I wish to begin by thanking you and the committee members for inviting Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada to appear before your committee as you are undertaking a study of the economic situation of Canada’s minority linguistic communities.
Before I address the study before us, I wanted to bring to your attention the fact that a new era will soon begin for Canada's cooperative movement with the launch of Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, or CMC, on April 1. For the first time, cooperatives and mutual enterprises in every sector and every region of Canada will be represented by a single national bilingual organization.
CMC will assume responsibility for the Canada-based work of its two founding organizations, the Canadian Co-operative Association, or CCA, and the Conseil canadien de la coopération et de la mutualité, the CCCM. The CMC brings together the francophone activities of the CCCM and the anglophone activities of the CCA to form one single national association. A single voice, a common table: this is the cooperative way.
[Translation]
Over the past 125 years, the cooperative formula has been an indispensable tool in the economic development of francophones and Acadians. It allowed them to work and live in their mother tongue, while introducing measures to respect cultural diversity, and ways of doing things that strengthened the use of their language in all sectors of endeavour.
It also allowed them to preserve and support the dynamic nature of Acadian and francophone communities outside of Quebec. It allowed them to get organized in daily life, and to live in the area that they chose. This dynamic is the cornerstone of the survival and lasting development of francophone and Acadian communities in Canada.
[English]
How does the cooperative model play out in assisting the economic situation of Canada’s minority linguistic communities?
Linguistic minority communities often face the challenge of accessing tools and resources that are often not available in their regions. Individuals may have to travel great distances to receive services in their language of choice. This is where we see the benefits of promoting the use of the cooperative model to help the economic situation in minority regions.
Cooperatives bring together individuals with common goals, often when there is a lack of service to meet their collective needs. Language is one of the common elements that can bring people together, even in minority situations, in order to receive the services that they might not have available.
[Translation]
The cooperative model was used by many official language minority communities to sustain their culture, for instance, through cooperative radio in the Maritimes, through a theatre cooperative in Calgary, an Acadian crafts cooperative in Chéticamp, or a francophone publishing cooperative in Regina.
However, cooperatives are not present only in the cultural arena. They are the backbone of the economy in many communities. What would these communities be without the many credit unions, fishers' cooperatives, agricultural and forestry cooperatives? Imagine Embrun without the Embrun Coop, Caraquet without the Caraquet Cooperative, or Saint Boniface without its credit union. Even the annual general meetings of these organizations literally become meeting places for the community. The cooperatives also provide a francophone environment, for instance through housing cooperatives, and we can educate our children in their native language in cooperative daycares such as the one in Chelsea, not far from here.
Finally, these cooperatives are the future of economic life in French in many communities. Indeed, the issue of finding a new generation to take over in business is an open door to the loss of economic assets for official language minority communities. If the executives of a business give it over to someone from outside the community, or worse yet, close it down, there is a far greater danger that the services will no longer be offered in the language of the community than if the community itself takes over the business in the form of a cooperative. A cooperative business will be an asset that it will keep forever, and one that it will benefit from.
[English]
Co-ops have been critical in providing a high level of innovation and services in areas that this government has highlighted as important. This innovation helps improve productivity in a way that specifically meets the needs of communities, including linguistic minority communities. This includes co-ops for food production, health care, child care, seniors' housing, and transportation, as well as grocery stores, funeral homes, and energy production. Co-ops for new agricultural products and domestic food distribution are one of the fastest growing co-op start-ups. The cooperative model of ownership is flexible, responsive, and adaptable enough to respond to many concerns of local communities.
[Translation]
History has shown that in Canada language communities in minority situations have used the cooperative formula for a very long time to give themselves economic and social development tools, and to give themselves services that are at the very heart of the challenges of maintaining and consolidating their community.
The presence of cooperatives in these communities in all sectors of activity bears witness to that most eloquently. The cooperative reflex is deeply rooted in the way of life of the citizens of these communities, who needed to consolidate, to meet and to forge their own development. The cooperatives have molded the history of our country and have been a feature of its identity.
