anglophone majority.[181]

The former Commissioner of Official Languages explicitly supported this development option for minority post-secondary institutions:

The federal government's main challenge is to find a way, as we've done with the action plan, to assist provinces in their efforts to improve access to training in the second official language. We could offer resources, and consider recommendations, as some have recently done, to the effect that post-secondary institutions commit to preserving knowledge of English and French acquired in secondary institutions. In some areas of the country, because post-secondary institutions do not offer programs or services in French, young people lose their knowledge of that language.[182]

These developments are completely desirable, but, from the perspective of enhancing the vitality of the official language minority communities, the Committee feels that they are of lesser importance than programs that help retain young graduates in their original communities.

That, for example, is the effect produced by the creation of the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface:

I think our greatest achievements are our school system and the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface. To build on that, we'd like to start sooner, before students even enter our school system, because, when they do, sometimes it's already too late. If it's already too late, a lot of our Francophones don't choose our system because of that. Our greatest achievements, in my view, are the Franco-Manitoban education sector, the university college, the occupational technical school and everything related to the college.[183]

That is unquestionably the same type of significant effect that the Centre de formation médicale de Moncton will have, since New Brunswick’s Francophone students will no longer have to leave their province to receive medical training in French. The problem of retention is crucial in the health field, where graduates are in great demand, and it becomes difficult to keep them in their communities. This situation can be exacerbated or helped by the fact that workforce mobility rules vary from one province to another. This is however more difficult for official-language minority communities in general. Saint-Boniface General Hospital, for example, works hard to bring back students who took their training elsewhere:

We periodically invite them to do internships at the hospital where, for example, we try to find them summer jobs. If they're from Manitoba, they can come and work at our research centre during the summer. That enables them to stay interested in our institution. It also enables us to talk to them about prospects, about how we can open doors for them when they come back.[184]

In Alberta, Saint-Jean Campus will be helping to set up a community college to provide French-language technical and professional training that will be integrated into the University of Alberta.[185]

These examples are a clear illustration of the dynamism of the Francophone minority communities and reinforce the importance of offering the entire continuum of education services, from early childhood to university, since, more and more, education is the guarantee of a satisfying career path. Offering Francophones this option also creates a living environment in which the possibilities are no longer limited by having to work in English.

The Committee recommends:

Recommendation 17

That the Government of Canada create a program, in partnership with the provincial and territorial governments and post-secondary institutions, to offer internships that will encourage the retention and return of Francophone students to the official language minority communities.

4.2. Vitality of community networks

The associative community is like the oil that keeps the gears working properly. I think we have to do whatever we can to ensure that it is healthy, without necessarily criticizing the fact that it always depends on government. In a minority situation, that is the reality.[186]

Increasingly, both spouses in a family work, and there are fewer and fewer volunteers. Those who are called upon to do volunteer work are people like Ms. Saulnier, who has just taken very early retirement and who will become a volunteer par excellence. I also retired a few years ago. I'm still a volunteer, and I'm going to continue, but we're getting burned out.[187]

4.2.1. Community Life Component of the Action Plan

Under the Community Life component, the Action Plan provided $19 million over five years to fund community projects submitted to Canadian Heritage, including those for community centres, culture and the media. This additional funding was not intended to boost the organizations’ capacities directly since no funding was allocated to their operating budgets. The funding was instead comparable to that provided under the Strategic Fund to support structuring projects for communities, but for projects that do not necessarily meet existing program criteria, or that have significant infrastructure requirements or that are interprovincial or national in scope.

On the whole, funding for the Community Life component of the Canadian Heritage Development of Official Language Communities program was cut by 3.6% from 2002-2003 to 2005-2006, from $54.9 million to $52.9 million. This drop in funding can essentially be explained by the fact that the budgets for the Interdepartmental Partnership with Official Language Communities[188] could not be transferred to other departments since there were no Supplementary Estimates in 2005-2006.

Funding for community organizations comes primarily from the Cooperation with the Community Sector subcomponent. This funding increased overall by about $3.3 million or 7.7% from 2002-2003 to 2005-2006. This increase can be attributed to the investments under the Action Plan for community support projects, and the Strategic Fund, which also provides project funding.

Funding for community organizations comes essentially from the regular program of the Cooperation with the Community Sector subcomponent, formerly known as Support for Communities or Canada-Community Agreements. In 2005-2006, this funding rose to its 2002-2003 level after two consecutive decreases in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.[189] In other words, as is the case with FPT agreements on minority-language education, but less significantly so, the investments under the Action Plan resulted in a drop in funding from the regular program, while the Action Plan investments supplemented those under the regular program.

Of the additional $19 million the Action Plan provides for Community Life, about $9 million was spent during the Plan’s first three fiscal years. That leaves $10 million to be spent in fiscal years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.

4.2.2. Increase Support for Organizations

As demonstrated in this report many times already, the strength of community networks is the main source of long-term initiatives that support community vitality. Their strength is threatened in various locations, especially in Ontario:

In fact, as regards the associative movement, right now funding is the sinews of war. We need increased core funding, based on regional characteristics. Compared to other cities, Toronto has higher rents, and so with $50,000, the Toronto ACFO will not be able to continue. There are other things that will also have to be considered, such as distances in the North.

We have also talked about multiyear plans, rather than having to do the same work over again every year. That makes no sense. We need a three to five year plan so that ACFOs can create the right structure and subsequently attain the desired results. That is not something that can be done in one year; and without adequate funding, it's a vicious cycle. If there is less money, there is no work and no qualified staff. If there is no alternative funding, there are no results, and if there are no results, there is no money. So, the whole thing starts all over again.[190]

During its meetings, the Committee noted that the people driving these initiatives are getting worn out, people who in most cases do this strictly on a voluntary basis. The significant gains made by the communities, especially as regards education and more recently health care services, has made the work these people must now do every day significantly more complex:

Grassroots organizations, those that work in the communities, saw their funding decrease in the 1990s. Evidently, their funding did not keep up with inflation, so much so that the Alliance de la francophonie de Timmins, which serves 19,000 Francophones in Timmins alone, cannot even hire full-time staff, neither a secretary, nor a director general, nor a development officer. We have part-time staff and volunteers. This is volunteer work that I have already termed, on Radio-Canada, extreme volunteer work, because people have to work in the evenings and on weekends; it is extremely difficult.[191]

Stronger skills and more resources are needed for project management, accounting and strategies for canvassing the various orders of government. These increasingly demanding roles must be performed by community organizations that in many cases cannot even afford to hire someone full time.

