LANG Committee Report

Dissenting Recommendations: Report by the Official Languages Committee on Immigration to Minority Communities

Preamble

We hereby present to the Standing Committee on Official Languages our concerns with the conclusions of the most recent report on immigration to minority communities.

This report should reflect the many difficulties faced by immigrants in Canada’s minority communities. However, it is obvious to us that the report has been sanitized and that its conclusions do not reflect the realities of francophone communities in terms of the measures, legislation and regulations governing immigration to their communities.

Over the years, the legal, education and social rights of francophones in all provinces across this country have been eroding. In most provinces they have seen their numbers and demographic weight dwindle to dangerous levels, and like the witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages, we firmly believe in an immigration policy that reflects not only the contemporary, but also the historical reality of francophone communities.

We are no longer able to extol the virtues of institutional bilingualism in international forums and deny the reality of how linguistic duality is experienced on a daily basis in our communities.

We need to come up with regulations and programs able to build viable social infrastructure for francophone communities.

Francophone immigration to minority communities will remain simply an illusion if the government does not agree to specific measures for recruiting francophones from Europe and/or Africa.

We cannot help develop a bicultural democracy without agreeing to develop a comprehensive policy on francophone immigration.

Endorsing the Standing Committee on Official Languages’ report in its current form would be admitting that francophone immigration to minority communities is doomed to failure in the short term.

Introduction to the recommendations

Dozens of community representatives, economists and legal practitioners have stressed the importance of immigration to French-language minority communities.

The urgent need to act with respect to francophone immigrants emerged as an essential condition for the proposals from the witnesses who appeared before the Committee.

All francophone communities have become vulnerable in the face of the new world economic order. For many communities around the world, immigration has become a lifeline, and Canada has been greatly affected economically and socially. We need to welcome immigrants not only to our communities, but also into our institutions and our strong democratic tradition. The co-existence of Canada’s anglophone and francophone communities lies in the origins of our legal system and political institutions. We therefore need to encourage immigration and the inclusion of immigrants into our two official languages to ensure the survival of our democracy and our sense of equality and justice.

1. The federal government is responsible for developing immigration policy and must come up with specific immigration policies for francophone minority communities;
2. The federal government must reach agreements with the provinces on francophone immigration to ensure that regional realities are reflected in settlement programs for francophone immigrants;
3. Federal targets on francophone immigration are not achievable given the little support provided to host communities in terms of logistics and efforts to integrate these immigrants. Consequently, the federal government must invest in community infrastructure to the same extent as it invests in promoting francophone immigration;
4. Investments in language training and immigrant settlement need to be increased given the disparity of host communities and the weak community structures currently in place;
5. The federal government must intensify its investments in language training for all immigrants, all categories combined;
6. The Express Entry program must now specifically consider francophone immigrants to minority communities by creating a separate category of criteria for issuing the relevant visas;
7. The federal government is obligated to promote Canada’s linguistic duality in its missions, embassies and consulates abroad as well as facilitate advertising for francophone immigration to minority communities;
8. In the short and medium terms, the federal government must develop a strategy for francophone immigration to minority communities that considers the regional nature of communities spread out across Canada; and
9. The promotion of French must be adapted to all minority employers in order to support the hiring of francophone immigrants.

Lise St-Denis, Member of the Standing Committee on Official Languages and the MP for St-Maurice-Champlain

27 May 2015