THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, February 9, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met this day at 5 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the regulatory framework of Part VII of the Official Languages Act.
Senator Allister W. Surette (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages. Before we start, I have a few details regarding audio feedback. There is a card on your table you can make reference to, but try to keep your earpiece away from the microphones, and the activation and deactivation of microphones will be controlled by the console operator. When you speak, please keep your earpieces away from the microphone. That would be greatly appreciated. My name is Allister Surette, I’m a senator from Nova Scotia and I will go around the table so my colleagues can present themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba from Quebec.
Senator Cormier: René Cormier from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Patterson: Senator Rebecca Patterson from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Poirier: Rose-May Poirier from New Brunswick. I am deputy chair of the committee.
[English]
The Chair: I would like to welcome everyone to today’s meeting, those here in person and those listening online via sencanada.ca.
Today, pursuant to the general order of reference received from the Senate on October 8, 2025, we are studying the regulatory framework of Part VII of the Official Languages Act.
We are pleased to have with us tonight from TALQ — Talking. Advocating. Living in Quebec. — Sylvia Martin-Laforge, Director General; Stephen Thompson, Senior Policy Advisor; and Marion Sandilands, Counsel.
Thank you for being with us tonight and for a discussion regarding this regulation. We will give you approximately five minutes for opening remarks and then go around the table for approximately an hour for questions and answers.
Ms. Martin-Laforge, you may begin.
Sylvia Martin-Laforge, Director General, TALQ: Senator Surrette, Senator Poirier and all honourable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as part of your study of the draft regulations under Part VII of the Official Languages Act.
My name is Sylvia Martin-Laforge, I am the director general and we represent the English-speaking community of Quebec at the level of public policy and governance. Our work focuses on legislation, funding frameworks and federal-provincial agreements that shape our community vitality. As you noted, with me today are Stephen Thompson and Marion Sandilands.
Before turning to the substance, I want to acknowledge the existence and good faith effort made by the Treasury Board Secretariat to consult TALQ and other English-speaking community stakeholders during the drafting of these regulations. The engagement matters, and we recognize it.
TALQ welcomes the proposed regulations. They bring long-needed structure and discipline to Part VII, and they make it much harder for federal institutions to overlook their obligations. By requiring Part VII analysis at key decision points — when programs are created, renewed, modified, ended or transferred — the regulations improve visibility and reviewability for Parliament and for the commissioner.
However, our core message today is that the regulations operationalize processes, not outcomes. In doing so, they expose gaps in Part VII of the act itself that Parliament should address at the statutory review stage.
The regulations require institutions to analyze impacts, identify affected communities, consult and document their actions. What they do not require is action. A department can comply fully with the regulations and still leave conditions on the ground unchanged. That is not a failure of the regulations. It is a structural limitation of the act.
This matters most in the unique case of Quebec under Part VII. I’m sure that has not escaped your attention. It is the only province where the federal government must simultaneously protect and promote French as a minority language in Canada and enhance the vitality of the English-speaking community of Quebec. Moreover, against the specific warning of English-speaking Quebec, the modernized act recognizes and incorporates Quebec’s Charter of the French language into federal statutes.
The draft regulations are silent on how institutions should manage resulting tension, and I believe you will see tension. We feel it. There is no framework for balancing competing obligations, no requirement to explain tradeoffs and no obligation to demonstrate that the interests of English-speaking Quebecers were assessed on their own terms rather than absorbed into broader language policy objectives. When the rules are silent, decisions default to discretion, and in Quebec, that discretion often favours preserving the Canada-Quebec relationship rather than protecting minority vitality.
This concern is not theoretical, senators. TALQ recently filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Official Languages regarding the Canada-Quebec agreement implementing the Action Plan for Official Languages. It points to a structural failure in how Part VII was applied: the absence of documented impact analysis on English-speaking Quebecers; limited meaningful consultation and the lack of binding safeguards to ensure concrete benefits for the minority community; and insufficient transparency around the agreement. Taken together, it shows how Part VII obligations can be diluted through agreement design, even when intergovernmental processes are followed. Last week, we sent you that complaint and we’re happy to answer questions.
What matters for this committee is that even if the draft regulations had been fully in force and followed perfectly, they would not necessarily have prevented that outcome. The regulations protect effort, not results. They require proposals, not outcomes; documentation, not justification; consultation, not capacity.
Part VII ultimately succeeds or fails in federal-provincial agreements. While regulations improve visibility in that space, they do not require early consultation before negotiating mandates are set. They do not require disclosure of rejected language provisions, and they do not preserve direct federal accountability once programs are delivered through provincial systems, particularly in Quebec where M-30 further constrains federal community relationships.
We also sent you our brief on Bill 1, which we believe will exacerbate the issues we face in Quebec.
Finally, clause 6 of the draft regulations improves consultation mechanisms, and that is welcome. However, consultation only works if communities have the capacity to participate. As drafted, the regulations assume that our communities can engage meaningfully in complex federal consultations, and I believe that without capacity, consultation risks becoming procedurally correct but substantively pointless. We have some ideas on how to address this, and we look forward to answering those questions.
In closing, TALQ supports the regulations as an important step forward, but we urge this committee to be clear-eyed about what they can and cannot do. Process alone will not deliver minority vitality. Outcomes require statutory clarity, justification and accountability, and those are issues Parliament must address when reviewing the act.
