Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue No. 24 - Evidence - Meeting of May 7, 2018
OTTAWA, Monday, May 7, 2018
The Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages met in public this day at 5:03 p.m. to continue its study on Canadians’ views on modernizing the Official Languages Act, and in camera for consideration of an agenda and a draft budget.
Senator René Cormier (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good afternoon, my name is René Cormier, and I am a senator from New Brunswick. I am pleased to chair the meeting today.
[English]
The Standing Committee on Official Languages is continuing the second part of its study on the views of official language minority communities and the modernization of the Official Languages Act.
We are pleased to welcome organizations that represent the English-speaking cultural industries community of Quebec. From Montreal, by video conference, we welcome Guy Rodgers, Executive Director, English Language Arts Network; and Kirwan Cox, Executive Director, Quebec English-Language Production Council.
The English Language Arts Network is an organization that supports and creates opportunities for Quebec’s English-speaking artists and arts communities and the Quebec English-Language Production Council represents the English language film and television production industry in Quebec. I invite the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Smith: Larry Smith, Quebec.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Welcome. I am Raymonde Gagné from Manitoba.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: Paul McIntyre, New Brunswick.
The Chair: Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Cox, thank you for being with us today.
Guy Rodgers, Executive Director, English Language Arts Network: I would like to thank the Senate committee for allowing me to appear by video link from Montreal. My name is Guy Rodgers, the Executive Director of the English Language Arts Network, which connects English language artists in all artistic disciplines and in many regions of Quebec. ELAN was created in 2004 and would not have been possible without the Official Languages Act.
In the final years of the 20th century, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage operated a matching fund under the auspices of the Interdepartmental Partnership with Official Language Communities, also known as IPOLC or PICLO. English-speaking artists were involved in overseeing the distribution of those funds, and over a period of four or five years, we came to understand how the Official Languages Act functions and how it could contribute to the vitality of our artistic community, which had suffered a massive exodus between the years 1975 and 1995.
It is no secret that when the Official Languages Act was created, Quebec’s English-speaking community was not thought of as a vulnerable linguistic minority. That situation has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Statistics demonstrate that obstacles and challenges are faced by many of our communities, particularly those in remote locations.
The English-speaking communities of Quebec City, for example, once constituted more than 40 per cent of the total population and were capable of building educational, medical and artistic institutions. The anglo population there is now under 2 per cent, and they struggle to maintain historical institutions.
The recent nature of this social shift is evident in the newness of our modern institutions. The Quebec Community Groups Network is barely 20 years old, ELAN is not yet 15 years old, and QUPC, who will be speaking next, is not even 10 years old. Many of our members feel abandoned by Quebec as part of a correction of historical inequities, although it is a pernicious myth that anglos were always rich and powerful.
Our members also feel abandoned, or at least somewhat neglected, by Canada. The fate of Quebec’s English-language speaking minority gets lost within the thorny and unresolved question of Quebec’s relationship to the rest of Canada, known as the ROC, leaving us between a proverbial rock and a hard place for English speakers.
For the past 20 years, the Official Languages Act has been one of the consistent good-news stories for our communities. It is a pity that more of our members and fellow citizens do not understand or appreciate the valuable support we have received from the Official Languages Act. I’m going to refer to a few examples from the arts sector.
As a direct result of the Official Languages Act, ELAN has collaborated with the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network and the Department of Canadian Heritage to produce an annual arts, culture and heritage working group with departments throughout the federal institutions. We have been doing that for eight years. These meetings have greatly increased our community’s knowledge of federal funds and programs and how to apply.
In the years 2016 to 2018, ELAN’s Arts, Communities, Educational project known as ACE developed supervised artistic content in schools around Quebec that encouraged creativity and youth engagement. The pilot projects were so beneficial to our youth that a larger version was among the first projects funded by Quebec’s new anglo secretariat last month, which was a significant turning point in our support from the province.
ELAN just received last month’s confirmation that the Department of Canadian Heritage will be funding, for a fourth year, Arts Alive Quebec. This is a series of weekend arts festivals in small towns in the Eastern Townships, the Montérégie and the Outaouais. These festivals have been a tremendous source of community vitality and positive interactions between English-language speaking members of the community and their francophone neighbours.
