Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, honourable members. I have prepared a presentation, which you should have in front of you. I will just quickly deliver my presentation. I will take just 10 minutes or so in order to leave as much time as possible for questions.

My presentation is structured in three themes that I propose discussing this morning.

First I will provide a bit of context. I know that you have already heard a few presentations that have provided you with a lot of information on this. I know that my colleagues from Statistics Canada were here earlier this week. I will quickly say a few words about the context.

I also want to spend a bit of time explaining the role and programs of Canadian Heritage that have an impact on economic development, in order to inform your debates and your study.

Then, as part of the third topic, we will spend a bit of time talking about economic development in the context of the roadmap, which is a well known tool and a rather important one in official languages.

Let's begin with context. I won't go into the details, because I know that the presentation by my colleagues from Statistics Canada already provided you with a great deal of figures. I simply want to talk about each of the two minority groups, namely francophones outside Quebec and anglophones in Quebec. I will illustrate and quickly present some of the major trends and observations.

Over the past number of years, we have seen francophone minority communities close a historic gap in terms of the economy and social development. This has happened over the past 40 years or so.

Obviously, the government has made efforts to support the development of the communities. This increased in the 1980s. Today, we see that for the most part, the economic situation of members of minority communities is comparable to that of the majority.

Obviously, nothing is perfect. There are regions, places and groups that still have challenges. For example, people often cite the case of northern New Brunswick, which is facing many challenges. That is where we have to be very sensitive to the realities that might vary from region to region.

The second bullet on page 3 talks about something important. Education has certainly played a role in the communities' development, both in terms of social aspects such as the sense of belonging and of the economy.

The anglophone minority community in Quebec is facing challenges in terms of level of labour market participation for its young people. The unemployment rate is higher than it is for the majority. Their salary and average income are not the same as the majority either. Challenges exist and they are specific to the anglophone minority community in Quebec.

That is it in terms of context.

I will now quickly move on to the role of the federal government. I am on page 4.

I'm sure that we are all familiar with part VII of the Official Languages Act and the two objectives in that part. The act provides an obligation, a duty, for the federal government to enhance the vitality of official language minority communities, and that is the centrepiece of part VII. But there is also, as we know, the obligation to foster the full recognition of our two official languages. That is the backstage for everything we do.

I think there is no dispute that economic development, at the very least, helps enhance the vitality of a community. Therefore, we feel this is a good match to consider and that we should look into economic development and the obligations we have under the act.

More specifically, with Canadian Heritage—and I'll come back to this in more detail on the next page, but just to set the stage very broadly—we have another program, of course, at Canadian Heritage on official languages. One is of particular interest, I think, to the study of the committee. It is the development of the official language communities program that we have. It accounts for about $225 million a year.

Of course, you have in the bracket here, in the bullet, a description of the nature of the kinds of activities that we conduct with that money, and the minister was before you recently to talk about the annual report, as well.

But the point that I wanted to make is that although the program is not aimed or does not have as an objective the fostering of community development per se, it is clear that when we foster all kinds of activities, we are actually providing, at least indirectly, some support to community development.

This is particularly true, I think, when it comes to education, for example, which is a pillar for making sure that development occurs, both socially and economically.

The department also coordinates the road map. I will talk about that a little more at the end. It is one of the tasks we have. I also wanted to spend a bit of time talking to you about the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie, where there have been a number of discussions over the last few years. I think it would be of interest to the committee to hear more about it.

Let me turn quickly to page 5. As you can see, we have laid out there in a little more detail what we do with the official language communities program at my department. One of the key cornerstones of what we do is support for education, at both the elementary and secondary levels, but also with the provinces in a growing fashion. We're supporting their efforts to develop post-secondary opportunities, programs, and services for the many communities as well. Post-secondary education actually plays quite a significant role in fostering and supporting economic development.

You see that, overall, when we look back at the last term of agreements with the provinces for education, we spent about $122 million supporting their efforts in post-secondary education.

I mention this quickly in passing. There are also a number of programs at the department in other areas that are not even aimed at official languages per se, but are open to official language minority communities as well, especially in arts and culture, for instance. We know how important that sector can be economically as well.

So it depends on how you define the scope, I suppose, of what you want to study today, how indirect you want to allow yourself to be, because you can actually look at a great number of activities carried out in the department that contribute to economic development.

Let us talk about the MCCF. This is the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie. It's a gathering of all the ministers from all jurisdictions that meet once a year to discuss the Canadian francophonie and its issues. Interestingly, the conference has had, for a number of years now, concerns and an interest in economic development. I think it goes back to the meeting in 2009 where it was decided that attention would be paid to economic development by the ministerial conference. That itself, I guess, is good evidence of the fact that even the provinces and territories are paying attention to that in the context of minority communities.

There has been a working group of senior public servants established across the provinces, territories, and federal government. It's co-chaired by the federal government, with the Government of Quebec. We've been working with this group to encourage the organization of an economic development forum. That actually took place in 2012. On the slide, you will see a few of the parameters for that forum, which took place at the encouragement of the Canadian francophonie ministerial conference. We had a great number of participants who came from three broad sectors: the public, community, and the private sectors. The private sector references the business sector, of course, in a sense.

The outcome of the conference was an integrated action plan with six pillars of action that were established by consensus during the conference. We can provide you with more information on this one, if you'd like. We have the report from the forum. If there's any interest, we'd be happy to share that with the committee.

The conference chair has been an active supporter of the organization of that conference. We're very happy, very proud that it actually took place and was a good success. It was organized by a committee, again made up of representatives from the public sector, the business sector, and the community sector. It was chaired by Madame Aldéa Landry from New Brunswick.

The forum was held in fall 2012 and we initiated national consultations around roughly the same time, in summer 2012, to try to define the communities' needs and areas of interest in the context of renewing the roadmap.

During the entire summer, the minister responsible, or some of his colleagues who replaced him, visited 22 cities and listened to what people had to say. Interested parties were also able to have their say through the website. We were able to connect with more than 2,600 people that way.

Economic development certainly came up as something important and of interest to the communities. When considering different scenarios for renewing the roadmap, we knew that economic development was important, relevant and valuable.

I am on page 8.

We also evaluated the various components of the Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages 2008-13, including three initiatives in the area of economic development in the former and current roadmap, namely the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities, the Economic Development Initiative, and the Strengthening the Language Industry and Technologies program, which is part of the National Research Council of Canada's responsibility. The evaluations find that the initiatives are useful and relevant, which reassures us.

I am on page 9.

When we were building the roadmap, we gave a lot of room to economic development. You know that the roadmap is based on three pillars. The communities pillar includes two programs that specifically target economic development, namely the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities and the Economic Development Initiative. That being said, it is true that all three pillars have a strong economic bent. The pillar that targets immigration focuses specifically on economic immigration. As far as education is concerned, I have already mentioned a few times the importance of education in a community's development on all levels, including economic development.

I will skip page 10. Essentially, last week you heard my colleagues from Industry Canada and agencies talk about the EDI, the Economic Development Initiative. My colleagues from Employment and Social Development Canada could also answer all your questions on the Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities. This page simply summarizes the three main initiatives in the roadmap.

In closing, economic development is recognized as important to a community's development and vitality, and especially its sustainability. The federal government's commitments, efforts and activities reflect that.

I will stop there.

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