Thank you, senators. We would be pleased to answer your questions. I have two very capable people next to me with a lot of experience in doing this. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for your presentation. As mentioned, we will move on to questions and answers. Please try to keep the questions and answers to five minutes per person. We can go to a second round, if necessary.
I will begin with our deputy chair, Senator Poirier.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for being here. I want to thank you for sending the brief a week ahead. It was helpful to go through it and be able to read it, so thank you for that.
In the brief that you did send to the committee regarding the draft regulations under Part VII of the Official Languages Act, it says that regulations are currently drafted and are necessary but not sufficient to discharge Canada’s responsibility under Part VII and that the draft regulations no longer allow Part VII to be ignored. Rather, they are allowed to be complied with, without changing results.
Can you please explain to the committee what you mean by this and give us some examples? I know you did mention in your opening remarks about the act not including action, and that also probably falls into that category. If you can just elaborate a bit on that, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Thank you for that question.
Stephen Thompson, Senior Policy Advisor, TALQ: I will go first and then I’ll pitch to Marion.
Remember that the problem with Part VII is that the terms in it weren’t well defined, and they’re still not. There is no legal definition around the terms “community,” “vitality” or “positive measure.” We don’t know what those words mean. That was identified by the joint committee back in 1992. This is not a new problem around Part VII. We argue in our brief that we think this was probably a political decision because I think the political reality is that Parliament wants to keep a level of flexibility in Part VII by managing its relationships with the provinces, especially with the province of Quebec. So there was this political imperative to keep it vague.
Modernization was supposed to fix that. The committee will recall at the time the FFCB decision at the Federal Court of Appeal that really gave very strong direction and legal definitions around these terms and what the government’s responsibilities were. The QCGN — now TALQ — argued at the time that the modernization process didn’t go far enough to implement the Court of Appeal’s decisions, and here we are. It didn’t, and we’re still in a place where Part VII, in 1988 — all those years ago when these are long-standing problems with the act that we all know about — still hasn’t been fixed.
Marion Sandilands, Counsel, TALQ: Just to put that in legal lingo, Part VII, section 41 declares that Canada has these commitments that we see. They’ve been drafted very broadly. A modernized Official Languages Act was supposed to give more meat to that — some teeth, as they say — but I think what we see in the regulations is a crystallization of a problem that’s actually in the Official Languages Act itself, which is that it really doesn’t create these obligations of results that the communities have been asking for.
Senator Poirier: I’d also like to hear about the subject of consultation. In your brief, you mentioned that the draft regulations imposed obligations on institutions to consult, but they also impose a no-peril obligation to ensure that the consultation is feasible and meaningful.
Could you please go into more detail on that? How can we remedy this issue?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: The issue of consultations for both minority communities — the francophone outside of Quebec and the English-speaking community in Quebec — is a long-standing one as well. Years ago, when there was consultation on results of the action plan, any time we want to prove that things need more work or that we should think about, from a policy perspective, gaps that we might address, we have to pay attention to this. You ask us to come to the Senate or to the House committee, but not many organizations have the capacity to be consulted. You can consult us, but they don’t have the capacity to do some serious work around evidence-informed proposals for you. For example, in Quebec, there are not that many organizations that are funded that can do this, so you’re going to hear from the same people over and over again with the same issues coming up. There is no mechanism for consultation.
All of us — senators, MPs and the House — have to pay particular attention to this because down the road, through the act, you’re going to have to review how things are going. If we don’t set up and we don’t come to grips with what success will look like, what the indicators are and how we do this, and you don’t allow the community to participate in this consultation fully, we won’t get any further. It will be an exercise that could have been fruitful but didn’t work because we don’t have the resources to do it. Is it only about money? Probably not. It’s everything that goes with constructing a proper consultation. I look to my colleagues if they want to add anything.
Senator Cormier: Thank you for your excellent brief. It was very interesting to read.
The regulation remains silent concerning the commitment to periodically estimate rights holders under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It’s silent around consideration with respect to the disposal strategy for surplus federal buildings and assets. It doesn’t say anything about the responsibilities given to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the specific role of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is important for all of us.
What can you tell us about that? Should that be in there? If not, what does that say about what the government wants to do?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I’ll call on Marion to answer that question, Senator Cormier.
Ms. Sandilands: They’re not specifically mentioned, but my understanding is that the scope would cover that because it’s an obligation on any federal institution to implement the complement. For example, enumerating rights holders is one of commitments.
My understanding is that the regulations are aimed at, in a general sense, all of the commitments, so any federal institution that has this commitment, I think, would be covered that way. But to be honest, this is not something that TALQ canvasses in their brief, so I’m just giving you my off-the-cuff answer.
Senator Cormier: Do you think it is a matter of priority for the government because what’s not there in the regulations —
Ms. Sandilands: The regulations don’t mention any of the specific commitments in section 41, so I don’t know if it means that they put some over. TALQ does notice that the regulations don’t give any guidance as to how the commitments are to be prioritized, and if there are competing commitments, how those are to be dealt with. That’s as far as TALQ has taken it in their brief.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Senator, we do receive questions from other departments, some of which you’ve mentioned. Once again, the ad hoc nature of it is a bit problematic. There are a lot of those departments out there that could ask us about what we think about such and such, but there is no plan for implementation, and I certainly would say to you that without consultation, we cannot deal with the ad hoc nature.
Mr. Thompson: We mentioned this in response to a previous question, but it might interest the committee to know that there is no understanding in government federal institutions of what vitality means. They don’t know.