The action plan has enabled us to make the targeted departments more aware of the provision of services and of the challenges facing the Acadian and Francophone community. However, we haven't enjoyed significant investment directly related to community development, which is to say of our French-language communities in an English-dominant environment. If we have one recommendation to make, it would be that this deficiency be corrected.

Since 2001, the number of French-language schools in Prince Edward Island has increased from two to six. The offer of services has risen and demand is still increasing. Unfortunately, funding allocated to our communities has not increased. Consequently, we are having trouble meeting the demand that we have created by establishing these centres.[192] Our increasing work load has put a serious strain on financial and human resources, and this is of great concern to us. We wonder about our capacity to respond to meet the needs and to establish partnerships with those who have the greatest impact on our community's development.[193]

Nearly all the community organizations that appeared before the Committee made similar comments.

In British Columbia, we determined our needs and submitted a comprehensive development plan together with supporting figures. In spite of everything, the cost of living is rising, and we now only have one employee. That's all we have, whereas development has to be done.[194]

To respond in an effective and realistic fashion, we need more substantial funding, not on a project basis, but to support the basic infrastructure in the various community sectors. The number of sectors has increased, but we still only have two or three people working on all the standing committees, etc. At a certain point, we will no longer be able to keep up.[195]

With respect to strengthening Part VII of the Official Languages Act, the Committee is of the opinion that the resources allocated to community organizations must be increased, as an urgent priority. The growth in services, projects and investments has led to a high demand for community resources, yet the funding allocated to community organizations has not grown with other investments, and they are increasingly complex to administer due to the new requirements for obtaining contributions. So there are few people who are being asked to do more and more.

The Committee recommends:

Recommendation 18

That the regular program funding of the Cooperation with the Community Sector subcomponent of the Community Life Component, Development of Official Language Communities Program, be increased by 50% for fiscal year 2007-2008 compared to current levels of financing, and then be increased proportionally with the overall budgets for Canadian Heritage’s Official Languages Support Programs, in order to reflect the additional effort required of organizations once projects are in place.

Another source of pressure on community organizations is the increasing complexity of reporting requirements. The Committee strongly advocates any measure that increases the financial accountability of organizations receiving public funds. It has become very clear however that a number of organizations do not have the resources at present to take on this responsibility and that too much of the volunteers’ time is spent filling out reports to justify the funding these organization have received.

Second, the process for transferring federal funds to community agencies is very costly because it involves contributions and funding transfers conditional on reimbursement. The provincial government, on the other hand, simply uses an allocation method and conducts an annual audit. The problems we are describing to you may be very practical problems but they make the life of organizations in Francophone minority communities very difficult. These funding agreements are very cumbersome to manage and the same types of complaints have been expressed by many other groups.[196]

The Committee does not regard funding for the operating expenses of these organizations as a gift that makes them parasites of the state. On the contrary, the individuals who take on tasks that are a federal responsibility generate inestimable savings.

The federal government is not giving these organizations a gift because the government is compelled to do so by the Act; rather it is a program whose objectives the government believes in and it must therefore ensure that the people responsible for delivering these services are able to do so. When the government chooses to directly provide the services it considers important, it hires public servants, rents offices and provides the infrastructure for the work to get gone. When the government provides a contribution for a project, it is because it considers that the community organizations are better able to deliver this program that it could itself. It makes the community organizations responsible for delivering the programs whose objectives it develops.

The federal government now has a legal obligation to foster the vitality of official language minority communities. We consider the funding of community organizations a much more effective, economical, structuring and stimulating way to fulfill these obligations than increasing the number of public servants to achieve these same objectives. Community organizations thus become a tool enabling the federal government to more effectively meet its obligations.

In 2005-2006, of the $341.4 million in funding that Canada Heritage provided under its official languages support programs, $5.3 million or 1.6% was in the form of grants and the rest was in contributions. The Committee considers the risk of abuse by organizations to be insignificant as compared to the tremendous savings achieved through the work they do in fostering the vitality of official language minority communities. The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 19

That all the funding provided to organizations under the regular program of the Cooperation with the “Community Sector” subcomponent of the “Community Life” component that is not for specific projects be provided in the form of grants.

This does not mean that the management of contribution agreements does not need to be improved. On the contrary, bureaucratic red tape is one of the main irritants interfering with the community organizations’ ability to do their work.[197] It is not a question of reducing the accountability criteria but rather of recognizing that a community organization that relies on volunteers does not have the same resources as an organization that has a number of employees and can assign staff to administrative duties relating to the management of these agreements. Various irritants are cited: the renewal of agreements on an annual basis, which creates uncertainty for multi-year projects and creates an additional workload, and transfers in the form of reimbursement upon presentation of receipts, which requires organizations to keep separate accounts for each project although projects evolve at the same time with resources divided among the projects. These are just two examples that a group of experts is currently considering in reviewing the Treasury Board policy on transfer payments.

The Committee recommends:

Recommendation 20

That Treasury Board consider the specific characteristics of official language minority communities, including the obligation to take positive measures to foster the development of these communities, and introduce greater administrative flexibility in the development of its policy on transfer payments.

This observation regarding the significant difficulties faced by community organizations applies to all official language minority communities in Canada, whether English-speaking or French-speaking. Matters are especially critical in Ontario, however, where half of Francophones in minority communities live; they are also spread out, so more organizations are needed to effectively represent the various regions:

Canadian Heritage nevertheless has a rather limited budget to support organizations. The number of organizations in Ontario alone is increasing, but the pie is still the same size. To ensure that Francophone organizations and associations receive some funding, the amount allocated to each of the organizations is being reduced so that everyone gets a little. The organizations then have trouble not only living, but surviving.[198]

These comments were supported by various representatives of educational institutions and health care facilities who are responsible for significant budgets and complex institutions, but who nevertheless stress the importance of maintaining community health networks:

If the ACFO were not a solid partner, we would not be here. Despite that $14 million [for health networks], which is great, we would not exist. It is thanks to the ACFO that we have been able to grow. Unfortunately, there is not sufficient awareness of the fact that it is organizations such as this that are involved.[199]

It is also very difficult for Anglophone communities outside Montreal, which face the same pressures as other community organizations, but must also fight the perception that Anglophones in Quebec automatically enjoy special status. The fact is that, given the same number of people as Francophone minorities, Anglophone organizations receive only about 10% of total funding under Canadian Heritage’s Cooperation with the Community Sector program.