That is why we believe that the cooperative movement is an important partner and supports the federal government in its mandate to promote the development of official language minority communities. The very nature of a cooperative project is implicitly linked to local mobilization and joint action. We think that this groundwork demands some concrete support from the federal government.
How can the cooperative movement support the development of official language minority communities?
[English]
The cooperative movement is a powerful tool in leveraging opportunities for minority groups, such as minority linguistic communities across the country. Co-ops have a well-established member network that can help in outreach and development.
We have 200 professionals who work with new and emerging co-ops on a daily basis from coast to coast to coast, and we have 9,000 co-ops and mutuals in Canada with $370 billion in assets and more than $50 billion in annual revenues. Co-ops exist in all economic sectors, including health care, social, renewable energy, finance, home care, and retail, to name but a few. Cooperatives and mutuals pay out over $1.2 billion in patronage dividends and donations every year.
[Translation]
There are large enterprises and small ones; there are enterprises in all sectors that often compete with each other on the market; in them there are anglophones and francophones and people from all cultures; people from minority communities and majority communities; all are brought together by cooperation.
We believe that the future of Canadian society goes hand in hand with this capacity to use everyone's potential to meet the common needs of our communities. That is why large cooperatives such as the Co-operators, Agropur or UFA are in favour of and support the small cooperative organizations that work with official language minority communities.
The CMC is happy to support the efforts of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, which is conducting this study at this time. We dearly hope that your work will mean that the cooperative movement will finally be considered as an indispensable economic actor in maintaining and developing official language minority communities.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I first want to thank you for having invited the FCFA to address you today.
As the leader of the collaborative networks of francophone and Acadian communities entrusted with seeing to the overall development of these communities, the FCFA is greatly interested in economic issues.
As you may know, the federation coordinates the Leaders' Forum, a group of 43 francophone organizations and institutions that work together to prepare a national strategic plan for communities. In fact, our friends from the CMC are members of it.
The plan has five parts, one devoted to the socio-economic development of francophone and Acadian communities. The objective of the communities in that context is dealing with the aging population and the rural exodus, as well as stimulating employment and economic growth. They want to do so by capitalizing on the dynamic nature of their networks and their private and collective entrepreneurship. They also want to put in place innovative strategies for local development to strengthen human resources, the acquisition of the necessary skills to allow everyone to succeed, as well as the recognition of foreign credentials.
It was with these objectives in mind that the federation addressed the Government of Canada and the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie about the importance of community economic development as a factor in the long-term survival of our communities. The conference and the governments that are a part of that entity provided financial support to the Pan Canadian Forum on Economic Development in the Canadian Francophonie in the fall of 2012.
The integrated action plan developed by that forum takes into account the economic development vision of the various levels of government, the private sector and the community networks. The plan has six main themes, and they are the market and commercialization, entrepreneurship, economic integration, sustainable partnerships, funding and investment, as well as public policy and regulations.
This last element leads me to voice the following basic principle: our communities must absolutely be active players in their own economic development.
Often, certain economic development stakeholders seem to have a tendency to see the communities not as partners but rather as passive recipients of development initiatives. However, the best solutions for social and economic challenges are most often to be found in the rural and local communities themselves, as the government in fact itself recognized, in particular in its 2011 Speech from the Throne.
The second principle is that there are a large variety of community stakeholders who do economic development. Very often, economic development is equated with entrepreneurship. Without wanting to minimize the contribution of business people to the creation of wealth in our communities, it must also be pointed out that the cooperative movement has played a very important role in many development sectors. In 2006, the francophone cooperatives outside of Quebec did more than 7 billion dollars of business.
In addition, economic development is related to employability. We cannot really consider a global economic development strategy without involving colleges and universities, literacy networks and organizations that further the acquisition of basic skills, as well as all of the other stakeholders who contribute to strengthening the human capital of our communities. Indeed, we must not lose sight of the importance of supporting the employability of immigrants as well as of those members of our communities who are unemployed or underemployed.
Finally, let us not forget tourism and culture.
