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Results: 136 - 150 of 223
View Bernard Généreux Profile
CPC (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the speech my colleague from the region gave. He is a parliamentary secretary, as my other colleague said earlier.
Apparently the situation we are in now has been in the making for months, maybe even for more than a year. The government talks about partnering with the provinces, but it looks more like the government wants provinces to shoulder the burden. In this country, the federal government has a role to play for minorities and in all services provided to francophone minorities.
I would like to ask my colleague how he and his party were involved in coming up with proposals.
Over the past year, what have my colleague and his government done to assess the situation? They had to have seen it coming. It did not just come out of nowhere. On February 12, the institution was in bankruptcy protection, but there had to have been discussions before that.
How was my colleague involved?
View Marc Serré Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Marc Serré Profile
2021-04-14 22:16
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I want to reassure my colleague that since 2015, the member for Sudbury and I have both been working closely with the administration and staff. We have had the opportunity to support Laurentian University's programming on several occasions.
Obviously, as far as the board is concerned, there are still short-term implications and financial problems, but I can say that, personally, I did not expect the institution to file for protection under the CCAA.
Laurentian University has made a drastic decision, but this is where we are, and we need to look at what solutions are available to support the university during this trying time. The most important thing today is to look at how, together, we can support the staff and students. The plan remains the same. We need to work with the province to find a way to do that. There is no easy solution or answer to such a difficult situation for Laurentian University, the faculty and the students.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I am so interested in speaking to this topic, a university in Sudbury, Ontario. I am a member from the west coast of Canada, almost as far away from Sudbury as one can get in Canada, and I am speaking on the heels of a member of Parliament from that region. I have a great deal of respect for that, and I speak tonight with a bit of trepidation.
The reason I am so interested in the topic is that I understand that Laurentian University has a very big French speaking department. I am a proud Canadian, and my Canada was founded by two founding nations: one French speaking and one English speaking. I was raised by immigrants from Europe, Dutch speakers, and they were very proud to become Canadians. To them, Canada was two languages, French and English. That is the way I was raised and that is the way we raised our children. A lot of people out here on the west coast, even though British Columbia is English speaking, the most unilingual province in the whole country, are very interested in what is going on in Ontario, in the Franco-Ontarian community and in universities like Laurentian University, which is doing its part to promote the French language.
As I said, Canada was founded by two founding nations, but it is not geographic, first and foremost. The Ottawa River is not the dividing line between French Canada and English Canada. Canada is dual from coast to coast. That is the Canada for which I am standing. That is why I got into politics. I am a passionate Canadian and I want to do my part to promote unity within that diversity. That is what Canada is and that is the Canada for which I want to fight.
Even though I am out here on the west coast, I am very interested in the topic, and I do not stand alone. I know that many people in my riding are passionate about Canada and about the dual nature of Canada. If we look at French immersion enrolment in British Columbia, it is very big: 6,400 British Columbia students are enrolled in French immersion schools. If we could build more, more people would go. I know there are a number of them in my riding here, and the parents and the children are passionate about what they do. We could double the number of French immersion programs and we would fill them.
I know I do not stand alone. I am speaking on behalf of, and I am confident I have the backing of, my constituents when I am passionate about Canada being both French and English. I applaud the efforts of universities like Laurentian University that would put that forward.
I said I was raised by—
View Blake Richards Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I did not hear the member, but I believe he was intending to split his time with the member for London—Fanshawe. I did not know if I had heard it, so I thought I would check.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my whip for that. I will be splitting my time with the member for London—Fanshawe.
Laurentian exemplifies the duality of Canada, but, unfortunately, today it finds itself under creditor protection under the CCAA, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. I do not know the arrangements and circumstances under which that had to become a reality for it, but it is indeed sad. I understand that it will be axing 58 undergraduate programs. Of those, 34 are English language and 24 French are language. That decision is going to have a disproportionate negative effect on the Franco-Ontarian community. That is unacceptable.
I talked about French immersion being popular in elementary schools and high schools in British Columbia, but that does not necessarily translate into students then going on to French language universities. It is not true in British Columbia and I understand it is not true in Ontario. Therefore, the closure of this French language program represents a lost opportunity to promote French and a truly bilingual Canada.
Financial woes for universities across the country have become a reality, not just for this university but right across the nation, including a private university in my riding of Langley—Aldergrove, Trinity Western University. A lot of the financial challenges that universities face have come to light in the pandemic. We have discovered that universities rely very heavily on income from foreign students. Of course, with the closure of our borders and restrictions on temporary foreign students coming into the country, that has hurt a lot.