I want to close with a few recommendations: First, Canada’s official language minority communities should be partners in the Official Languages Act’s implementation. This could take the form of an advisory council with representatives from both linguistic minority communities.
Second, it is important that Part V of the act be given clearer definitions specifically for the terms: positive measures, enhancing vitality and assisting in their development.
Third, official-language-minority communities require resources to maintain ongoing conversations about community needs and to inform our members of opportunities. The recent action plan is an excellent example of new opportunities that are little understood by many members of our community. The Community Cultural Action Fund has been around for a few years, so a number of people understand that and have applied for it. The new funds for community radio are of significant interest to many small communities that have tried to develop community radio projects and will be trying to inform them of how they can find support for their projects and also community spaces.
Many partners with ELAN in Arts Alive Quebec are not part of the Quebec Community Groups Network, so they need specific support in understanding how they can receive development funds for their cultural spaces.
Finally, we need enhanced research capacity to measure shifts in vitality and to assess impacts of projects and policies.
Thank you for listening to these opening remarks, and I look forward to answering any questions that you may wish to pose to me.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Rodgers. Now, we will hear Mr. Cox. The floor is yours.
Kirwan Cox, Executive Director, Quebec English-Language Production Council: Thank you for this invitation to speak to you. I don’t think I have ever been in this building before. so I’m really happy to have this opportunity. My name is Kirwan Cox. I am Executive Director of the Quebec English-Language Production Council, and we represent the official language minority film and television production industry in Quebec.
We have had some experience with the Official Languages Act and the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Let me start by saying that, without the OLA and OCOL, there would probably not be an English-language production industry in Quebec. Toronto is the centre of our industry, and we have been losing production to Toronto or Vancouver for more than a generation. Our industry has been declining since 1999, when we had $306 million in production. That represented 22 per cent of the national English-language domestic industry. By 2015-16, our production had fallen to 127 million or 7 per cent of the national industry. That is the lowest level in our history.
Our production would be even lower were it not for television production funded by the Canada Media Fund. CMF-funded TV has been growing, while all other official-language-minority production has been in steep decline. Why? The reason is the Official Languages Act.
In 2010, the Canada Media Fund said that we were just another English region, but the regional rules didn’t work for us. The CRTC said we were not a region, which meant we weren’t eligible for regional support. Heritage said that the Canada Media Fund was not subject to the Official Languages Act, so we couldn’t be treated as an official-language-minority community. We were outside the pale and had nothing to lose, so we filed a complaint to OCOL about PCH and CMF. It took three years for OCOL to investigate. OCOL said we were right. CMF was subject to the Official Languages Act, and Heritage needed to give the Canada Media Fund clearer direction in its contribution agreement to mitigate our decline.
CRTC gave us regional status, and CMF created the Anglophone Minority Incentive fund. This new fund did not have enough money, but the rules now made sense. Our CMF-funded production has been growing since the AMI was set up, thanks to the act and Graham Fraser. A victory, but we are still losing ground. We are not being treated the same as the French minority, which has a guaranteed 10 per cent share of CMF’s French envelope. Unlike the French minority, we have no guaranteed funding. Our overall production continues to decline. Work is leaving for Toronto, and with it goes our talent. Without these well-paid jobs, our youth are leaving.
What to do? First, we believe the language of Part VII of the act needs to be more specific. What is a positive measure? How do you define “vitality” or “measure development?” What does equality mean, given the obvious differences between the English and French minorities?
Second, the act should empower the official-language-minority associations and provide them with the tools they need to defend official-language-minority interests.
There has to be the capacity and resources in the associations to do the research needed to make our case. We need much more research funding.
Third, the act should provide OCOL with a variety of tools so that it can deal with situations like ours without undertaking a full-blown, multi-year investigation. Maybe an arbitration process where OCOL, the federal institution, and a complainant such as ourselves can meet and come to an agreement based on a clearer act.
Fourth, in our case, we need better provincial support. Tricky, I know, but can the act not provide for better coordination with the provinces to support official language minorities?