Through Canadian Heritage you're looking at an envelope of about $33 million for the support of minority language communities. The other reality is that $30 million of that $33 million goes to the Francophone organizations outside Quebec and only $3 million goes to the Anglophone organizations in Quebec. And the numbers are comparable: 950,000 people versus just under 1 million people. We agree the reality is that the needs of those small Franco organizations everywhere in Canada are obviously many times more significant, because we have a lot more in terms of institutions in Quebec. But we don't all live on the Island of Montreal.[200]

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 21

That the proportion of total funding for the Cooperation, with the “Community Sector” subcomponent of the “Community Life” component of Canadian Heritage’s Development of Official Language Communities Program, that is allocated to Quebec’s Anglophone community be increased and that priority be given to community organizations outside the Montreal metropolitan area.

The Anglophones of Quebec also have a problem retaining their best and brightest:

There is a sense of demoralization […] it is the brightest and the best [who have left], the people with the most education.[201]

I hope that, when they [young people] leave, they do so with a desire to return. But at the moment, they leave to go — they are not thinking about coming back. Perhaps if we could get them to think about it, some of them might come back. But they would need to have a future, and jobs.[202]

The minority French and English populations in Canada are very similar in size, just short of a million each. The reports I get of the francophone minority outside of Quebec give me some encouragement that the support they are receiving is achieving positive results. I celebrate that. We all celebrate it. However, it is time to examine whether Canada wants to maintain a population of anglophones in Quebec or whether it might be more politically expedient to allow us all to emigrate or die out.[203]

The other problem for both Francophones and Anglophones pertains to the fact that the federal government regularly calls upon community organizations to prepare plans and development priorities for the programs it wishes to implement. As we saw with respect to health, the networks in each province and territory were tasked with developing priorities and projects to increase access to primary health care in French. This project was called Préparer le terrain. To date though no funding has been confirmed to launch initiatives that the networks identified as priorities at the federal government’s request. Both recently and in the past, community organizations have been asked to come up with regional strategies to foster Francophone immigration, but the funding agreements for immigrant settlement were signed with the provinces without any specific amount being allocated for Francophone communities and without any assurance that the priorities set by the communities would be respected. The communities have now become increasingly sceptical and sometimes even cynical about what the federal government asks them to do.

We make a proposal to Canadian Heritage, and its officers make the decisions. Last year we made some very difficult decisions that were not respect.[204]

Our communities have not yet renewed their agreement with the Department of Canadian Heritage […] Any uncertainty could kill the initiative of volunteers and employees, thus leaving our communities in a tenuous situation.

We therefore ask that these agreements be renewed as soon as possible in a manner consistent with the needs of the communities. The communities' priorities must be the priorities set out in those agreements, and the necessary resources to achieve them must be provided there.[205]

The Committee is of the opinion that the requirement to “take positive measures” entailed in strengthening Part VII of the Official Languages Act also includes the obligation to respect the priorities set by the communities themselves insofar as these priorities are compatible with the program criteria. The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 22

That, insofar as it respects the spirit and criteria of the program concerned, Canadian Heritage, under the “Community Life” component of the Development of Official Language Communities Program, commit to respect the priorities set by the organizations representing official language minority communities and specifically include them in these agreements.

4.3. infrastructure

Many examples have illustrated the effectiveness of an active offer of services. An active offer of services highlights unrecognized demand and produces results that exceed expectations. While the simplest kind of active offer is a sign saying “English-French,” or a badge identifying institutions where patients can be served in French, the most elaborate type with the most striking results is a building. This form offers a solid foundation from which community networks can achieve stronger growth. Three kinds of infrastructure have demonstrated their effectiveness as catalysts for community vitality: community health centres, school and community centres and multi-service centres.

4.3.1. Community Health Centres

In Manitoba, the construction of the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Health Centre is one of the greatest successes of the Réseau santé en français, and is also the best illustration of the leverage effect of an initial investment by the federal government (see Chapter 2). In Alberta, a health infrastructure project, the Saint-Thomas Health Centre, a residence for Francophone seniors requiring assistance in daily living, will soon open. It has been difficult getting this project going, and a more substantial investment was requested of the federal government. The snags in obtaining funding for this centre illustrate the difficulty reconciling respect for community priorities, the limits of federal jurisdiction and the great variability in conditions that may or may not justify funding in a given case.

In 2003, Alberta’s Francophone community was asked to identify a few priorities that the federal government could support. The underlying principle was that, depending on the objectives and the budgets set, projects put forward by communities themselves are more likely to meet the community’s needs, to be accepted and to be more successful than priorities set in Ottawa.

Our priority is very simple, and it took the community 10 minutes to say that it was the Saint-Thomas Health Centre. That was three years ago. Since then, senior officials have told us that they had the political will, that it may be eligible for funding, but that they did not want to create any precedents within their program.[206]

After obtaining funding from the provincial government and other backers, construction began in 2006:

Once the centre opens, which should be in the fall of 2007, over 200 residents and an even larger number of external users will be able to access a wide range of services in French, from health care to training and cultural development, under one roof. For the first time in the province's history, health care specialists will be able to practice their profession in a Francophone environment with French as the language of work. The centre will also be able to provide job placements for interns wishing to work in a Francophone environment.[207]

Even before the building was completed, places were booking up so quickly that the health authority serving the Edmonton area was forced to recognize the extent of the demand for primary health care services in French. Creating this centre will also have all kinds of repercussions in other areas and on revitalizing the French fact in Alberta.

In January 2006, an additional $2.7 million in funding was requested and the provincial government approved it, in view of the strong demand. Of this amount, $1.2 million had been requested from the Government of Canada. When the Committee stopped in Edmonton in December 2006, the Saint-Thomas Health Centre had still not received a positive reply from the federal government. A few weeks later, however, on January 19, 2007, the Minister for the Francophonie and Official Languages announced a $750,000 contribution.[208]

The existence of a fund for infrastructure including construction, which the communities regard as a priority and that is consistent with the Government of Canada’s program objectives, would have greatly simplified discussions on the federal government’s involvement in this project, which marks a turning point in the development of Alberta’s Francophone community and could very well snowball in other parts of the province.

4.3.2. School and Community Centres

A school and community centre is a building that serves as a hub for a wide range of community needs: child care centre, school, gymnasium accessible to the community, performance hall, office space for community organizations. Professor Rodrigue Landry summarizes the benefits of the kind of cooperation involved in establishing a school and community centre:

Education is a provincial jurisdiction. If the provincial government says that it has a duty to attend to the school component and the federal government addresses the community component, we get a good mix, with a great community school centre as a result. That centre would offer community

activities enabling all generations to meet in the context of all kinds of activities. For young people, there'd be a school. We could even add a day care centre to it.