What the solution is I do not know. We are all optimistic that the pandemic will soon be over and maybe by next year, foreign students will come back in big numbers. Canada's universities are leading academic institutions and there will always be an attraction among foreign students to come to Canada.
Universities also rely on corporate partnerships. I am a Conservative and I applaud that. I applaud private initiative, which is a good thing, but it can lead to problems as well. A lot of our research chairs are funded by foreign corporations, which creates a real challenge if those foreign corporations are owned and controlled by foreign nations, especially if those nations are not particularly friendly to Canada.
I am thinking of companies like Huawei that have financed research chairs. They get the best and the brightest of Canadians to use their intellectual prowess to find new technologies and then the foreign nation takes the technology with it. It walks right out the front door. Canada needs to do something to protect intellectual property assets within Canada, to promote more research and development and to protect universities and corporations.
One idea that has been floated is patent collectives. Canada is a big country geographically, but small in number, so we need to band together to protect our intellectual property assets, our universities and keep our IP at home, working productively for our country and economy so we can export that. We should not be exporting our students or our intellectual property. We should be developing all of that at home and selling the finished product through patent licenses, for example.
The CanSino vaccine fiasco is a great example of where Canada is failing industrially. All Canadians thought that Canada was one of the leading countries in the industrialized world, so we were all very shocked to find out that we did not even have our own pharmaceutical industry. We cannot even develop our own vaccines to keep ourselves safe. We are lagging way behind other countries in vaccinating our citizens. Certainly, too, with the country that we like to compare ourselves to, the United States, which is right next door to us, we have fallen far behind. How did that happen?
There is a fundamental problem that Canada faces, and that is a lack of industrial willpower to do it on our own. Canadian universities have to be a central part of that.
That was a bit of a diversion away from the main topic of what is happening at Laurentian University. I understand it is not necessarily a research university, but the work that it is doing is very important. I would applaud any efforts that we could apply to keep this university sound and healthy.
It is not for the federal government to tell the province how it must build, promote and defend its universities and it is certainly not for me, a member of Parliament from the west coast, to tell Ontario what it must do or tell the university how it must survive and thrive.
I want the university community, the Franco-Ontario community and all Ontarians to know that we out here on the west coast have a great deal of emotional investment in what is going on in the country and in the university community. We stand behind them. Please make this happen. Make Laurentian University survive. We have their backs.
View Denis Trudel Profile
BQ (QC)
Madam Speaker, I am a bit sad. In this debate, there is talk of small measures. The government will invest a bit more money in immersion here, give a bit of money for post-secondary studies there, and so forth.
This is the second time in a year that we are having a debate on French. I have been fighting for French in Quebec for 20 years. In North America, 3% of the population is francophone. For anglophones, this issue may not be clear. Across the border, we have the United States of America. It has the most dominant and overpowering culture in the history of humanity, what with Netflix and its ilk and all the films, music and songs flooding over the border. How can we compete with that unless we declare a real linguistic emergency in Quebec and Canada?
I think that the Official Languages Act has been a failure. We should immediately declare an emergency over the French language so that we can bring in the significant measures we need to save French in Canada and Quebec.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I would do whatever is possible to protect the French language. It is a part of Canada's culture. We must defend it and protect it.
I recognize what the hon. member is saying about our living right next door to the United States, an English-speaking country of about 350 million people The French language needs proactive investment and protection. It is a beautiful language, but it does need help to withstand the onslaught of the English language in North America. I understand and appreciate that.
View Gord Johns Profile
NDP (BC)
Madam Speaker, I understand there are only three midwifery programs in all of Ontario. All the student midwives in the Ottawa region, for example, are from Laurentian as it has the only French program in Ontario. We know midwives are essential to improve maternal and newborn outcomes, and they deliver important care to marginalized communities. People who have given birth have said constantly that midwives provide holistic, inclusive, medical and emotional care. This is even more critical for indigenous communities and communities of colour. Getting a midwife is hard enough and losing Laurentian cuts one-third of the training programs.
My question for the member is this. Who should be accountable for the demise of a highly reputable centre of higher learning like Laurentian University, its board of directors or the Doug Ford Conservative government?
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, there are severe economic strains and stresses throughout Canada's economy. Universities are not immune from that. I do not know the source of all the financial blows for Laurentian University, but universities are primarily a creature of the provincial government. I would encourage the government to work together with the university community to keep that university alive and well. Maybe it needs to focus more on certain programs than others.
I am not in a position to tell the university how it needs to govern itself and how it needs to remain strong and vibrant. However, certainly there are good solutions that well-meaning people and intelligent people, when they put their heads together, can come up with.