I was in a consultation a few years ago at ESDC, and they were very proud of the fact that they had developed a vitality model for the OLMCs. There was an ADM there, they rolled it out and everyone was very proud of this piece of work. We asked the simple question, “Were you aware that Canadian Heritage had spent two years working with the francophone OLMCs in the English-speaking community of Quebec to come up with the PCH vitality framework?” They said, “No.” “Fascinating,” we said.
So when you talk about the responsibilities and the various actors now mentioned in Part VII, CBC has no idea of how to understand its obligations under Part VII. There is no document it can go to and say, “That’s what community vitality means. Therefore, this is what we have to do.” There is nothing for them to look at.
Senator Cormier: Do you think it could be put in the directive?
Mr. Thompson: We believe it should have gone into regulations. We understand there is a legal problem. It can’t go into the regulations because the act prevented it. One of our recommendations is for the statutory review in 2033, the regulations be permitted to include a definition of these key terms, like “community,” like “vitality,” like “positive measures.”
Senator Cormier: You talked about documented impact. Can you make the difference between having a clear impact and what is the evaluation? What I mean by that is because it’s in the regulation that they have to assess the effects of measures taken to implement the commitments, et cetera —
[Translation]
— isn’t that a way of measuring impact?
[English]
I just want to hear more about that.
Mr. Thompson: Let me turn the question back. Where is the idea of measures defined and what impact? How is impact defined? Who defines impact? We get back to the definition problem.
An institution can say that we’ve taken measures. We’ve assessed them and they had or they did not have an impact. Now, they’ve done their job. They’ve checked off their little marks, but what does that mean on the ground and what does that mean to the community?
[Translation]
I have no idea.
[English]
Senator Cormier: The objectives were not clear then.
Mr. Thompson: They’re not. They’re not defined.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome to all of our witnesses. Ms. Martin-Laforge, you pointed out Quebec’s unique nature and the tensions between the two objectives. In Quebec, do you think federal institutions have the means to clearly understand the distinction between the goal of enhancing the vitality of Quebec’s anglophone communities under subsection 41(1) of the Official Languages Act and that of protecting and promoting French under subsection 41(2)? If not, what are the risks of lacking such clarity?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: No. Thank you for the question. The history of promoting French in Quebec for the majority — they are a majority in Quebec and a minority in the rest of Canada — comes from the 2020 Speech from the Throne. That was the first mention of including the promotion of French. It then appeared in the Official Languages Act modernization.
Please understand that we are not against it. We understand quite well what is happening in Quebec and across Canada with French.
[English]
However, on how to square the circle in Quebec around these two, some might see these as competing priorities. They shouldn’t be competing priorities. Sure, we should promote French in Quebec, and we should understand what needs to be done to protect and promote French in Quebec, but not in opposition to the minority English-speaking community.
The Government of Quebec doesn’t understand it, obviously, in our view, in the view of I would say most English-speaking Quebecers don’t understand it. We have seen different bills over the years.
[Translation]
This weakens our community. I am not talking about language, but about weakening the community.
[English]
This is a relatively new thing that we see in the modernization. We don’t believe that anyone quite understands how to do this with equity, with elegance even. How do we do this in Quebec? What is the responsibility of the federal government to do it?
Have I forgotten anything?
Ms. Sandilands: I will add that this is related to recommendation two in our brief, where we offer a suggestion on how a framework could be developed to weigh these priorities within federal institutions.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Thank you. So if I understand correctly, you think that should be specified in the draft regulations?
[English]
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Yes. It’s absolutely necessary for an understanding. We don’t need more division in Quebec, folks. For the understanding of how to manage this situation, we would need some serious good-thinking dialogue, and not everyone thinking, “I’ve got it. I’ll do it this way.” Another department saying, “I’ll do it this way. I’ll do it that way.”
We can’t have a fragmentation of how to do it at the federal institutional level. There has to be an understanding, and that’s where we talk about that framework. Otherwise, you will exacerbate the situation.
Senator Moncion: I will read something that you wrote. I just want your two cents on it with an unusual question. You said that the regulations, as currently drafted, are necessary but not sufficient to discharge Canada’s responsibility under Part VII. By their very nature, and apparently by some degree of choice, they are limited in scope.
I would like for you to comment on “by some degree of choice.”
Mr. Thompson: I talked about this a little earlier. I think this has been an historic problem around Part VII. There is a dance in Part VII. So I think we go over this in some detail in our brief, and I’m sure you know better than I do about the history of Part VII that comes out of 16(3) of the Charter implements the second big chunk out of the Bi and Bi Commission, because the Bi and Bi Commission talked about this, the protection and promotion of French and English in Canadian society, but they left that. They just dealt with the official language government.
Now, Ottawa has a problem, and the problem is that most of the things we know make a community vital are areas of provincial jurisdiction; health care, education, those are in the province’s backyard. What are the Feds going to do? This is very delicate, especially when it comes to Quebec.
If you think about the timeframe this is happening, it is around the time of the Charter, the repatriation. Quebec hasn’t signed on. The relationship isn’t great. It definitely was not great then, so there is a lot of flexibility put in Part VII, and I think Parliament just continued with that. It’s a cultural thing in official languages, within the ecosystem, to be very careful with Part VII.
Part of the reason that this committee started the modernization process in 2017 was to put transparency and accountability around Part VII. That was one of the big reasons why Parliament embarked on this.