With this kind of institution, you provide what the community is lacking. This is all the more important in the major urban centres, where it's very hard to find a school near home.

This is a good example of cooperation.[209]

The effects of uncovering unrecognized demand have been apparent wherever these centres have been built. The centre in Prince Edward Island is a good example:

In 2000, the Summerside elementary school had space in our offices. There were four students in Grade 1. That's all. In 2006, we had a great school centre that met a lot of the community's needs. We think it's a model for all other regions. We had four students in 2000, and now we have 65 to 70. At the preschool centre day care for children 22 months to six years of age, there are more than 50 students.

In addition, another school, Carrefour de l'Isle-Saint-Jean in Charlottetown, was built in 1991. The building was constructed to accommodate 150 students. In the first years, there were between 50 and 75 students; now there are more than 250. They have a nice centre, but they've exceeded the school's capacity in 15 years.[210]

The federal government’s role is essentially to fund community spaces and those used for preschool child care, since preschool child care does not fall under the responsibility of the French-language school boards. With the school and community centre model, a day care centre and a French-language school can be located together, without requiring separate buildings. In some regions, there are still communities whose schools are in portables, which cannot accommodate a gymnasium or a small laboratory.[211].

4.3.3. Multi-Service Centres

Multi-service centres are based on the single-window concept. They make it possible to offer Francophones in a region all the services they need on a regular basis, and ideally includes the various orders of government under one roof, as is the case with the very successful centre in Winnipeg. Such centres can be in addition to a school and community centre or a medical clinic, such as at the Centre francophone de Toronto, or they can be separate, while also including a community component. It is this type of centre that the Francophone community of Saskatchewan is especially interested in, since the community is spread out, making it difficult to offer services in one location.[212]

4.3.4. Other Options

An infrastructure fund could also support the development of post-secondary education, such as the Centre for Excellence that Boreal College, Glendon College and the new School of Public Affairs would like to develop in Southern Ontario.[213] The Cornwall area is also in great need of a Francophone cultural centre, which could benefit from an infrastructure fund.[214]

The Anglophones of Quebec, especially communities outside Montreal, could also benefit from an infrastructure fund, like the library planned in the Eastern Townships, which would preserve this community’s heritage and also serve as a community centre, a multi-service centre and a meeting point fostering community vitality.[215]

An infrastructure fund could also help fund technology infrastructure linking various communities, especially in provinces where minority communities are spread out.[216]

Since official language minority communities have significant catching up to do in order to approach services of equal quality to what the majority receives, the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 23

That the Government of Canada establish an infrastructure fund in order to upgrade services that foster the vitality of francophone language minority communities, including early childhood services.

4.4. Linguistic clauses in federal transfers

In areas under provincial jurisdiction, such as education and health, or of shared jurisdiction, such as immigration, the federal government must give provincial governments sufficient leeway to perform their roles. Yet the statutory requirement that the federal government foster the vitality of official language minority communities should also be reflected by a firm commitment in the form of transfer payments to the provinces. Various witnesses stated that such a commitment would have a profound impact on community vitality and would in a way intensify negotiations between the communities and the provincial governments, which are responsible for the services with the greatest impact on vitality.[217]

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 24

That all federal transfer payments to the provinces or territories for a sector under provincial jurisdiction or shared jurisdiction include a clause allocating separate funding in order to work towards equality of services for francophone language minority communities.

Such a clause would also dispel persistent doubts about how federal transfer payments, especially for education, are spent by the provinces and in turn by school boards.[218] With respect to immigration, such a clause would also direct funding to organizations specifically responsible for the reception and settlement of Francophone immigrants.

We must bear in mind the special status of the three territories which do not have the same areas of jurisdiction under the Constitution, even though negotiations are conducted with them in the same way as they are with the provinces. The Committee is of the opinion that the federal government’s greater role in managing the territories should facilitate the application of linguistic policies since the territories cannot offer the same kind of resistance relating to federal and provincial jurisdictions. Yet witnesses indicated that services in French in the territories were very poor and would benefit from greater attention by the federal government to its linguistic obligations to Francophones in the territories. Once again, a productive dialogue appears to be developing in health, while there is stagnation in other areas. The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 25

That the Government of Canada, together with the territorial governments and the Francophone communities of the North, develop a strategy for Francophones in the territories to ensure that satisfactory services are available for all matters under federal jurisdiction, and negotiate specific clauses for Francophones in areas where responsibilities are transferred to the territorial governments.

4.5. Budget cuts in 2006

4.5.1. Court Challenges Program

All the organizations we met were unanimously and profoundly opposed to Government of Canada’s plan to cancel the Court Challenges Program.[219] We will simply reiterate the main reasons for this outcry:

The communities’ use of the CCP forced provincial governments to comply with section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as it allowed them to obtain school governance rights and to keep the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa open, decisions that have become the most striking symbols of the progress made regarding the vitality of official language communities. The communities firmly believe that they would not have been able to obtain a large number of their institutions without this program. The challenges also led to changes to the Canada Health Act and the responsibilities of some municipalities, and influenced electoral boundaries.

The Accountability Framework of the Action Plan for Official Languages imposes the requirement to “consult affected publics as required, especially representatives of official language minority communities, in connection with the development or implementation of policies or programs.”[220] This part of the Plan stems from subsection 43 (2) of the Official Languages Act, which requires Canadian Heritage to “take such measures as that Minister considers appropriate to ensure public consultation in the development of policies and review of programs relating to the advancement and the equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian society.” The communities maintain that they were not consulted before the Court Challenges Program was cancelled.

There are currently no alternatives to this program, since the Commissioner of Official Languages derives her authority from a federal statute and not the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, just as the Canadian Human Rights Commission has authority over matters under federal jurisdiction only. The provincial jurisdiction over education would thus preclude the Commissioner from having jurisdiction over provincial decisions relating to education and health.

The fact that exercising the rights granted under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms depends on sufficient numbers[221] could create an additional burden since it would then be a collective right, which would mean that the very existence of the holder of this right would have to be demonstrated, unlike equality rights, which are the rights of individuals.

The Committee recognizes that such a program can create fundamental problems since it appears to introduce inequality in access to justice for some individuals or groups. There might however be a distinction to be made between the defence of equality rights funded by the CCP and the defence of linguistic rights, which are in part collective. It is also clear that access to justice for groups and not for individuals is at the heart of this complex debate. It could be helpful to explore what recourse is available for other kinds of collective rights, for instance by examining the type of funding provided for recourse by the First Nations where collective rights are involved, or whether a similar program could be based on the “Fonds d’aide aux recours collectives” program in Quebec, which provides funding to non-profit organizations for legal action on behalf of individuals with the same problem.