In short, we feel that community economic development has four dimensions. Firstly, there is the entrepreneurial aspect, i.e. the deployment of a variety of production activities and the sale of goods and services. Then there is the enhancement of local resources on a given territory, within the context of partnerships involving both the communities and the private sector, as well as public institutions. The third dimension is the social and economic revitalization of a territory involving employment, housing, training, health and social services and the ownership by the local population of its economic and social development. Finally, the last dimension is that the community must be the both starting point and the final destination as well.
In reality, do things really take place in that way?
I would like to use the few minutes I have left to describe the challenges as the FCFA sees them.
As I mentioned previously, there are a large variety of stakeholders in economic development. Aside from community actors and the private sector there are various levels of government, and interdepartmental relations. The lines of communication and cooperation among the stakeholders are few and the players are not all at the same table. A lot of work gets done in isolation and often without planning that is directly linked to the needs of the community.
For instance, Canada's 2013-2018 official languages roadmap states that the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities will be informed by a continuous dialogue with the communities. However at the regional level that dialogue is not systematic, and varies greatly from one location to another. Nationally, key players in employability such as the francophone colleges, literacy networks and networks for the acquisition of essential skills, and the organizations that are the spokespersons for our communities, do not participate in that dialogue.
Federal departments that are active in economic development such as Industry Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada regularly organize meetings to discuss things with stakeholders in our communities. These meetings allow for the collection of a great deal of information from the field. However, not much is done with that information, whereas it could be used to better design and plan programs and policies. To our knowledge, that information is not used or is not used very much.
The members of this committee who know the FCFA well know to what extent our organization favours an approach based on cooperation and consultation. Our statement today demonstrates that clearly. We are very insistent on that approach because it gives results. Our communities have best managed to set up services and infrastructures in French when they got organized and concerted their efforts, and coordinated their activities around priorities and specific issues.
The money invested by the federal government in economic development in our communities comes from taxpayers. If you only consider the roadmap, we are looking at a sum of almost $100 million over five years. Can we really allow ourselves to continue to function in isolation without getting together and without getting the community to participate in its own development so as to produce concrete and sustainable results?
Regarding the roadmap, we are coming to the end of a first year. The 2014-2015 fiscal year which will begin in a few days will see investments in economic development become concrete. So there is still time to correct things by redirecting those investments in an endogenous development perspective, that is to say development by and for communities, by introducing new methods which would be based on collaboration and consultation.
I will conclude with a few concrete recommendations on economic development in our communities.
Firstly, generally speaking, all of the federal departments have to focus more on endogenous economic development and work with their provincial, territorial, municipal and private sector and community partners using a comprehensive and integrated approach. Those partners must work together to plan programs by region and by community, taking into account all of the stakeholders who should be brought in to participate.
Next, we recommend that the support programs managed by the federal departments and regional economic development agencies be flexible, so as to take into account the particular realities and challenges of the francophone and Acadian communities.
Finally, when federal institutions commission studies or investigations on economic development or employability, they should include language questions that would allow them to have an accurate picture of the situation and of the issues encountered by official language minority communities.
I will be pleased to answer your questions later.
:
Good morning. First of all, I'd like to speak to you about who we are and what we do, and that will provide a context for our analysis and our conclusions.
Youth Employment Services is a non-profit charity whose mission is to enrich the community by providing English-language services to help people find jobs and start small businesses. YES was founded in 1995 by a group of concerned leaders from the business, education, and corporate communities in response to the youth exodus and in recognition that employment was a major strategy in addressing retention.
Retention and renewal is still our primary mission, and every program or activity we engage in is with the purpose of supporting, retaining, and attracting individuals to Quebec. In the broader sense, we do this using a community development approach, building partnerships, attracting and cultivating volunteers, and creating networks. In concrete terms, we do this by providing support services.
Our services respond to the ongoing needs of our clients and our community. We help people start and grow businesses, find employment, and help artists who need the business skills to succeed economically through their art. We modify and adjust our programs to ensure that our services remain relevant.
We provide over 1,200 workshops at our downtown location and online. We hold events and conferences, provide coaching and counselling—over 5,000 sessions last year—mentors and internships, and we work with over 400 volunteers and a variety of partners and funders.