How can something be accountable and transparent if it’s not clear? If it’s not clear, the institutions will default to, in political law terms, administrative discretion. They are just getting on with what they are told to do; they will use their discretion. Also, what one department’s decision is won’t be the same as another institution’s and so on.
We’re left with this problem that we’ve always had as communities. We don’t know what to expect. How can we, as a society, hold somebody to account? How can we hold a government or institution to account if we don’t know exactly what they are supposed to do?
Senator Moncion: Thank you.
I think you summarized that the draft regulations operationalize process, not outcomes; I think you have summarized our concerns. It is the same for the English-speaking citizens of Quebec as it is for francophones outside of Quebec who are dealing with the same hurdles.
You have also mentioned that the regulation is drafted in a negative. Instead of using positive as making things better, using the negative reduces the number of obligations that are associated with the regulations that are being brought forward.
Do you have a comment on that? How would you see the regulation through that lens?
Ms. Sandilands: I’m afraid I don’t fully understand what you mean by using the negative.
Mr. Thompson: It has been a few weeks since we wrote this, but I think the idea behind the argument was that the institutions have to take into consideration when their actions will have negative impacts on community vitality. Their focus is on the negative impacts and not the positive impacts. Then, once you start focusing on negative impacts, now you are creating a floor — what Commissioner Fraser used to call the floor and the ceiling. We’re not shooting for the floor here; we’re shooting for the ceiling.
What you should be doing as an institution is maximizing your investments and positive measures to maximize the potential of what you are doing, not looking at the floor. Once you have decided that you haven’t hit the floor, you can hit the check mark and move on.
Senator Moncion: Using that floor makes it easy to find targets or tick a box.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I will tell you something interesting. I have been in official languages for a very long time; some people know that. I have seen institutions, over the years, make terrific progress in the action plan. In the action plan, with funding — I remember the first action plan under Stephane Dion — that’s how old I am in this business — and we were barely there. We fought hard to get funding for our community.
We have been heard over the years, so the ceiling went a bit higher, and then went a bit higher, et cetera.
If you try hard at something — and one of the things TALQ kept saying, when it was QCGN at the time — is that you are not looking at the gaps. Where are the gaps in the action plan funding? Everyone evaluated the action plan and said it was doing very well, but you did not evaluate the gap. You always evaluated what the program was going to be.
That gap is interesting — the difference between what you can do, what you want to do and what you can’t do. Those are the measures that have to be looked at in terms of ensuring that you get the outcomes. You have to be very lucid in checking what you want to do.
We don’t believe that’s quite there.
The Chair: There are quite a few in the room, I believe, who remember the Stéphane Dion action plan.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I remember him writing the action plan in his shorts one summer.
Senator Patterson: We talked about how a lot of this responsibility, even to figure out what “vitality” means, has been pushed onto the very communities that need the support, whether you are an English-language minority in Quebec or a French-language minority elsewhere, which is very interesting. As you know, we are going through the process of appointing the new Commissioner of Official Languages, so there is an arbitrator of a certain type available there too.
I would like to get your perspective on what the current limits of the Commissioner of Official Languages are to ensure that compliance at the federal institutions that enter into agreements with the Government of Quebec. Do we need to include something in the draft regulations that better delineates that authority?
Mr. Thompson: It is a very interesting question.
This is tricky, because the commissioner is an officer of Parliament, and intergovernmental agreements are a function of the executive. Do you really want an officer of Parliament to be able to interfere with the power of the executive to make agreements between governments? You probably don’t, as a general rule. I’m not administrative law person — I’m a constitutional law person — but I would think that the executive would probably not want that.
Ms. Sandilands: These regulations deal with Part VII of the act, so they could add more substantive details on these aspects, but they don’t directly deal with the powers of the commissioner.
Mr. Thompson: It is a very good question, though.
Senator Patterson: It is something to think about. You have the status quo, and we have to get both communities somewhere. How do we do it? In Quebec, specifically, for everything that you have said, it is such a delicate space. At the end of the day, vitality in communities is what? It’s a process, not an outcome.
Anyway, we would certainly welcome any feedback you have later on. Thank you.
The Chair: Before going on to further questions, a question came to my mind. I read your brief, and in your presentation earlier tonight and in your answers, as well, you mentioned the challenges with the act itself and that you would like to see changes. However, that is seven years hence, at least, which can be discouraging if you have to wait that long to move on.
I know there was one recommendation for sure on the regulation itself. My question is twofold: If the regulation stays as is, what types of impacts do you think there will be for the anglophones in Quebec? I know there is a challenge if you do not define the word “vitality,” so how do you measure the difference in vitality? So there is a challenge there.
My other question is more pragmatic: Is this any chance that you could present some recommendations for changes in the regulations that would move the needle somewhat?
Ms. Sandilands: We do have one recommendation for the regulations, which has to do with consultation and resourcing consultation.
I think the point about reconciling the potentially competing potential obligations under Part VII could be dealt with in regulations, potentially. Beyond that, the big structural issues were the ones that former QCGN flagged in the modernization of the Official Languages Act. They go beyond what the regulations can do, because regulations cannot go beyond what the act enables. So we are in this box, and the box is the act itself.
Mr. Thompson: You are right, senator, that the statutory requirement for the review is every 10 years, but, in this committee’s third record on Bill C-13, you noted that because of the concerns that English-speaking Quebec had about Bill C-13 that those effects be studied before the 10-year period, regularly, and reported to Parliament. So, we saw this as an opportunity to go on record; we’ve had almost three years now of Bill C-13 and to report back to Parliament on our experience with Bill C-13.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for the answers.