View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
Madam Speaker, I have been listening to this debate, and I think it is really important that we maintain the French language in universities, but also the revitalization and protection of indigenous languages.
Universities are struggling across this country. In my own riding, Vancouver Island University struggles for funding and has to reach out for corporate funding. I listened to the hon. member talk about corporate funding, but then he highlighted some of the issues that were related to that. Universities become too dependent on it, and corporations end up making out like bandits. I am wondering where the disconnect is, if he sees that disconnect.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, it is a problem if the partnership is with foreign corporations that are controlled by foreign nations that are not friendly to us; that is the problem. I do not think there is a problem with universities partnering with well-funded, responsible Canadian corporations.
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
NDP (ON)
Madam Speaker, I want to start off tonight by thanking my colleague from Timmins—James Bay for his work on this issue and for requesting this emergency debate.
I also want to recognize your hard work, Madam Speaker, as the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing. You have been serving in the Chair, so you are not allowed to speak, but we have been talking about this and working on this issue for so long. I know how dedicated you are to the students, staff and community of Laurentian University, so I want to thank you for that as well.
Because you have been an incredible advocate, you shared with me that your own son, Shawn Hughes, is an alumnus of the biomedical science program at Laurentian. You talked to me about your niece, Emily Reese, and your staff member's daughter, Izabel Timeriski, who are all students in the biomedical science program that is now being cut. These are amazing young people with so much potential, but in order to complete their education, now they have to leave home.
The crisis at Laurentian University is one that should not be a surprise, however. After years of neglect and underfunding from federal and provincial governments, Canada's post-secondary education system is in trouble. The COVID-19 crisis has of course exacerbated this situation.
Laurentian University received insolvency protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on February 1. This is important to note, as this is the first time a public university has declared insolvency and been granted insolvency protection by the courts in Canada.
Years of investment by Canadians have built this institution, like so many other post-secondary institutions across Canada. Now we see a provincial Conservative government willing to dismantle it, and a federal Liberal government standing on the sidelines watching it happen. Words of empathy from a Liberal government will not pay the bills at Laurentian University.
Canada's New Democrats, in concert with Ontario New Democrats, will not be silent, however, and we will not let Laurentian be sold off to the banks. We will fight to protect our education system and protect these institutions that Canadians have built.
Laurentian is a public post-secondary institution with a tricultural mandate to support French, English and indigenous communities. This institution is an essential economic driver in Sudbury and the third-largest employer. It serves as a beacon for francophone excellence and indigenous research and reconciliation.
The impeding restructuring and cuts will result in devastating impacts on students, workers and community members. This week, over 100 faculty members received termination notices. The university is also cutting nearly 70 programs, including entire departments, many of which are unique indigenous and francophone programs that Laurentian is mandated to support. It is also cutting programs like engineering, math, economics, entrepreneurship, nursing and midwifery.
Specifically in regard to the midwifery programs, there are only three in Ontario. They are offered at McMaster, Ryerson and Laurentian. The program being cut at Laurentian was offered in English and French, and in fact it is the only bilingual midwifery program available not only in Ontario but in Canada.
Of course, the impact on female students is measurable, as the majority of students who generally take this program are women. The midwifery program also benefited many indigenous students, since it allowed indigenous graduates to provide important health services to their local communities and particularly to the women in those communities.
Reproductive health services are severely lacking throughout Canada, but this is especially true in rural, remote and northern communities. Earlier, I rose in this House to speak about the importance of providing fair and equal access for women to health services in Canada. There are significant disparities between rural and urban access to these services, and midwives are often the major providers of women's reproductive health services in underserviced areas.
Hundreds of people are forced to travel out of their communities to access reproductive health services and must pay for travel expenses out of pocket. Travelling to another city for these procedures can mean having to take time off work, planning or paying for child care or elder care, and some people cannot afford those expenses. Access to services should not depend on one's postal code or income. I said that earlier this evening, and I will say it again.
This is a human rights violation, and it contravenes the Canada Health Act. Throughout Canada, access to health services in remote, marginalized and indigenous communities or communities that remain removed from urban centres because of religious choice, like Amish communities, depend a great deal on midwives and the services that graduates from Laurentian provide.
Fifty-two per cent of students who attend Laurentian are the first in their family to pursue a post-secondary education, and 65% of Laurentian alumni reside in northern Ontario after they graduate. These are people who stay in their communities and offer the training and help they learned from Laurentian, and this is so important.
I want to share a story from a dear friend of mine, Kathi Wilson, who works as an assistant professor in the midwifery education program. She said, “Yesterday I did a presentation on Zoom for the third-year class of midwifery students at Laurentian. They would have only just been informed of the termination of their program, and I thought, 'Will they even be able to focus on what I'm teaching them today?' I figured they must be devastated, but I was so impressed with how engaged they were.”