Finally, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages needs better-defined powers to enforce its decisions. We have provided you with answers to OCOL’s consultation questions, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Cox. We start our question period with Senator Gagné.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Thank you for your presentation. You both referred to Part VII of the act. Under that part of the legislation, federal institutions have a duty to take positive measures — as you point out — to implement the federal government’s commitment with regard to the development of anglophone communities in Quebec. My first question is: how do you define “positive measures” within your context?
[English]
The Chair: Who would like to answer? Mr. Rodgers?
Mr. Rodgers: I’ll try to answer that question. A positive measure is one that has a beneficial, positive, measurable impact. What is lacking currently in Part VII is a definition or ways of measuring or determining if these aspirations have been achieved.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Okay.
[English]
Mr. Cox: I don’t have much to add to that except that there should be some kind of a quantitative measurement so that, if, as in our case, we have statistics that show things are going down, then maybe the CRTC or maybe Heritage or somebody else says, “Okay, they have to undertake positive measures.” How do you find out whether that positive measure has had an impact? It is with that that we need to have the research to undertake an understanding of what they’ve done and what the results are.
In our experience, a lot of federal institutions put in official-language-minority wording in whatever they do to show that they are really on top of it, but, in fact, the actions they undertake may even be counterproductive.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Okay. You both also mentioned the impact of the recently announced Action Plan on Official Languages and the importance of the investments for ensuring the development of your communities. Was the anglophone community of Quebec sufficiently consulted during the drafting process of this action plan?
[English]
Mr. Rodgers: I think the general feeling was that consultation was quite adequate in terms of sectors, regions, different perspectives. That was done largely with funding with the support of the federal government.
So the consultation was comprehensive and adequate. Where there is a lack now is taking the action plan and for us to communicate to our citizens and our members without that mechanism for bringing them together and sharing information. So there is a lack of capacity for us to make our members aware of the many opportunities available in the new action plan, how they could benefit from it and how they should apply for it.
Mr. Cox: We weren’t consulted, so I don’t have anything to say about it.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Do you think that the consultation component should be reinforced in the review of the Official Languages Act?
[English]
Mr. Rodgers: I think that the consultation, for the most part, felt quite comprehensive, quite adequate. What I’m hearing from many members within the English-speaking community is that we would like this to happen on an ongoing basis as your new plan is being implemented.
I made the recommendation that we don’t have a good consultation once every 10, 20 or 30 years but that there be ongoing dialogue to ensure that as the plan is implemented the intentions behind the recommendations are applied in ways that are beneficial to our communities.
Mr. Cox: I would agree.
[Translation]
Senator Gagné: Okay.
I have one last question, again in the same vein. Mr. Rodgers, you mentioned the importance of establishing an advisory committee to advise the minister on public policies. Do you believe that we should further define the partnership between the federal government and the anglophone communities in Quebec under the legislation?
[English]
Mr. Rodgers: Most of the people I speak to would say yes. I’m sure as you are going through consultations, yes. The needs and interests of Quebec are quite specific and sometimes are lost in the shuffle.
I’ll give you one example. When we created ELAN, one of the first things we tried to do was apply for funding for websites, and there was a fund available for the website for I think what were called at the time “major organizations,” and the definition of a “major organization” was to be present in three provinces or more. When I called Ottawa and said ELAN was representing English-language speaking artists in the same capacity as FCCF for French-speaking artists outside Quebec, they said, “Great. How many provinces are you present in?” It took about a year and a half to talk that through and realize that QCGN is similar to FCFA, ELAN is similar to FCCF, but there are times when a lot of time, energy and frustration is spent trying to correct a problem that should never have been there and could have been fixed easily by having a discussion mechanism in place.
Senator McIntyre: Gentlemen, thank you for your presentations. On April 23 of this year, the Government of Quebec made an important announcement to the effect that an agreement that flows to $1 million over two years with Concordia University in collaboration with five other organizations to support the vitality of the English-speaking community throughout Quebec would be signed. For example, this would apply to expanding school programs, improving tourism and so on.