I will go back to a discussion we have already had with a few of our colleagues. We were talking about the definition of vitality, the measures and the obligations.
Do you fear that because there’s no clear definition of what some of these things mean, there is a high risk that federal institutions may adopt a minimized interpretation of their obligations?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Absolutely, but not because they’re bad people. In terms of administrative discretion, as Stephen has talked about, I was a civil servant for many years, and you do your best with what you have. If you don’t have enough clarity, you are going to use your administrative discretion. Not all departments have the same understanding of official language minority communities in Quebec or in the rest of Canada. We are different.
Senator Poirier: Are you any better off now with this regulation and positive measures than you were before Bill C-13?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I was there long ago, when Mauril Bélanger tried to do Part VII. I have been around for a long time. I think we’re making progress, but let’s not take the foot off the gas. Mr. Thompson has an example.
Mr. Thompson: During the modernization process, then-Minister Duclos decided to cut the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, a regional component to Quebec. The Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, which I will refer to as YESS, was an ESDC program that a number of community organizations in English-speaking Quebec relied on to fund youth employment initiatives within their communities.
Minister Duclos made this decision, cut it to Quebec and it went to Emploi Quebec, supposedly with guarantees that that program would be accessible by English-speaking community organizations. Within three years, there were no English-speaking community organizations receiving funding from that money.
We met with ESDC shortly after. You can imagine that we were on the road up to Gatineau the next day to discuss this with the bureaucrats after it was announced. I remember being in the room with some very uncomfortable ADMs who were trying to explain that, at the time, it was the efforts of the department en masse that were considered for the purposes of Part VII. It wasn’t discreet activities or discreet decisions under Part VII. Now it is discreet decisions.
Now we could go back and say to the Commissioner of Official Languages that they didn’t consider the impact of this decision on the vitality of English-speaking Quebec, and now we have a hook to go and make a complaint and hold the institution to effect. We didn’t have that before.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: That is success.
Mr. Thompson: That is a plus.
Senator Poirier: Which of the suggestions to the Treasury Board Secretariat during the consultation period were reflected, and which ones were left out in the draft regulations that you had made?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I didn’t hear the question.
Mr. Thompson: What recommendations did we make to Treasury Board during the consultations that are or are not reflected.
Senator Poirier: And which ones were not.
Mr. Thompson: With what we asked of the regulations, I can confidently say that our concerns were not addressed in the regulations. I will also say that is not Treasury Board’s fault. Again, our brief makes it clear that these are structural problems within the act. We would have liked to have seen more around consultation, recommendation 4, which can be put in there.
We are working with Treasury Board on this, but it is going to be complicated because somebody is going to have to pay for this. It’s not just a Treasury Board Secretariat problem; there is a bigger problem here for government to address.
As Sylvia mentioned in her opening remarks, the consultations with TBS were excellent throughout the process. I think they were excellent because these are people who we have worked with before. This committee will remember modernization of the Part IV regulations. It is the same people who are working together to make these regulations better. We know one another, and we work well together.
Senator Poirier: It gives us a chance to continue working at what we didn’t achieve this time for the next time, hopefully, but at least there is success that some things have improved. Thank you.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: It has been 10 years.
Senator Poirier: Ten years is better than never.
Senator Cormier: What you are saying about the regulation is that it’s about process, not outcomes. You are saying that it’s about effort, not results. You are telling us what is not in the regulations, no definitions. We are here to make observations or recommendations. Saying what’s not there is one thing, but saying what should be there is another.
Are you telling us that the definitions should be defined in the regulations?
Mr. Thompson: They cannot be.
Senator Cormier: They cannot be. So where should we define them, then?
Mr. Thompson: They either have to be defined in the act, or the act has to give statutory permission for them to be defined in the regulations, one or the other.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: You can do some work, perhaps, in the guidelines — act, regulations, guidelines. But that, again, is complicated because each department is a big place and there are many of them. There has to be a continuation of a centralized preoccupation with helping departments understand definitions or approaches to do something.
I’m of the opinion that sometimes, in a definition, you need a little bit of ambiguity to give yourself some flexibility. There’s danger in that because then everybody has an opinion. There has to be a balanced approach to figuring out how to square this circle around no definitions and no measurement possible.
Senator Cormier: There are structural problems in the act. Is it your wish is that we look at the act before seven years?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Absolutely.
Senator Cormier: A review of the act before seven years?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: We can start to look at it, and we can learn from what we are hearing. That is one of the reasons we gave you our complaint. That is one of the reasons we gave you our Bill 1, to see what we’re dealing with and how, in fact, in reviewing the act as you are going along, you can’t change much, but you can start to tweak guidelines and start to think about it. It takes a long time.
Senator Cormier: I have a very technical question for you, Ms. Sandilands. I will ask it in French.
[Translation]
How do you interpret subparagraph 8(b)(ii) of this draft regulation in relation to the term “paragraph 4(4)(b)”? Is it clear to you that we are talking about the regulations, not the act?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Subparagraph 8(b)(ii)?
Senator Cormier: Yes, which deals with consultations.
Ms. Sandilands: In the draft regulations?
Senator Cormier: Yes, in the draft regulations. It raises a question. Because of the way this paragraph is drafted, we don’t know whether it refers to the act or the regulations.
Ms. Sandilands: I would have to look into it to answer that question.