We pride ourselves on our ability to build strong partnerships with the business community, Broccolini, Aldo, BeaverTails, and Bombardier; with the arts community with David Usher, Lorraine Klaasen, and Jennifer Gasoi; with the academic community with the universities and colleges; with the community sector with the QCGN members; with the francophone community organizations; and with the media.
We do a regular spots on Global. We're present on CTV and the CBC, in The Gazette, and others.
The objective is to bring together networks and our clients. We work with a variety of funders from both the provincial and federal governments, foundations, corporations, and we do our own fundraising and pay-for-services activities.
In 1993 we helped over 120 clients. Today we help over 4,600 individuals who visit our downtown location close to 15,000 times a year. As well, we now have the capacity through technology to service areas outside of Montreal that need English-language services, and we are working closely with many of our regional partners, including Voice of English-speaking Québec, CASA, and others to ensure that English-language services are available in the regions of Quebec.
We also have programs where our coaches are able to provide services at the offices of our regional partners. Each year YES hosts four major conferences, including the largest English-language entrepreneurial conference and the only artists conference.
In 2008 YES did a report on the barriers to employment and self-employment for the OLMC new arrivals and visible minorities entitled, “Self-Employment and Employment in Quebec’s English-speaking Cultural Communities and Visible Minorities: Prospects and Problems”.
Between 2011 and 2012, YES brought together the OLMC partners to look at the issues of economic development of the OLMC. This research and discussion took place over a two-year span and resulted in a report entitled, “Regional Development of English Language Entrepreneurial Services”, which we have distributed today. This was in follow-up to a report done by the QCGN in 2008.
In 2013, YES recognized an increase in mental health issues within our client base and did a study with the support of the CHSSN, “Building Youth Resiliency and Community Vitality within Montreal’s English Language Population” to quantify what we were observing.
In 2013, with the support of the Status of Women, YES did a gender-based analysis to better understand the needs of women in the field of technology in Quebec. As a result, we are building exciting new partnerships in the technology industry, including Google and Ubisoft. This week we will be matching 20 women with 20 tech companies at a speed-interviewing event being held at Google.
As a result of these studies, YES has created a variety of programs to respond to all of these reports. We take a holistic approach in our responses. You can see some of these programs in the packages that we have distributed. Research allows our community to quantify the issues that we see emerging and these are an invaluable tool.
YES also heads up the employment services round table, the only coalition of community employment organizations that provide English-language employment services. This table was set up in 1998, when the federal government transferred payments and responsibilities to the provincial government, to ensure the continuity and health of English-language employment services. It continues to meet regularly.
I'll pass you to Iris Unger now.
:
What are we currently seeing?
Obviously, the current political situation is having an impact on what we are seeing and hearing, but I would like to address the issue in more general terms.
Youth unemployment and underemployment is often quoted at about 13% for both Canada and Quebec, but this figure, from my perspective, is really not an accurate figure, in that it does not include those who are underemployed or have dropped out of the job market altogether. I would estimate the figure being much higher. Members of the OLMC face even greater challenges as members of a minority community. Many of our clients have university degrees and are living below the poverty level. TD Economics' report on youth unemployment states that the financial impact will be $23.1 billion in lost wages over the next 18 years. The issue becomes: what impact will this have on our community?
As a result of being unemployed and underemployed many of the young people are facing situational mental health issues. Many feel isolated and have no networks to support them, as demonstrated by the reports that we have just undertaken. I also want to clarify that our organization has grown and most of the clients we see fall between the ages of about 22 to 40 years old, but we also see older people who are coming to us for support for entrepreneurial help, and our artist clientele have no age restrictions.
Many young people who are English-speaking are coming to Quebec for a variety of reasons and can be very instrumental in the renewal of our communities. Many are attracted by the creative economy and in many cases they have been recruited by what's being referred to as creative companies. They often come with families, and they come to Quebec with the hopes of joining this creative economy.