Mr. Rodgers, I note that ELAN is part of this agreement, and I believe you have stated that ELAN is eager to expand its program from five to 15 schools. Could you tell us a little more about what this agreement consists of, how this funding will help your organization expand its program from five to 15 schools and what other projects you are considering implementing with these funds?
Mr. Rodgers: Just to put this in context, there are often places within the bureaucracy in Quebec where English speakers feel disconnected. That’s probably the best way to put it. They don’t have access to bureaucrats at the right level or knowledge of the policies, so we have been asking for many years to create something equivalent to the secretariat for Franco-Ontarians. This has been some years in discussion, and the final implication means that, yes, there is money. Education and arts are both provincial jurisdiction, so the province should be actively involved in supporting English-speaking schools and students.
We are hoping to have more direct contact with ministries and people within the bureaucracies who have more support from the province for our schools and students. We know there are federal-provincial agreements that have been more or less well developed in the past, and we are hoping that now with this greater receptivity on the part of the province, specifically, ministries of education and arts, that we can make better use of these federal-provincial ententes for the development of our community.
Senator McIntyre: Mr. Cox, I note that your organization isn’t part of this agreement. Could you explain why?
Mr. Cox: No one mentioned it to us.
Senator McIntyre: Okay. I understand that funding is one of the main challenges your organization is facing. Are there any other challenges that your organization is facing that you would like to discuss with us, apart from funding?
Mr. Cox: Well, I suppose one issue that we found some difficulty with is getting access to some of the ministries — let’s leave it at federal — and feeling that we had good communication links. I think that was a question.
One of the advantages of the new anglophone secretariat in Quebec is that there is now a secretariat that can act as a traffic manager to say, “Okay, you know, here we’ll help you get access to this ministry or this minister or whatever.” That has been very helpful at the Quebec level, and we would hope that at the federal level it might be possible to get more active communications and links with the various elements in the federal government.
Senator McIntyre: I note that in 2015 both your organizations signed an agreement with Telefilm Canada to support arts and culture development in Quebec’s English-speaking communities. Can you tell us a little more about this agreement, Mr. Rodgers?
Mr. Rodgers: The 2015 agreement was with the National Film Board. We are currently in discussions with Telefilm for similar agreement, but the agreement in 2015 was with the National Film Board. There are a number of objectives. When ELAN and QUPC interface with producers, we do so in two different capacities. Kerwin and his group represent funding and production, and ELAN represents the community and representations.
One of the features of the new agreement with the National Film Board was the playlist of some of their many films created over the last 60 years by English-speaking producers and about the English-speaking community. They started to create a playlist now available to seniors centres and schools, which is part of our vitality and reflection in telling our story, and this ties into other advocacy we have done with Videotron’s community channel MAtv, and even with Télé-Quebec, where we asked them to represent the English-speaking community.
The agreement also created an open house, which is a very simple event for filmmakers, musicians, composers, et cetera to come into the offices of the National Film Board to have the programs described to them to meet producers and develop connections. The National Film Board has tended to be a closed shop — they work with people they know — and opening it up to the community was a tremendous benefit to our artists, and I know that the people at the National Film Board were really surprised by the quality of people working and writing music and direction that they encountered during that evening.
Those are two examples of the kinds of things that can flow from an agreement of this nature.
Kerwin has more to say about production, I’m sure.
Mr. Cox: Yes. This is the first agreement of its type, and so the National Film Board gets kudos for having taken the initiative.
I should point out that on the French side, there is an umbrella agreement signed by Heritage with the National Film Board, CBC, Telefilm and so forth, and we don’t have anything like that on the English side. This was an initiative project.
One of the important things from our point of view was that, again, by looking at the data, we realized that production was going downhill at the film board in Montreal, and, in fact, they were moving a lot of their production to places like Vancouver. The NFB has its digital studio in Vancouver.
We pointed out to the National Film Board that we thought this was a problem and in that agreement we all agreed on a floor for English language NFB production in Quebec.
Therefore, when you’re talking about positive measures, this is a quantifiable number that the National Film Board should stay above. If they don’t stay above it, there’s not much we can do about it, but anyway, it’s a goodwill opportunity and makes both ourselves and the film board understand there is an obligation to try and keep to a certain minimum level.