Senator Cormier: Yes, I’d appreciate that because it seems ambiguous to me. It’s not clear if we’re talking about the current regulations. Should we add “current regulations” to make it clear? It’s about being precise. We’re making the most of your presence and your expertise.
Ms. Sandilands: Thank you very much for the question.
[English]
The Chair: In your opening remarks, you made reference to it’s at least a step forward. How is it a step forward, in your opinion, from what you see and with all of the challenges that we’ve identified around the table?
How will it make life different for you? What is the step forward? I’m trying to understand what the step forward is.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: I think that I’ve answered it somewhat.
Mr. Thompson: I gave the example of the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy.
The complaint is a great example of how this moves us forward. Our complaint against PCH on the intergovernmental agreement is that we didn’t have meaningful consultation. They didn’t publish the agreement afterwards. Those requirements come from the modernized act.
We now have the tools we need to say, “No, no, wait a minute. You have to do this.” Consultation is still vague — don’t get me wrong; it needs to be tightened up — but in the previous Part VII, it could be anything. Part VII could be having Steve up for lunch, and believe me, I spend a lot of time between Montreal and Ottawa going to lunch with the coordinator from Natural Resources Canada, and they would check the box that they have consulted with the English-speaking community of Quebec. No, they haven’t, but they consulted.
Parliamentarians could demand of them whom they saw, the minutes of the meeting, the decisions, the discussion, the follow‑up. You can now ask for that under Part VII. That is a huge step forward in terms of accountability and transparency.
The Chair: Based on consultations, specific to your remarks, you make reference to consultations having to be resourced, iterative and consequential.
Mr. Thompson: Absolutely. Sylvia talked about this before. I wear another hat as the president of a small community sector organization in Montérégie-East. We have a community of 25,000 people. We are not funded to be here. We can’t come and talk to you. My executive director and my staff are working literally 12 hours a day to provide services to people, seniors and moms and people who need help in my community. That is their job. That is what they get paid for. That is what we do. We don’t have the money to spend on fancy policy people and lawyers, so you’re hearing from us. If the requirement to consult is now elevated on the institutions, you have to understand that when you go to these institutions you are across the desk from a PhD in linguistics or a masters in constitutional law, and you are an ED. Many people around this table have likely been in that position when consulting with government.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: Do I have a moment to give you an example?
Never mind the federal government asking to consult with people, last week we asked what we call the coalition of the willing, a few groups, to come and listen to us, and we presented this brief to them. They looked at us and said, “Oh, my God. How do we do this?”
There can be capacity to speak to you in a way where we don’t whine. We want to give you examples. Even for the three of us who have been in this business for a while, it is not always easy to give you the right answers. People don’t want to come because they don’t want to look foolish, or they don’t want to come here or they don’t know how to answer a federal department. The mechanism of consultation is terrifically important for you folks.
Senator Cormier: There’s a lot of discretionary language in the draft regulation like “possible,” “to the extent possible” and “if possible.” It says, for example, “if possible after providing the region summary provided to the English and French linguistic minority communities.” What kind of effect do you think that language will have?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: It is discretionary. I’ve been a civil servant all my life.
Senator Cormier: Should we suggest they have stronger language?
Ms. Martin-Laforge: You will have to pick your spots. What places do you believe will have the biggest bang for your buck? Excuse my colloquialism here. It is too mushy in some places. What would be the best places to strengthen?
Mr. Thompson: You can’t impose further obligations that aren’t included in the act. The regulations can’t impose further obligations.
You can’t say “must” unless it says “must” in the act, and it doesn’t say “must” in the act.
Ms. Martin-Laforge: That is our worry with the act, and it translates into the regulations.
The Chair: Thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight, for your brief, your presentation and the answers to our questions will all be taken into consideration.
[Translation]
For our second panel, we welcome representatives of the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada: Liane Roy, president, Alain Dupuis, executive director, and John Mark Keyes, professor.
Welcome and thank you for being with us. You are familiar with the procedures in both chambers. You have five minutes for your opening remarks, after which we will move to questions and answers.
Liane Roy, President, Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada: Mr. Chair, honourable senators, good evening. Thank you for inviting us to appear to comment on the draft regulations on Part VII of the Official Languages Act. I am accompanied by our executive director, Alain Dupuis, and John Mark Keyes, a former official from the Department of Justice. Mr. Keyes is a recognized expert in regulatory proposals.
You know how many years and efforts were invested in modernizing the act. Some of you experienced the marathon that led to the passage of Bill C-13 in June 2023. There was some sense of urgency. Parliamentarians, both in the House and the Senate, were motivated by a desire to take action to curb the decline of French and to provide Canada with a strong, modern and respected Official Languages Act.
The legislator’s intent, regardless of political leanings, was clear, and it was bold. The draft regulations for Part VII, as prepared by the Treasury Board Secretariat, do not fulfill the promise of the Official Languages Act, and they are light years away from that legislative intent.
As you know, the modernized act introduces a new paradigm with a differential approach, recognizing that one of our two official languages, French, is vulnerable and requires specific protection and promotion measures. The proposed draft regulation is based on the old paradigm of symmetry between French and English. It also suffers from a glaring lack of clarity, particularly when it comes to the process for achieving positive measures. It merely repeats what is already set out in the act.
This draft regulation contains so many inaccuracies and elements left open to interpretation that, if adopted in its current form, the new momentum sought by you parliamentarians would be brutally curtailed. I would therefore like to reiterate four key FFAC recommendations.