We've worked with the spouses, we've worked with the people who come hoping to get jobs, and many of them find themselves underemployed or working on short-term contracts or underpaid jobs. Many young people as well go to English universities in Quebec and want to stay in Quebec. We also see them at our doors. New government policies have made it a bit easier for these people to remain in Quebec, but they also, again, have the potential of renewing our community and need the support to remain.
It is very difficult for new arrivals to access English-language support, so they either will integrate into the majority community or will leave and use Quebec as an entry point for Canada. There are many people interested in entrepreneurship in the OLMC for a variety of reasons but one of them is their difficulty in finding jobs, so they create their own businesses. Last year we helped more than 700 businesses get launched or sustained.
A large percentage of the OLMC is made up of visible minority communities as well, who are struggling with a whole variety of difficult and systemic issues. They are a minority within a minority.
Youth from the OLMC are reluctant to go into the trades or government jobs for a variety of reasons including: the lack of training for many of the trades, the heavy influence of trade unions in Quebec, and government bureaucracy and forms in French only. If they succeed in getting employment, there is often a sense of exclusion on the job. There is also a perception related to language competencies and complexities related to government positions in the province.
There is also difficulty in accessing English-language services, and much of the funding is going to para-government or government agencies in Quebec that don't necessarily meet the needs, or there is not the perception that they will meet the needs of those in our community.
Many individuals, especially new arrivals from the OLMC, lack networks as identified in all of our studies. There is a skills mismatch between what young people are learning in university and what the needs of employers are. This is a universal issue, but again, it impacts proportionately our community.
Internships work as a vital tool for the OLMC to retain young adults seeking career opportunities in Quebec. They clearly need the community sector's involvement in their success. Thanks to the Youth Employment Strategy we've had great success with those.
I will quickly pass it to John for the conclusion and recommendations.
:
Community organizations have played and continue to play a crucial role in the vitality of the OLMC as it relates to retention and renewal of the OLMC, whether the group is in Montreal or in the regions. They provide services, a network, an entry point to a community, and a place that makes community members feel part of that community. Groups need the financial support and stability to do their jobs. Project funding is not sustainable.
Community organizations have an important job to do but spend an inordinate amount of time trying to secure funding instead of focusing on their mission. It is an important and economical investment on the part of the government, but we need to also add businesses to the dialogue. Government can possibly look at ways and incentives to encourage businesses to be part of that dialogue. Many of the issues related to renewal and retention—employment and immigration to name two—fall under provincial jurisdictions and this makes addressing already complex issues even more difficult. The federal government may be able to play a role in helping the community build those bridges.
Community organizations, governments, and businesses all need to work together to ensure adequate resources for the community organizations to address issues that are crucial to the health and future of the OLMC. These issues are intergovernmental, interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, and intersectorial, and they need multi-pronged and creative responses. They can't be dealt with piecemeal or hampered by jurisdictions.
Today young people and many business leaders would say this situation needs an organic response because the issues are more complex, are moving quickly, and don't fit into tidy matrix graphs and boxes. We all need to be thinking more organically in our responses to the issue of renewal and retention for the OLMC in Quebec, as it is ultimately having an important impact on our youth, our economy, our province, and our country.
Thank you.
:
Sure. There are national tables in various departments and in several of our organizations. I do not want to just talk about the departments because there are national and local tables too. Our impression is that not all stakeholders participate. There are a lot of economic players, including the co-operatives, of course. There is the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité in the provinces, as well as RDEE Canada at the national level. There are colleges and universities, as well as communities.
For parents, it would be easy to say to their children that they are going to plan the rest of their lives, without having them participate in the planning, and just tell them what they have to do. But things do not work like that.
We should take the time to talk to each other. Each community has an overall development plan. Collectively, we have a national strategic plan for communities. The Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie has just held an economic development forum where they came up with an integrated plan. Another strategic plan is being done at the moment. How many strategic plans are we going to have? Can we not all get together and discuss how we are going to go about doing things?
Departments often tell us that they have not thought about the desired objectives. We have had that discussion right here when we had the consultations about the last Roadmap. We want specific, measurable results. Before a program is implemented, can people not sit down with the communities to find out what they need?