We haven’t found any other federal institutions that have wanted to do a similar collaboration agreement and that’s something we hope they will begin to do.
Senator McIntyre: I mentioned funding was one of your main challenges but it appears another challenge you have is licensing criteria for Canadian broadcasters to ensure English-language production. Can you elaborate a bit on that?
Mr. Cox: The licence criteria? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
Senator McIntyre: Licensing for Canadian broadcasters.
Mr. Cox: Canadian broadcasters get a licence from the CRTC. There is a big problem now because the over-the-tops like Netflix, Google and Facebook are undermining the business model of Canadian broadcasters. We are finding that if we, the Government of Canada, don’t do something about this, there’s going to be increasingly less money for Canadian production wherever it’s made. We’re very concerned about that in terms of the future.
In terms of the CRTC licensing certain things, we felt one of the issues that the CRTC has done is to not provide a proper licence for broadcast groups. Cabinet referred that decision back to the CRTC and the CRTC is now examining what should be done. That was an example where, in our opinion, the CRTC made a decision that was actually against the interest of the official language minorities so we were happy that decision was given back to them.
Senator McIntyre: Thank you for your clarification.
The Chair: I have a few questions before my colleagues ask some. I would like to better understand the difficulties and opportunities your organizations face in order to see the similarities and differences you have with similar minority francophone organizations.
I come from the cultural sector and I’m trying to understand what your relationship is with the anglophone majority in terms of organizations, producers and presenters. In the francophone minority, there are some relationships with the francophone majority in Quebec; we have certain agreements with the majority and on the other side we don’t have that because of our status.
I would like you to tell us a bit about that, because I think it’s important for us to understand that reality and how the act can help you on these issues.
Mr. Rodgers: I might go first and Kirwan will talk more about production. English-speaking artists — and I’m talking about dancers, musicians and writers, and not just film people, as Kirwan was speaking about — are part of the English Canadian reality. In fact, I was at a meeting of the national arts service organizations at the Canada Council last year and you made a very inspirational speech there.
We are part of that national network. We are also part of Quebec national organizations, so the representations of writers, dancers, et cetera.
Where our challenge has been is that there were years where we lost a lot of population and we lost a lot of connections. I mean, it seems CALQ has always been there, but it has only been around for 25 years. Prior to the creation of CALQ, it was difficult for English-speaking artists to access funding through the Ministry of Culture. There were all kinds of barriers.
CALQ removed the barriers by creating an arm’s length, peer-assessed, jury-based arts funding body. So where money is channelled through CALQ, the equivalent of the Canada Council, English-speaking artists have done well and have been equitably treated over the last 25 years.
Where it becomes more complicated is once we move outside of CALQ and into the ministry. Any funding through the ministry becomes complicated and difficult to access. The Ministry of Education is extremely problematic, which is why this new Anglo secretariat, which can act as a mediator or intervenor to help us collaborate better with these provincial ministries and institutions, will be beneficial.
During that 20-year period from 1975 to 1995 and onward, the Official Languages Act really gave us a foothold. It gave us something substantial to support ourselves as we were trying to develop new modern relationships with Quebec. Now we’re starting to see the fruit of that but it has taken many years.
We live in this very specific environment where we have certain rights and institutions but we’ve also had to deal with a certain legacy of historical animosity, which is really only just starting to become a thing of the past.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Cox: Our organization got started about eight or so years ago. There are two well-established film producers’ associations; one operates more or less in English across the country, including Quebec, and the other is for French producers in Quebec only. We show up sort of jammed in between them. Those other organizations get a lot of their operational funding because they negotiate with unions on rates and what have you, and there is a system for that.
We don’t do that. We are not capable of doing that. What we have ended up being is treated, on the one hand, by, let’s say, the national association, where they feel that any money our members get belongs to them outside of Quebec. The people inside Quebec feel a little concerned, you know, over what it is that we’re about. Consequently, we don’t have an accepted status in this kind of an environment.