First, the regulations should stress that positive measures must have a positive, concrete and demonstrable impact. They must be developed and implemented through effective consultation with official language minority communities.
Second, the use of positive measures must be based on analyses grounded in dialogue and consultation, as well as research and evidence. The draft regulations are vague and insufficiently binding in this regard.
Third, the regulations must include an obligation for federal institutions to develop frameworks and action plans based on specific indicators. This is the only way to assess the gaps in substantive equality for linguistic minorities and to take the necessary measures to reduce them.
Finally, in terms of collaboration with the provinces and territories, the regulations must stipulate the federal institutions’ obligation to promote the inclusion of language clauses at all implementation stages of transfer agreements, including framework protocols, bilateral agreements and action plans.
Honourable senators, the FFAC has been monitoring the implementation of the Official Languages Act for 50 years. We’ve spent many years explaining to federal institutions what a positive measure is, and we have borne the brunt of court decisions on the lack of clarity and guidance on these measures.
Our recommendations, well known by the Treasury Board Secretariat, are rooted in our experience. Not only is it important that the secretariat go back to the drawing board, but it is crucial that it listen to what communities have to say. Otherwise, we fear that all these years of hard work to modernize the act will have been for naught.
Thank you. We are pleased to answer your questions.
The Chair: Thank you. We will begin with our deputy chair, Senator Poirier.
Senator Poirier: Thanks again for joining us. It’s always a pleasure to see you. We discussed this with the other witnesses a little earlier; in your opinion, are the current regulations clear enough to guarantee that positive measures have truly lasting effects for francophone minority communities, and why?
Ms. Roy: In response to your question about whether the regulations are clear enough, I would say no. The regulations are unclear and lack precision in many areas. For example, there is no differentiated approach for official language communities with different needs. There is no additional clarity on what constitutes a positive measure, which is a long-standing problem in the act, as you know. Nor is there any explanation of what a concrete measure is and how it should contribute to achieving substantive equality for official language communities.
There is a lack of clarity on how to develop and implement positive measures.
There is also a lack of specifics regarding the analyses required to develop positive measures. If I may elaborate, we can specify timelines for consultation notices, objectives, how to participate in consultations, and the obligations to collect empirical data on communities. There remain several loopholes, allowing a federal institution to refrain from acting on the analysis. That could lead to further processes without achieving any further results.
Furthermore, there is little clarity on the evaluation and monitoring mechanisms — everything related to accountability — the impact of a positive measure, the thriving of communities, the recognition and use of official languages, the protection and promotion of French, the learning of the minority language, and, more broadly, progress toward the substantive equality of our official languages. Action plans based on indicators linked to the act’s objectives are needed to guide federal institutions in their work. That would make it possible to measure gaps and address them.
Senator Poirier: My next question is along the same lines as those I asked the previous panel.
In your opinion, is there a risk associated with a missing or inadequate definition of positive measures? Is it possible that federal institutions will not comply with these measures because of their own misinterpretation? If so, what do you recommend to address that?
Ms. Roy: As for the definition, I’ll let Mr. Keyes answer that. We’ve studied all the details of the regulations. Normally, people don’t want definitions included in regulations. However, Mr. Keyes has found a way to resolve this issue.
John Mark Keyes, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities: We are well aware of limits to regulations in defining the act’s terminology. However, we have the power here to specify the terms and conditions for implementing positive measures. In order to strengthen the definition of “positive measures,” we recommend inserting a statement of purpose at the beginning of the bill. It would set out the legal framework surrounding Part VII’s objectives. That would also strengthen the definition of positive measures in subsection 41(6) of the act, a provision that prescribes certain aspects of positive measures.
Indeed, a purpose clause would strengthen the nature of positive measures by reiterating the objectives of the act and of Part VII. It would also influence other provisions, including those related to consultations.
Senator Poirier: You took part in the consultations surrounding the development of Part VII regulations. In your opinion, did the consultations allow for a substantive exchange on the regulations’ content? Was the government receptive to your concerns and recommendations? What could you have done differently during the consultations to ensure that the regulations better reflect what is happening on the ground?
Alain Dupuis, Executive Director, Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada: Since the act was passed, the Treasury Board Secretariat met with the FFAC and its 25 member organizations on two occasions. This gave us two opportunities to share a number of recommendations for the regulations. Unfortunately, the draft we have before us contains very few of our recommendations. The regulations are pared down, whereas we feel that a number of processes could be better defined to clarify things.
Part VII is central to the development of the francophone minority community. Our communities rely on Part VII as a basis for establishing relationships and developing all kinds of initiatives and programs that support French-speaking citizens in minority communities. We had that opportunity twice. However, we feel that the needs of our communities and the requests that were made are not sufficiently reflected.
Senator Poirier: Thank you.
The Chair: I would like a clarification from Mr. Keyes.
I’m trying to understand. You suggested that the terms of the act be reiterated in the regulations? Did I understand correctly? Wouldn’t that simply be a repetition? I’m trying to understand how it can make a real difference if all we’re doing is repeating what’s already in the act. Are we moving to another stage? We talked about directives. Do we have a mechanism to clarify certain things?
Mr. Keyes: Generally, the purpose of regulations is to expand on the content of the act, to go a little further, to specify what the act aims to do, to add details. We believe that’s what is missing from this bill. In many respects, the opportunity to amplify what the act requires was missed. For example, if I want to —
The Chair: Do you have an example of positive measures? There is not much more that can be done to define positive measures if they’re not already described in the act, is there?