The Committee therefore recommends:

Recommendation 26

That the Government of Canada reinstate the Court Challenges Program or create another program in order to meet objectives in the same way.

4.5.2. Literacy Program

The other cut that was strenuously opposed was the one to Human Resources and Skills Development’s Adult Learning, Literacy and Essential Skills Program. The program was not specifically designed for minority communities, but the cuts could have a greater impact on these communities given the lower literacy rate among Francophones in Canada in general and in Francophone minority communities in particular. Fifty-six percent of Canadians, whose first language is French, do have the desired level of literacy, and this figure reaches the worrisome level of 66% in New Brunswick, 40% of whom are under the age of 40.[222] For Anglophones in Quebec, this figure is 43%, compared to 39% for Anglophones in all the other provinces.

The chief concern is that the Action Plan for Official Languages allocated $7.4 million for early childhood literacy programs, which is one of the Plan’s components that produced meaningful results, as highlighted in the 2005-2006 Annual Report by the Commissioner of Official Languages.

Recalling that the Minister for the Francophonie and Official Languages informed this Committee with respect to the Action Plan for Official Languages that: “As a government, we have no intention of ever providing less than what the communities have obtained in this area,”[223] the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 27

That the Government of Canada maintain its commitments in the Action Plan as to funding for early childhood literacy initiatives.

Following Canada’s contribution to the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey, it was surprising that a majority of individuals that Statistics Canada considered Francophone chose to respond to the survey in English, even though they had the choice to respond in French:

One might have expected, given that the people were Francophone, that they would have answered the questions in French, but some of them felt more at ease in English. Some told us that they thought they had to choose English because the call had come from the federal government, because that was the language of work. These people live in a minority community. So we are talking about vitality. If there had been more confidence in French and more vitality, people would have answered in French. We think that it is a clear sign of the challenge that awaits us.[224]

Aside from families where the parents have limited knowledge of French and that want to encourage their children to learn French, the other clients of these programs who might suffer the most are seniors, for whom the Action Plan for Official Languages did not contain any specific measures.

If seniors do not have access to appropriate programs in every area, how can they be expected to read prescriptions or even properly complete the forms they need to fill in to receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement? The government noted that over 200,000 Canadians were not receiving the supplement because they did not know they were entitled to it. Information about it had not reached seniors. And because seniors do not necessarily read well or perhaps have trouble reading, we used this program [literacy]. By making it impossible for them to complete such tasks, which are so familiar to us, are we not jeopardizing the independence and health of Francophone seniors in Canada?[225]

The low literacy rate of Francophones outside Quebec also has a historical dimension:

In Northern Ontario, there is a tradition: people live off the land, or from mining or forestry. In the past, they didn't necessarily need training. But the market has changed radically; it’s a bit like the fisheries in Eastern Canada. The people we call Ontario's first generation are not a first generation of new Canadians; they are the first generation not to have access to a post-secondary education. The rate in Northern Ontario is among the highest. We just cannot continue like this. If our youth are unable to write their own name or prepare their own resume, try and imagine what their chances of survival are, either in the trades or any other type of employment. It's an impossible situation.[226]

Francophone minority communities are therefore at a significant disadvantage when it comes to the growth of technology and the knowledge-based economy. This affects rural communities more than others, especially those in New Brunswick:

How are we in New Brunswick, given the realities of our Francophone communities with respect to the labour force, going to be able to cope with needs for ultra-qualified workers in context of globalization, and given our high illiteracy rate? You mentioned a key project, one that would have a direct impact on Canada's economy and on Canada's positioning from a global standpoint.[227]

Considering once again that the Government of Canada has an obligation to foster the vitality of official language minority communities, the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 28

That the federal government establish a literacy program, in partnership with the provinces, territories and communities in order to offer Francophone communities outside Quebec and the Anglophone community of Quebec better opportunities to contribute to Canada’s knowledge-based economy.

4.6. Promotion of French

The Constitution of Canada has guaranteed the equality of French and English in the parliamentary institutions of Canada and Quebec since 1867, of Manitoba since 1870 (abolished, then re-established in 1979), and of New Brunswick since 1993. Since 1969, the Official Languages Act has guaranteed that same equality in federal services to and communications with the public in institutions of the Government of Canada in regions designated bilingual, where numbers warrant, and in regions designated bilingual for the purposes of work in the institutions of the Government of Canada. Since 1988, the Official Languages Act has committed the federal government to enhancing the vitality of the language minorities and supporting their development, and to promoting full recognition and use of French and English within Canadian society. In 2005, that commitment became an obligation to take positive measures.

The principle underlying the Constitution, and the Official Languages Act of 1969, was formal symmetry between the two languages. The addition of Part VII of the Act in 1988, by announcing a commitment to enhance the vitality of the linguistic minorities and promote full recognition and use of the two languages, introduced a principle that requires asymmetrical action in favour of French. The reason is quite simple: English, as the international language of communication around the world and the first language of virtually all North American, exerts a pull on Canada’s 7 million Francophones incomparably more powerful than any pull that French could exert on Canada’s Anglophones. In other words, the effort needed to maintain that formal equality will have to be greater in the case of French and minority Francophones than of English and minority Anglophones.

That in no way diminishes the problems that Quebec’s Anglophone communities face, particularly those outside the Montreal area, whose efforts to maintain their vitality have met with mixed success. On the contrary, the advantages that these communities benefited from in the past, as well as the relatively enviable situation of Anglophones in Montreal compared to Francophones outside Quebec, masks the decline of the communities in the rest of the province, and means that their claims are met with less sympathy than perhaps they should be. Unlike the Francophone minority communities, which are beginning to believe that it may be possible to consolidate their gains, the Anglophones of Quebec are grappling with an inability to act that does not even allow them to view the future with optimism. An admittedly fragile, yet real, balance seems to have been reached in the acceptance of the need for Quebec to adopt legislative measures that can in part counter English’s gravitational pull. It must be recognized however that this balance was achieved at the price of tools important to the vitality of the Anglophone communities, in particular their inability nowadays to accept Anglophone immigrants into their school system. We have no intention of questioning the inestimable value of that linguistic balance; we are simply recognizing that the loss of certain tools to ensure their vitality might produce a sense of resignation among some of those concerned about the vitality of that community.