I suppose what I was saying in my speech was that it would be very good if the Official Languages Act or its regulations allowed for associations such as ours or others to acquire a status that said, “Okay, this is a legitimate organization doing a legitimate job and therefore it should have resources or it should have whatever other kinds of status is involved to represent the official language minority either outside of Quebec or inside of Quebec.”
The Chair: What would be, for you, the criteria to have an organization like yours be part of it?
Mr. Cox: There would have to be some kind of an understanding as to what organizations were not duplicating or not making difficulties in other ways.
If you had an umbrella organization like the QCGN in Quebec or the ACFI outside of Quebec, they might say in terms of sectors or other kinds of things, they could figure out who is legitimate and who is not.
The other thing is that I obviously think an official language minority association should be mostly made up of official language minorities. That’s another factor. They should not be duplicating each other and not doing endless amounts of multiplying themselves. There would have to be an understanding of what the criteria were for eligibility of official status and once an organization had it and could maintain it with AGMs and all the rest of it, that would be very helpful, I think.
Senator Smith: Regarding relationships with the Commissioner of Official Languages, where are you both at with the commissioner? Do you have relationships? Is there a position? Do you have a strategic plan for each of your groups? What is the relationship? What are you trying to do in leveraging yourself through the commissioner, if anything?
Mr. Rodgers: The short answer is we had extremely good relationships with the previous commissioner. We have not yet had time to establish much of a relationship with the current commissioner. The overarching umbrella group for Quebec is the Quebec Community Groups Network and they, in collaboration with ELAN and QELPC, are developing a cultural policy to present to the commissioner so he understands what our issues and priorities are so we can then engage in ongoing discussions. We figure the new commissioner will be there for five to seven years, which will give us time to establish as solid a relationship as we had with the past couple of commissioners.
Mr. Cox: I would say our relationship is good. We’re in regular contact with the Quebec representative of the commissioner. Sometimes we’re frustrated by the act in the sense that it would be nice if the Commissioner of Official Languages had various tools they could use depending on the circumstances. What it seems to us is there’s this big tool, which is do a three-year investigation, or relatively little and not much in between. If the commissioner had more tools, they could work with that would help us get a message across to a particular institution that things need to be improved without going through the three-year investigation and the whole thing.
I would say that our issue is not with the commissioner’s office but rather with the rules they have to work under through the Official Languages Act.
Senator Smith: With the new creation of Kathleen Weil’s group, have you set up relationships with that particular group? That body has obviously been set up by the Quebec government to deal with the English community. Where are you with the relationship? Is it just starting? Do you have a plan? Have you met? Give me a sense of where you are with that.
Mr. Rodgers: The Anglo secretariat was established last November. There was a large meeting at Concordia University in February, so ELAN was certainly present there, along with many other community groups. We were there representing arts and culture. At the event, the press conference at Concordia University on April 23 that Senator McIntyre referred to, which coincidentally was Shakespeare’s birthday, which was a great day for announcing an arts initiative, ELAN was present and we did receive one of the five funds to develop arts initiatives in schools that create vitality, strength and identity and hopefully contribute to retaining youth within Quebec.
Mr. Cox: We had a meeting with Kathleen Weil and I’ve also spoken to her deputy minister, Bill Floch. I think things are very promising but obviously it’s early days. It would have been nice if the Quebec government had reached this idea earlier in its mandate because it’s at the eleventh hour of their mandate, maybe. I don’t know if they’ll win the election or not, of course. This initiative may not be carried forward if the next government is not a liberal government. It may be a very short spring.
Senator Smith: Do either of you have relationships with the private sector, trying to create partnerships or some form of funding that can help you move forward with your initiatives?
Mr. Rodgers: Yes, the art’s sector is quite active in developing sponsorships. The initiative I mentioned earlier, Arts Alive Quebec, has produced many festivals in towns like Knowlton, Hudson, Huntingdon, Wakefield, at the Morrin Centre in Quebec City, and in every one of those cases the seed money we provided to help them take a risk and do something they had not quite been able to do in the past allowed them to think bigger, more ambitiously, promote more widely and obtain additional sponsorship. That is part of our business plan.