If you just want hard-nosed economic development, it will no longer be economic development for minority francophone communities. I am an entrepreneur. I could just go with the majority and drop all this, but I take pride in operating my two businesses in French and in English in minority situations.
When a program is being considered for implementation, can we not make sure that all the stakeholders in economic development are at the national and local tables? I am talking about co-operatives, if there are any, and about colleges and universities, but communities should be at the table too. If community economic development programs are put in place without having the communities participate in the process, there is going to be a serious problem.
:
Yes, indeed. Previously, there were two co-operative networks in Canada, one francophone and one anglophone. They had existed for goodness knows how long for historical reasons. Basically, francophones made up about 45% of the co-operatives, 60% of the assets, 60% of the jobs and 50% of the revenue. So it really was split down the middle.
We asked ourselves why we would not come together, why we would not give ourselves a stronger voice to make the co-operative model known, both here in the House and with the public. We also realized that it would allow us to exchange better business practices. Some models existed among francophone co-operatives but not in the anglophone ones, and vice versa. So we decided to co-operate and to see how we could provide each other with more mutual support. It is very important to point out that anglophone co-operatives are now helping francophones outside Quebec and vice versa. This is the true co-operative spirit, for the good of Canadian society.
Our revenue is $50 billion, with $370 billion in assets that belong to Canadians. It is important to stress that this is not private money; it is money from ordinary men and women in the street. All of us around this table, for example, hold co-operatives.
Our growth rate in terms of both assets and jobs has been higher than for private enterprise in recent years. Our survival rate is double that of private enterprise. That means that, five or ten years after a business has been set up, it is twice as likely to continue if it has been set up as a co-operative. The engine is real.
It is also important to know that, during the recovery, it has been shown, in Canada and elsewhere in the world, that co-operative financial institutions have been more stable than private financial institutions. The explanation is that the goal of a co-operative is for the business to be sustainable, to exist in the long term. Profit is not the most important thing; the priority is rather to keep jobs and services in the community.
My thanks to all the witnesses appearing here today. It is very much appreciated. You seem like a very diversified group to me.
You are probably aware that our government is focused above all on job creation, especially for young people, as well as on economic growth and long-term prosperity. This is very important for our generation, but also for all generations to come.
This morning, I was at a meeting put on by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada. It was a book launch. I have to say that chartered accountants—I am an accountant myself—are also focused on financial literacy. I have a quotation here that comes from this morning's presentation. Unfortunately, it is in English only.
[English]
The report identified financial literacy as critical to the prosperity of Canada, pointing out that, “Increasing the knowledge, skills and confidence of Canadians to make responsible financial decisions will help them meet their personal goals, enhance their quality of life and make Canada more competitive.”
[Translation]
This morning was the launch of the publication called. Protecting you and your money: a guide to avoiding identity theft and fraud. They also launched two other books dealing, I think, with financial literacy for young people and for Canadians as a whole.
The objective of the government and of the chartered accountants is to educate people all over Canada in financial matters. I see a close link between what we and your federation are both looking for.
Ms. Bossé, do you want to comment on that?
:
Thank you for asking this question, which is so important. There are various aspects to the answer.
For instance, OECD's international investigations assess the levels of literacy and numeracy, whether it be in computer science, math, science or another field. The results of those investigations conducted under OECD's PEICA were published last fall. Canadian Heritage, Statistics Canada and other departments have joined forces with our community organizations, including Réseau pour le développement de l'alphabétisme et des connaissances, and with FCFA to see how those data could help us better understand the specific needs of our communities, in order to develop retraining and equivalency programs.
There are linguistic data, but the resulting analysis will not have sufficient sampling of our francophone minority communities to make it possible to know the needs that vary, depending on whether the communities are rural or urban.
Two or three years ago, the same problem came up when Employment and Social Development Canada, Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage and Statistics Canada joined forces to conduct a study on francophone companies to find out how the francophone business community was doing. Unfortunately, it was not possible to put together the databases, because not all the investigations that were carried out included linguistic data. Once again, we do not have access to information dealing specifically with the communities.