Moreover, their under-representation in the federal public service in Quebec is seen as a sign of the lack of attention paid to this community in the federal policy framework on official languages. This objection is also the only one involving Part VI of the Official Languages Act (equal opportunities in the public service), since Francophones have an advantage pursuant to this Part of the Act.

But we have to face facts and state clearly that promoting linguistic duality essentially means promoting French, both outside Quebec and in Quebec even for Anglophones, which at the same time means accepting the fact that the Francophone minority communities are eminently more fragile than the Anglophone communities as a rule.

In the section on education, we saw that the effort to promote French had to begin with the parents who have the option of sending their child to a French-language school. Such an awareness-raising campaign, if successful, would be likely to have a long-term effect on the vitality of the communities, and this effort to raise awareness should be a priority.

In conjunction with that awareness-raising, it became evident during the Committee’s cross-Canada tour that recognition of French was more often than not connected with multiculturalism policies that accord French no special place. The members of the Committee were pleased to note that acceptance of French among Anglophones has made noteworthy progress. However, this acceptance seems to be based on a principle of openness to cultural diversity that threatens to dilute the privileged place that French should be accorded as an official language. In other words, French outside of Quebec and New Brunswick should not be considered one language among all the rest. Francophones are not a cultural community. Along with the First Nations and Anglophones, they are a founding people who define the Canadian identity as a whole, from one end of the country to the other.

The comments that the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages made during her appearance before the Committee strike a similar chord:

There is a consensus with respect to official languages: Canada's linguistic duality represents an essential component of Canadian identity and an extraordinary richness for all society.[228]

Professor Wilfrid Denis of the University of Saskatchewan neatly summed up the Committee’s thinking:

We need to find a way to ensure that French is not only an official language, but also a national language. In order to do this, communities and the federal government need to make a concerted effort to increase the visibility of the French language across Canada, particularly in regions where this language is weaker.[229]

We were given examples of this tendency to consider Francophones a cultural community or ethnic group in several provinces, but it was surprising to see so many instances in Ontario:

New immigrants in Ontario tend to settle in certain areas. For instance, Chinese immigrants will move to places where there are a lot of Chinese already, and as a result they can say that they represent 10% or 13% of the population. Consequently, regional organizations or public health organizations will translate their documents in Chinese or in Italian, but not in French.[230]

Before the addition of Part VII in 1988, the role of the federal public service was essentially to be able to offer service in French where it was obliged to do so. In other words, the public service was in the passive position of reacting with annoyance to a real or potential demand. The objective of the amendment of the Act in 2005, and the obligation to take positive measures, should be to transform the public service into an agent for the promotion of French, and at the same time to revive the mandate of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages to promote linguistic duality.[231]

Echoing the statement of the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages that “the government's support of linguistic duality, as a foundation of Canadian society, remains unequivocal,”[232] the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 29

That the Government of Canada, with the support of the regional offices of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, launch a campaign directed at Anglophones to promote French as a national language in support of the efforts made through the federal-provincial-territorial agreements for French as a second language instruction.

4.7. Media

The Action Plan for Official Languages does not make reference to the media. Yet the community media play an important role in supporting the vitality of official language minority communities. They are a catalyst, a beneficiary and an indicator of that vitality. Their contribution to community life is not fully recognized by the federal government, which should use them more to fulfill its own commitment to community vitality.

For instance, community newspapers subsidize cultural events and support community involvement in educational institutions, and this commitment by the media, rather than being a cooperative effort with the federal government as part of its obligation to support community development, is in response to the federal government’s lack of involvement. The media finds itself supporting the federal government’s mandate and, in some cases, doing the work in its place.

A subscription costs $42. We charge the Collège Boréal $12. Therefore, the college receives a $30 subsidy per subscription […] The same holds true for the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, which buys $6,000 worth of advertising per year, but pays us only about $600. We provide the balance for free. Thanks to us, community organizations are able to survive up to a certain point. However, if we cannot bring on board young people today who often only read this newspaper, which is their only source of French at home.[233]

The same community cooperation exists in Manitoba:

We have an agreement with the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine. Every week, we offer two pages of content on students' activities in the schools. We call that the ‘Dans nos écoles’ pages. That automatically enables all the families that have children in a French school to subscribe. That's been in place in our paper for four or five years.

The paper is also investing a great deal in this project. Our agreement with the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine doesn't come close to covering costs, and we're very much aware of that.

We also have the Journal des jeunes, a monthly publication inserted in the paper that's intended for young people and provides news written in a way that young people can read. The Journal des jeunes has subscribers. It's distributed by mail outside the province, and we have customers scattered across Canada: teachers subscribe to it and use it as a basis for their teaching.[234]

The Anglophone community media outside Montréal are also very involved in community development; take the Québec City region:

There are 15,000 anglophones living in a region with a population of 700,000. We have a weekly anglophone newspaper called The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which is very helpful to the community […] We organize special evening activities. We organized one last week at which 12 newcomers came to talk about their experience in Quebec City […] They think our efforts to preserve institutions are important […] It takes an effort, but it also takes money, because we need time and people to get this work done.[235]

The same holds true for community radio:

A number of our community radio stations are located in community centres or schools. For example, a new radio station has just opened in Saint-Jean. The station is located in the school. The studios are on the inside, an antenna on the outside. It is the same at the community centre in Fredericton […] Our community radio stations in New Brunswick […] have reached an agreement with the schools in order to create radio stations for students in the schools. In our opinion, this is a solid foundation for recruiting future volunteers for community radio.[236]

The Committee members want to highlight the commitment of the community media to fulfilling what is, after all, the federal government’s obligation. This shows that the media are very well placed to act as the Canadian government’s agent. In return, this contribution should be recognized and supported financially, because this contribution, in whatever amount, will produce substantial savings compared with what it would have cost the federal government to do similar work with its own resources.

The presence of dynamic and innovative media is a necessary condition for the vitality of official language minority communities, as the Director of the Manitoba newspaper La Liberté put it:

I believe that if there weren't any communications in French, the community wouldn't see itself reflected anywhere. The majority media don't cover matters of interest to Francophones or what they do. If you read the Winnipeg Free Press, if you look at the English-language television networks or if you listen to English-language radio, you won't hear about the people from Saint-Pierre-Jolys or Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes.