Kathi continued, “They asked me interesting and challenging questions and made thoughtful comments. Truthfully, they were an instructor's dream to teach. Their passion for the profession of midwifery and care for childbearing people shone through, even on Zoom. They will become excellent midwives, but they deserve to be able to do that in a university where they have been attending, with professors and instructors that they know.”
She concluded, saying, “Ontario and Canada need more midwives, especially racialized, francophone and indigenous midwives, to serve diverse communities, and we need the Laurentian midwifery education program to be able to meet our growing need.”
I want to thank Kathi for sharing her story with me. I also want to focus on an important point that she makes, and that is the diversity and strength these students have. The cutting of this program will directly impact the 14 faculty members who are women, the 120 students in the program, many of whom are indigenous, Black or persons of colour, francophone, and trans or non-binary folk.
In recent years, Laurentian has made important strides toward providing indigenous programming in courses that incorporate traditional teachings and indigenous language. These programs are a crucial component of reconciliation. We keep hearing about the government's commitment to reconciliation, yet this institution is failing right before their very eyes. What good are all the pretty words without the action needed to back them up. It is the government's responsibility to help this institution.
Laurentian University is and must continue to be an important part of our commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action on indigenous education. This institution has an immense impact on indigenous communities in Canada, and if the government lets it fail, it will represent the first indigenous studies program to be shuttered since the discipline began in 1969.
I spoke to people at the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and they were clear that without indigenous studies programs we have no indigenous language teaching at Laurentian. There are more than 1,200 indigenous learners without access to formal language instruction if they want or need it, and virtually no indigenous content requirement courses for other students.
Tonight, we have heard from members of the government on this crisis, and their response is to say that they feel bad or that this is not in their jurisdiction. Repeatedly, we see the government fail to take responsibility. It is this attitude that has left so many indigenous communities behind and has led to the poverty rates we see on and off reserve, and the boil water advisories across Canada. After all the signalling and words from this Prime Minister and the government, how can the government just sit there and do nothing once again?
I often plead with the government, on humane or compassionate grounds, to act, but I find often when it comes to Liberals and Conservatives, it is only about money. Across the country, universities are facing losses in the hundreds and millions of dollars, and now, because of COVID-19, in the billions of dollars.
In Ontario, the rising costs and revenue shortfalls from COVID-19 total more than $1 billion. In British Columbia, universities and colleges have requested an exemption to run deficits of more than $178 million. With the university seeking bankruptcy protection, its liabilities may expand and this may raise costs for universities across Ontario and Canada as banks reassess the risk of lending to them.
In other words, without action now, this crisis will spill over to other universities. This should not be a surprise to the government members as they have left colleges and universities to struggle alone throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion back in May 2020 to ask that the Canada emergency wage subsidy be extended to them. I asked the same question in the House several times. The minister's only response was, “We'll think about it; we'll talk about it”.
After a lot of thinking and a lot of talking, we now see the result of the lack of action from the government. The question now is this: Will the government wait another year, think about it a little longer and do nothing, or will it finally take the necessary steps to save Laurentian University?
View Francis Drouin Profile
Lib. (ON)
Madam Speaker, you are also a francophone member from northern Ontario. I salute you and I stand with you.
I thank my colleague for her speech. Does she think that minority language universities should be 100% funded by the government, or should the government fight to ensure their relevance and funding in partnership with provincial governments? If the funding comes only from the federal government, it would have major repercussions in all other provinces.
How much does she think the government should invest?
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
NDP (ON)
Madam Speaker, there is an important role for the federal government to ensure that there are many services provided to Canadians equally, fairly and in a balanced way. Education is certainly one of them.
The federal government certainly has a role to fund post-secondary education. It has failed in that role for many years. The transfer payments that universities were provided through the provinces have not moved or increased in the way they need to. That has actually shifted a lot of the responsibility to students, who have to pay a lot more in tuition, and it has left universities looking for other alternatives.
The member who spoke before me talked about turning to private partnerships. This is unacceptable. It is the federal government's responsibility to ensure fairness and balance throughout the post-secondary education system.
View Mario Beaulieu Profile
BQ (QC)
Madam Speaker, we talked about Laurentian University. The University of Sudbury also wants to become a French-language university. We say that schools must be “by francophones, for francophones”, because bilingual and immersion schools often facilitate the assimilation of francophones. The same more or less holds true for universities.
Does my colleague think that the government should strongly support the University of Sudbury's plan to become a French-language institution?
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