It is important to include research that enables us to understand our own challenges and circumstances. That is the only way the federal, provincial and territorial governments can fully understand them as well. We are dealing with a serious challenge.
I hope that answers your question.
:
I didn't plant this question—I want to put that on the record—but I would have, if I could have.
Thank you, Jamie, for your question and for your compliments. We all work really hard in the community. Getting a compliment is very much appreciated, so thank you.
As I mentioned, all the community organizations spend much of their time doing grant proposals and reporting. If there is a way that you can facilitate that....
Unfortunately, community organizations are set up with the same standards as businesses, with expectations of evaluation results. But we're not given the resources to do those kinds of evaluations and monitoring and accountability. We take it very seriously—yes, we invest that money—but there's no recognition.
Much of our fundraising goes to providing jobs for people at our organization who can do those things, because we recognize the importance of such people as the accountant, the evaluators, or grant writers. We need those people in order to function or to evaluate whether we are doing a good job and having results. But this is an area for which we don't get funding.
If there were additional funding for the community organizations to help them build their capacity in those areas....
:
Another strategic plan is being implemented by the anglophone community in Quebec and by francophone and Acadian communities, in collaboration with economic development organizations, CEDEC and RDEE Canada.
You will understand that we are very concerned by the fact that the economic situation in English-speaking Quebec is not the same as in the francophone and Acadian communities. I would not go so far as to say that everything is rosy in Quebec, but let's just say that Quebec has more English-speaking employers or employers looking for people who speak English than our communities have employers looking for people who speak French.
A strategic plan is taking shape, but what I'm most afraid of is that we are going to end up with a plan that will mix the needs of anglophones in with the needs of francophones.
Also, there has not been a lot of consultation on how to approach the strategic plan that is being developed jointly with CEDEC, RDEE and Air Canada. Neither QCGN nor FCFA were really consulted before being presented with a done deal. That raises a lot of questions for us.
Right now, the survey questions coming out of the boxes from RDEE Canada and CEDEC deal more with entrepreneurship. So the survey questions are targeting entrepreneurs more than the communities.
Just now, I pointed out that communities need to be there, need to be consulted. If you want to talk about my economic development, I need to be there to be able to tell you about my reality, meaning the rural exodus in my community, the shortage of jobs for young people, and entrepreneurship training.
However, the survey that is going around—and in which we encourage our members to participate—deals more with my needs and priorities as an entrepreneur. I think that's a good thing because this is the first time I have ever been asked about it, but the other economic development organizations, of which I am a member, should not be forgotten. Of course, I think it is important that I am surveyed as an entrepreneur, but economic development is not limited to entrepreneurs. When a strategy is prepared, it is important to include organizations such as QCGN, YES and CMC, instead of working in a vacuum.
Earlier, I pointed the finger at the government, but I am also ready to point the finger at some of our francophone and anglophone organizations that decide to work in a vacuum. That serves no one. That is not a good use of taxpayers' money and the needs of communities are not met. Let's try to open things up.
My role is neither to stand up for the interests of an organization, a secretariat or an office, nor to stand up for a budget or for employees. I am sorry, Suzanne, but my role is to stand up for francophone and Acadian communities. If we don't all work together in that direction, we might as well close the doors and go home. I am not ready to do that, even though our organization has a long way to go. The government must encourage everyone to sit at the same table and promote those types of opportunities.
The concept of community-oriented schools implies that the whole community is there. In terms of immigration, I always say that it takes an entire community to welcome an immigrant. The same goes for economic development, culture and other areas. The entire community must participate and be involved.
:
Actually, the majority of organizations work well.
As you know, our funding has not gone up in years. We have the same pie for the same number of organizations, but sometimes we must share it with emerging organizations. As a result, the pieces of the pie are getting smaller while the amount of work is going up.
Unfortunately, some organizations or interest groups have got it into their heads that they should make sure they have their own budget. However, the goal is not to ensure that everyone has their own budget, but rather that, at the end of the day, all the work the organizations do meets the needs of the people in our communities. Let's not protect our budget or our courses at all costs.