As a result, we heard about the official opening of the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes health centre one week before the first sod was turned, and we've been monitoring this file for a long time. People won't find that in other newspapers. The community media obviously play an essential role. People see themselves reflected back home and don't see themselves elsewhere.[237]

Many think that community radio is of secondary importance to Radio-Canada’s involvement in the Francophone minority communities. The Committee recognizes that Radio-Canada does not do enough to promote the vitality of Francophone minority communities. That said, the national broadcaster’s objective and scope are very different from those of community radio, as Steven Watt, from the Newfoundland and Labrador newspaper Le Gaboteur, so aptly put it:

Le Gaboteur newspaper […] is the only French-language newspaper — and almost the only francophone media channel — in Newfoundland and Labrador. Of course, there is a Radio-Canada radio and television journalist here, in St. Johns, but Radio-Canada tends to produce more news stories about what is happening in Newfoundland for the rest of Canada. For our part, we provide Newfoundlanders with true coverage of activities here in Newfoundland.[238]

Because of the importance of its national mandate, the support for community development that Radio-Canada can provide will be limited by its obligation to serve a larger audience. The federal government’s efforts to support community vitality will therefore of course include Radio-Canada, given its regional penetration, but it will also have to rely on the proximity and local roots of community media, which is an excellent way for the federal government to reach out to Francophone communities directly.

The review of the management framework following the lifting of the moratorium on advertising created major administrative hurdles that disadvantage community media, given that campaigns must be prepared several months in advance.[239] Most of the media representatives that the Committee met felt that advertising was the best may to fulfill any mandate that the Government of Canada might give the community media. The reason is that community media are not necessarily non-profit organizations, which would limit their ability to obtain grants or contributions.[240] The members of the Committee are certainly sympathetic to that difficulty, but they also feel that if, as was often mentioned, a media outlet’s minority status makes it impossible to access a sufficiently large local advertising market to ensure its development, then running a for-profit undertaking might not seem the wisest choice, and it is not up to the government to correct that choice.

Moreover, the dispersion of their clientele forces the print media to use mail subscriptions and the radio stations to multiply the number of small transmitters. The development of Internet media may prove promising, but for the moment it seems that these media are effective primarily in support of other media, following the logic of convergence, and not as main sources. In the case of radio stations, and if the community deems it a priority, access to the infrastructure fund that the Committee is recommending be created could prove one option. In the case of the print media, it is necessary to maintain the Publications Assistance Program, which subsidizes postal fees for newspapers and periodicals, and which was previously funded on a 75/25% basis by Canadian Heritage and Canada Post:

La Liberté is a paper with a provincial mandate; it has circulation of 6,000 copies. Half of our readers are in Winnipeg, and the other half are scattered across Manitoba. For us, Canada Post is the only possible way to distribute the paper.[241]

Canada Post has announced it is withdrawing from the Program, thus threatening the survival of a large number of community newspapers.[242]

Since the communications sector was not included in the Action Plan for Official Languages, and considering how much the Plan itself could have benefited from a considerably more sustained media campaign, the role of the community media could prove essential to raising awareness of and promoting a second phase of the Action Plan.

The Committee recommends that:

Recommendation 30

The Government of Canada ensure that publications primarily serving the official language minority communities do not suffer financially from Canada Post’s decision to withdraw its contribution to the Publications Assistance Program and that Canadian Heritage confirm that it is maintaining the program beyond 2008.

The Committee also recommends that:

Recommendation 31

The presence of community media be considered an important element of support to the vitality of the official language minority communities, and that the Government of Canada make these media major partners in its efforts to fulfill its mandate to promote linguistic duality and support community development.

4.8. Arts and culture

The field of arts and culture was, with media, the other glaring absence in the Action Plan for Official Languages, even though it is unquestionably an essential element in community vitality. It is also an element in the development plan of many of the communities that the Committee visited, in Newfoundland and Labrador, for instance:

Although culture has always been a prior[it]y in our development plans or in our annual programs, we have not always had full-time human and financial resources assigned to this file in particular. Culture, since this was my file before becoming the interim director general, was done through financial administration and this part of the infamous sentence ‘performs other duties at the request of management.

Phase I of the cultural position project sponsored by the Fédération culturelle canadienne française made us realize that we have a relatively diverse and vibrant cultural and artistic life. We have musicians, story tellers, painters, writers, poets, gallery curators, as well as guardians of our history and heritage. We want to give them a voice, we want to give them tools and, in particular, we want to promote them.[243]

The development of a dynamic cultural and artistic environment is directly linked to the vitality of the community networks on which this report places a great deal of emphasis. This is a two-fold challenge for the communities, as the Director General of the Centre culturel francophone de Vancouver explained:

We have to find the necessary funding to sponsor the arts, and at the same time we have to find niches in order to promote and distribute them. There, too, funding sources are always inadequate. I don't think it's a lack of will or poor public reception, because the comments and our interactions with the Anglophone majority are always or nearly always positive. We're taking advantage of a climate of openness here, in British Columbia. I don't exactly know all the statistics, but I think that most people in British Columbia come from elsewhere. This is a land of immigration, and that creates a favourable prejudice toward other cultures.[244]

Cultural initiatives depend in large part on the community resources available, because very few things can be organized on a strictly commercial basis. The people in place thus struggle to keep a few cultural projects going. The growth of other activities puts more and more demands on these same people, while the funding for community organizations has not kept up with growth. Given this, until there is a significant reinvestment in support for community organizations, it is almost utopian to envisage a structured plan to support cultural initiatives. The situation in Prince Edward Island is typical:

Since our communities are growing exponentially, demands are becoming greater and greater. We now have community school centres in certain regions, which add to the challenge of managing those bodies.

We don't have the necessary critical mass, like in other provinces, for cultural development to become self-sufficient. Our clientele isn't large enough to pay the inherent expenses of high-quality entertainment or trainers […] To really contribute to the development of our communities, you have to learn the language, of course, but you also have to adopt the culture. In that respect, we have an enormous lack of human and financial resources to achieve our goals and meet the needs of our clientele.[245]

The Fédération culturelle canadienne-française has suggested a number of interesting potential solutions, including the creation of an official languages in culture program complete with a strategic fund, and the integration of an “arts and culture” component into the second phase of the Action Plan.[246]

The Committee recommends:

Recommendation 32

That the arts and culture be considered essential elements for the vitality of the official language minority communities, that this be reflected in the follow-ups to the Action Plan for Official Languages, and that Canadian Heritage add adequate funding for arts and culture projects and the corresponding infrastructures in the “Community Life” component of its official languages support programs.

In order to support the local artistic communities, the Committee also recommends:

Recommendation 33

That Canadian Heritage, when investing in major infrastructure projects related to the Action Plan for Official Languages, add 1% of the value of the investment in order to include an arts project in the infrastructure.