The fact that we have had that particular project funded by four different sources for four years has meant it has established a continuity and considerable visibility in those small communities where a two-day or three-day arts festival can have a large impact. One of the most important impacts is creating a dialogue between French and English-speaking neighbours because arts are something we can all rally around and enjoy in a positive way.
Mr. Cox: I guess we’re considered the private sector — producers who are working. I wouldn’t say we have an approach similar to ELAN’s. We’re trying to improve the environment for the work of our members.
Senator Smith: How do you advance? What’s the key to your future?
Mr. Cox: More production. The question of how you get more production varies on the one hand, like what you do about Google, to the other side, which is how to improve the provincial tax credit or things of that nature. It’s quite a broad spectrum. Certainly, as I said, if it weren’t for the Official Languages Act and the Commissioner of Official Languages and the ability to try and affect public policy, then it would be a much better business plan to move to Toronto. If you’re making English-language films or television, staying in Montreal doesn’t make a huge amount of sense because the talent base is elsewhere.
Senator Smith: What’s the long-term outlook for your groups?
Mr. Cox: I would say it depends a lot on whether some of the structural problems can be dealt with, if the Official Languages Act is improved in some of these ways to make it easier to use it, if the federal government looks at the question of the digital world as it applies to the things I just mentioned, then great. But if those things are not dealt with, increasingly I think a lot of people will say it’s not worth the problem, let’s just move to Toronto and get it over with.
Senator Smith: Any comment for you, Mr. Rodgers?
Mr. Rodgers: The situation is different in industries that require less capital. I’m thinking specifically of music and literature. A lot of writers and musicians like living in Quebec because it’s such a vibrant cultural scene. Rents here are still relatively affordable, so artists can sell their work in English around the world, based in Montreal, and be part of this thriving cultural community. Quebec is really a place where artists are appreciated, which is a major reassurance for artists at a time in their career when they’re maybe not yet making money.
It’s also a place where English-speaking artists, after perhaps being neglected, ignored, perhaps unappreciated for a number of years pass through a watershed moment such as when Arcade Fire won the Grammy Award in 2011 and the National Assembly of Quebec got so excited that they voted a unanimous resolution recognizing the contribution of artists, both English speaking and French speaking. There has been a shift in that social climate where English-speaking artists can be recognized as ambassadors of Quebec culture, something that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. So there is a possibility for these people to thrive, to make a living, and sell their works around the world.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Thank you, sirs, for your presentations. I have two short questions. Mr. Cox, in 2016, the Government of Canada allocated an additional nearly $700 million to the budgets of Radio-Canada and the CBC. You work in television production. What was your share of that funding?
[English]
Mr. Cox: I’m not sure how much we got of that. First, the CBC had been suffering cuts for a very long period of time and so anything they’ve received recently I’m not sure makes up for all the cuts they’ve had over that period of time.
Second, about six or seven years ago, the CBC spent about 10 per cent of its independent English language budget in Quebec. After that it declined, and recently it’s gone up to about 10 per cent again. I don’t know if that has anything to do with their upcoming licence renewal or not. But, anyway, I’m always optimistic that things will be better.
The CBC is incredibly important for official language minorities, much more so than private broadcasters, because the CBC has resources to fulfill its mandate both in French and English across the country; so the healthier the CBC is, the better. The more the CBC maintains a minimum level of official language minority production, both in English and French, then I would say that’s great. That would be a positive measure. Hopefully, the CRTC will undertake to continue the quota they have when there’s a new licence renewal hearing.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Do you know how much of this funding goes to francophone minorities in anglophone communities? How much were they given?
[English]
Mr. Cox: I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. I worry about our statistics, and I often don’t look at the other statistics.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: You’re right. Radio-Canada is doing well. It is having a new building built. Once that is paid for, it might be able to give you more.
Mr. Rodgers, you talked about the duality of anglophone and francophone artists in Quebec. I am originally from Quebec City and I still live there. You know, at the Quebec City summer festival, which goes on for days, 80 per cent of the groups are anglophone. They don’t all come from Montreal. Some come from Montreal and the regions. They live in harmony with the francophone community and attract 100,000 people every evening on the Plains of Abraham. I think that is an extraordinary co-existence. What do you think?