As I said earlier, the roadmap anticipates an investment of $100 million over five years in economic development. However, the government must make sure it specifies what results it expects before it distributes the $100 million. It is important to specify that everyone is expected to work together to achieve x, y or z results in terms of employability, for instance, or when young people, seniors and women need to be integrated into the labour market, to combat the rural exodus, to create companies and to encourage entrepreneurship.
Right now, we don't have any of that. At the end of the day, it is your money, our money that we are getting. Will this money be used to develop 35,000 strategies without doing anything tangible? Our communities really need economic development. Let's work on it. However, let's first make sure that, when all is said and done, the money distributed will be used for the desired outcome.
:
Actually, economic development is not the only goal. I am referring to all the issues related to communities.
In terms of economic development, there is CMC of course, but there are also colleges, universities and RDEEs. Many organizations are working on economic development. For instance, a women's organization in Manitoba also looks after the employability of immigrants and works with employers. There are many.
It is important that everyone works together, hand in hand, and agrees on the common strategies. However, before all those stakeholders agree on a common strategy, the community must be consulted to find out what its real needs are. That varies from province to province. As I said, the needs are different for our francophones and for our anglophone friends. The needs, the realities and the issues are not the same.
I am not at all saying that economic stakeholders must be eliminated. What I am saying is that we must work together. Some things on the ground are working very well. The co-ops are doing very well, the RDEEs in some communities are doing very well. We just have to work together better.
:
As I said earlier, I myself am an entrepreneur. With respect to red tape, since I was already a manager before I started my company, I had a fairly good idea of the market and the field in question. Still I got in touch with the community economic development organization in our area. I said that I wanted to create a business plan and asked what I would need.
I was given a BDC template to fill out. I came back with this huge brick. I needed someone to help me. I drafted my business plan. Then, I was told that there was no funding available to help me with my business plan and that I had to use a consultant, which would cost me $5,000. I had already done all that. My plan was very long.
Put yourself in the shoes of young university graduates who want to start their own business because there aren't really any jobs where they live. Nobody is going to help with their business plans. And it will cost them $5,000. First, we have to wonder where they would get that money and, then consider that they do not necessarily have the experience I had that enabled me to draft most of my business plan myself.
Entrepreneurs' needs vary. If you are a francophone living in Saskatchewan and you want to work in French, it is even more difficult.
You were talking about red tape. I think that access to the funding, education, management, support and expertise the communities need is a very important aspect that is currently lacking.
:
That's an excellent question.
[Translation]
What is a francophone entrepreneur?
[English]
We haven't even decided what that is.
[Translation]
What makes me a francophone entrepreneur?
[English]
Is it my mother tongue? Is it my first spoken official language? Is it the way I operate my business bilingually, or not bilingually? Is it the way I let my employees speak French or English? What is a French business?
I consider my business to be a French bilingual business. The language spoken is French so I operate in French. Mind you, I'm a translation company, so of course, I'm a bilingual company as well.
That being said, we haven't established what it is. So you will have groups that work within employment services that will tell you there are so many English businesses in Quebec and so many French businesses. Basically, I don't know what their numbers are based on because we haven't established what is
[Translation]
a francophone business.
What defines a francophone business? Is it the language of work? Is it the language of the owner? I could be a francophone owner and do business in English, but because my name is Marie-France and I am francophone, you could say that my business is francophone.
First, it would be important to define that.
Second, we just said that we've created 30,000 businesses in our communities, but what is that number based on? Is it the owner's mother tongue?
In any event, there is a francophone space. I can say that there is at least one francophone employer in a minority situation, that is to say me, but I know there are many others.
A little earlier, I mentioned some numbers on francophone co-operatives outside Quebec. Their revenue was over $7 billion. So there is a significant francophone space.
Furthermore, I would say that the francophone space at home, in another business I have that is not a translation business, is also bilingual. Obviously, if I want to do business or seek funding at home in Saskatchewan, I need to go and see anglophones. My francophone space is also bilingual.
The economic contribution of my businesses to my province and to the federal government is still quiet impressive, even though they are small businesses.