4.9. Justice

The justice sector is one part of the Action Plan for Official Languages that has been most favourably received by the communities involved:

The Action Plan has had the following results: a revitalization of FAJEF and its network; the appointment of a number of bilingual judges; legal training is now offered in French in a number of regions of Canada; legal work instruments are now being prepared in French for practitioners; the promotion of careers in law and justice; the promotion of legal services in French to Francophone litigants; more legal popularization in French and significant networking with Anglophone and Quebec legal associations such as Éducaloi […] We believe that this progress, which we consider significant, would not have been achieved without the action plan.[247]

Of the $45.5 million set aside for the field of justice in the Action Plan for Official Languages, $18.5 million was for targeted measures to improve access to justice in the two official languages, including funding of federal-provincial-territorial initiatives, funding of associations of French-speaking jurists, the creation of a mechanism for consultation with the communities, and the development of educational tools for legal advisors in the Department of Justice. The rest was earmarked for enforcing rulings that modified certain of the Government of Canada’s legal obligations.

Three elements were presented as a priority in order to continue the progress made in this sector: the training and retention of legal professionals capable of working in French,[248] the development of tools to support jurists working in French — raising the awareness of institutions involved in the administration of justice, for instance — and the establishment of a mechanism to identify Francophones in order to create a pool of potential jurors. This final element would involve an amendment to the Statistics Act or an amendment to the questionnaire submitted under the Canada Elections Act to add a question such as this: “Would you agree to having information compiled about official languages you have learned and still understand for the purpose of drawing up lists of potential jurors?”[249]

The Committee accepted this suggestion and recommends:

Recommendation 34

That the Government of Canada continue the effort begun under the Action Plan for Official Languages to facilitate access to justice in both official languages and recommend the most appropriate method for establishing pools of Francophone jurors, in cooperation with the Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française de common law.

4.10. Economic development

There's something else that I always tell my Anglophone counterparts, and that's that, if we work together, we speak the two most powerful languages in the world in economic and political terms. So it's worth the trouble for us to work together: if there's one thing that Anglophones understand, it's the economy. So when we're able to show that our presence has an economic impact, suddenly we're accepted, not only because it's the law, but because we contribute something.[250]

The economic development of the official language minority communities nowadays is closely linked to the dynamism of the Réseau de développement économique et d’employabilité (RDÉE) and their provincial and territorial components. This organization was created in 1998.

The creation of the Enabling Fund in March 2005 bolstered the efforts of the Réseaux de développement économiques et d’employabilité (RDÉE) and the Community Economic Development and Employability Committees (CEDEC), after the review of the mandate of the Official Language Minority Communities Support Fund, by more effectively coordinating applications for assistance to various federal institutions. The Enabling Fund, managed by Service Canada, has an annual budget of $12 million for the last three years of the Action Plan. Many are worried about the survival of the RDÉE after 2008.[251]

The RDÉEs provide communities and business people, that before did not have any, with a range of services in order to support sustainable job creation and the growth of an entrepreneurial culture with a community spirit. One of the RDÉE’s most spectacular achievements occurred after the terrible floods in Manitoba in 1998:

[translation] [Following these events], the Economic Development Council for Manitoba Bilingual Municipalities, the CDEM, created its first vision plan, a community economic development planning model […] Over 300 organizations: business groups, community associations, research and educational institutions, cooperatives, municipalities and provincial and federal departments, community futures development corporations and over 7000 individuals participated in local public planning meetings. The projects that arose from this unprecedented mobilization generated extraordinary benefits in Manitoba alone between 1999 and 2005: 225 new businesses, 3746 temporary jobs, 1159 permanent jobs, 133 community economic development projects, an investment totalling almost half a billion dollars. Each dollar invested had a leverage effect of 650%. A first in our rural communities![252]

The problem for the RDÉEs is that the level of awareness of the official language minority communities can vary markedly among the various federal organizations involved in economic development. It often depends on the openness shown by a few people in the upper echelons of the public service. For example, the cooperation of Service Canada and Canada was exemplary:

Agriculture Canada had a program called Vision and it was a small subsidy of $25,000 allocated to a rural community so that it could pay for the services of a professional consultant and define its assets, its needs, its prospects, and the threats it faces, and so that it can mobilize a little. The program was not used in the Francophone communities. When we realized that, at our table with the federal representatives, we told them that we could perhaps sell the program a little for them. We made sales for them: we sold the Vision programs for $1,500,000. Sixty programs. The communities accepted that easily. And that produced exceptional benefits in Manitoba’s case. Now, the communities are really structured.[253]

It seems that cooperation was more difficult with Industry Canada, which manages over 150 programs for small and medium-sized businesses. Reflecting on the best way to offer these programs to the official language minority communities would help attain the programs’ objectives more fully and would be an excellent way for the Department to fulfil its obligations to take positive measures for community development.

It also seems that the federal government’s involvement is essentially limited to the steps prior to actual development: “Feasibility studies and business plans are mainly being done, and there's not really any money to pursue projects.”[254]

The Committee recommends:

Recommendation 35

That the Government of Canada maintain the Enabling Fund beyond 2008.

Recommendation 36

That the Government of Canada develop a policy framework for the economic development of the official language minority communities:

§         That is focused on the active offer of programs and start-up funding for projects, based on the specific characteristics of the communities;

§         That is under the control of the provinces and territories, while being developed in partnership with the Réseaux de développement économique et d’employabilité and the Community Economic Development and Employability Committees and with the federal economic promotion agencies and the departments involved in economic development.

4.11. Research

The many gaps observed in the information available on the official language minority communities, particularly regarding health and immigration, mean that research must be given a great deal more support. The issue of the vitality of these communities also raises the question of how best to measure it. It is a complex question to which the former Commissioner of Official Languages gave much thought and on which significant preparatory work has been done:

The government and the communities must adopt a consistent approach to vitality based on indicators and research to arrive at better-targeted actions and achieve concrete results for the benefit of Canadian society. We will have to document the measures taken and clarify the objectives by identifying vitality indicators that are relevant and appropriate to the specific circumstances of official language communities.[255]

The avenues for research are known and are particularly numerous. It is now time for action. Therefore, the Committee recommends:

Recommendation 37

That the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages ensure that all federal institutions, consistent with their respective mandates, develop a community vitality strategy based on factual data and sustained researched and focused on practical results, and that a permanent fund be created to subsidize research on the official language minority communities.