Mr. Rodgers: I totally agree. I would like to respond in French, but that might not be so fun for the interpreters so I will continue in English.
[English]
Between artists, there is a tremendous collaboration and cooperation and that increases as you move down through the generations. For young people, language is not a preoccupation at all. We find in the regions that there is a willingness and openness for people to collaborate together.
Where we’ve struck a problem in the past is within certain bureaucracies, particularly culture and education, people who have devoted their life to promoting and preserving the French language, which is a totally admirable life-long goal, but for some people it is perceived as a zero sum problem, promoting French and English as if the two issues are irreconcilable.
I know what you’re saying. For most people, that is not a problem, and it’s becoming less of a problem. But it is a problem we have butted up against many times within certain bureaucracies. Hopefully, that will disappear within the next generation, and will not be a huge factor in our day-to-day lives.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: I have one last question, if I may, Mr. Chair.
You know, for the generation under 30, language is not an issue. They are neither francophones nor anglophones. They are citizens of the world and for that they know that they have to be able to speak English. Of course, the 30 to 75 crowd is a bit more set in their ways.
I have children and grandchildren. They have no barriers. If you are having problems with officials, perhaps it is time to replace them. Maybe their thinking is too outdated. If they are unreceptive or lack the understanding of the evolution of linguistic thought in Quebec, perhaps these officials should consider working in the environment sector or something like that and get out of the cultural sector. That’s my opinion. I experience this daily.
Sunday was the seventy-third anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. That may not mean anything to you because, except for Senator Smith, you are rather young. Every army corps was represented in Trois-Rivières, and the invited artists switched between English and French. There were no problems. No one was kicked out, neither on the anglophone side or the francophone side. The crowd was delighted to hear their words and music.
In other words, there is a shift happening not just in Quebec, but around the world. People have a sense of belonging to a group, but also a sense of globalization when they listen. Music is not the exclusive domain of a language. It is international. It comes from all around the world. If it pleases young people, they will listen to it. Even if it was created by their neighbours, if it doesn’t please them they will not listen to it. That’s how it works. The way things are going, I think that over time the problems you encountered over the past 25 years will diminish. That’s my opinion.
[English]
Mr. Rodgers: I am absolutely in agreement with you. In my own experience dealing with bureaucrats and people in private industry, when we’re talking about people who lived through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, there is a certain legacy of division that is difficult to move past. But as soon as you’re dealing with people who are under 30 or 40, there’s a complete shift in mentality. Yes, those bureaucrats may not move into the environment, but they will retire and, once they’re gone, we’ll be living in a very different environment.
The Chair: Some witnesses strongly suggested that the Official Languages Act should recognize, in its preamble, the role of arts and culture in the development of our minority communities. What do you think about this idea? Should we add the arts and culture sector part of the strategic sectors in the act?
Mr. Rodgers: We’re in a bit of a conflict of interest here. It’s like asking a plumber if you need more plumbing in your house. What my experience has been over the last many years working in official languages is when communities are talking about life and death, they’re going to talk about education, health and services for seniors. When they’re talking about long-term vitality, they’re going to talk about arts and culture as a way of expressing identity, telling stories, making youth understand their own culture and history, making them proud of it, exporting their stories and sharing them.
We found that during the consultations last year about the action plan that in small communities, when the priority was on survival, arts and culture didn’t come up that often, which surprised a lot of people. Once we got to Ottawa or national centres, and we’re talking in broader terms and, more largely, vitality, suddenly arts and culture was practically at every table and conversation.
I wouldn’t personally recommend arts and culture, but if you’re listening to the communities, what they think of as being important to vitality, they would say that, yes, arts and culture is something we need to have supported to deliver a quality of life for our youth and communities.
Mr. Cox: I don’t have as much trouble with my conflict of interest. I support the idea that culture should be a factor in the Official Languages Act. I think that the quality of life of our official language minority communities should be considered in the raison d’être for the act.
That would include culture as well as education, health and a lot of other things.
The Chair: Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Cox, thank you very much for your presentations. Indeed you have certainly given us some great insight to inform our study.
Thank you very much.
(The committee continued in camera.)