Mr. Keyes: We have two suggestions on that front. First, the measures must be included in departments’ main mandates. Positive measures are not things that should be on the periphery of departmental activities. They should be right in the departmental mandate.
In addition, they should be integrated into other departmental programs and policies, not separate from departmental affairs.
Those are two examples of how the notion of positive measures can be expanded.
Mr. Dupuis: I would add that, for us, the notion of substantive equality that was added to the new version of the act must also guide positive measures. Over the years, we have too often seen positive measures that were completely incidental, small, very insignificant initiatives with no budget, that were proposed and found their way into departmental reports as positive measures.
For us, it is important that it be part of the government’s programs and framework policies. For example, the budget just announced that millions if not billions of dollars would be invested in housing and infrastructure. Will this major investment program have a francophone component or will communities have access to a flagship program from a department or a central federal government priority? For us, that’s where positive measures can be developed and associated with principles in the act, such as substantive equality.
However, to be associated with a principle like substantive equality, each department must also reflect. What does substantive equality mean for Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada? There needs to be a framework, action plan or thought process to lay the groundwork, determine the gap between minority and majority in the organization’s core mandate and build on that gap analysis. In terms of equality, at that point, positive measures will be developed to enable the minority to eventually achieve substantive equality. It’s no longer a matter of having separate positive measures, but of placing them at the very core of every move federal departments and agencies make.
Senator Cormier: That clearly explains the embodiment of positive measures. I understand that Minister Ali didn’t receive a passing grade, Ms. Roy, based on your testimony about the shortcomings of these regulations. I’d like to ask you some questions that I asked the previous panel about where the regulations themselves remain silent. We’re not talking about the issue of periodically estimating how many rights holders there are, or property disposal strategy considerations, for example. Mr. Keyes, can you give us some clarity on this? What’s stopping us from clearly stipulating something in regulations if it’s not enshrined in the act? Is my question clear?
Mr. Keyes: The act was created to develop a framework for its implementation, so the regulations can’t go beyond the framework of the act. Going beyond it would effectively mean amending the act. However, if the act targets X, and the regulations address X and Y, then Y is not targeted by the act. The nature of regulations is that you exercise authority delegated by Parliament, and if Parliament has talked about delegating X, not Y, you can’t address Y.
Senator Cormier: Thank you. I don’t have the exact wording from the act about periodically estimating the number of rights holders. There’s something quite specific in the act on that, so why isn’t it in the regulations?
Mr. Keyes: This raises another principle when it comes to regulations; normally, what’s in the act is not repeated in the regulations. Repeating things tends to confuse where the legislative provisions come from. Is it a legislative provision in the act or a regulatory provision in the regulations? Generally, when people draft legislation, they don’t repeat things; they say something once and that’s enough. Repeating something in the regulations therefore flies in the face of this guiding principle of legislative drafting.
Senator Cormier: You’re calling out the fact that the regulations include passages that repeat what’s in the act.
Mr. Keyes: The regulations can refer to what’s in the act. They’ve done that, in some respects, in these draft regulations, for example, for the purposes of certain provisions of the act, and they’re adding a requirement related to that provision. To understand the regulations, you have to understand the act at the same time. You have to read the provisions together. Somewhat of a reiteration to refer to the contents of the act is appropriate; however, the regulations can’t simply copy what’s in the act, because that would be repetition.
Senator Cormier: Will what you’re proposing be added to the purpose section address a fair amount of the grey areas that you pointed out, Madam Chair? Do you have any other observations or recommendations for us with respect to the draft regulations?
Mr. Keyes: Item 11 that we are going to propose will resolve a number of grey areas around what the act is intended to do.
It will amplify the act to ensure that it achieves its objectives. In some respects, there are some doubts with respect to the content of the act. For example, in the presentation made just before ours, a witness noted that a provision aims for a maximum level and a minimum level.
That may be one way of reading the act, but that’s not how I read it. You have to read them side by side, there’s no other way, it can’t be one or the other, you have to read both.
So addressing those doubts is absolutely a good thing; That’s what we’re trying to do with a lot of our provisions or additions to the bill to really clear up those types of uncertainty around what the law requires.
Mr. Dupuis: The section on positive measures and negative impacts in clause 3 also proposes that an entire procedure for implementing positive measures be set out. It specifies that the development of positive measures must be subject to consultations; that they are part of every federal institution’s core mandate and primary responsibilities; that they must be integrated into the institution’s policies, programs and central initiatives; that they may take the form of several specific and directly applicable actions based on clearly defined objectives and means that are not limited to statements of principle, but that generate a measurable impact in relation to the indicators formulated, directly targeting the current needs of francophone and anglophone minorities.
We will therefore set out a complete procedure in the document we will submit to this committee. Those are two ways in which we have succeeded not only in adding elements to the purpose and reiterating what a positive measure must do, but we’re also proposing an approach that is not a definition, but rather a pathway to implementation that should make it possible to specify how federal institutions are to interpret the term “positive measures.”
Senator Cormier: We look forward to reading the document. Thank you.
Senator Gerba: Ms. Roy, you said in your opening remarks that the modernized Official Languages Act prescribes a differentiated approach between the two official languages, particularly for French, which is recognized as a vulnerable language. However, you indicate that the regulations are silent on that. Can you tell us more about what the regulations should say on this issue?
Ms. Roy: Yes, that’s a very good question, because that part of the regulations concerns us a lot. According to this new paradigm, it’s a matter of demonstrating that French is vulnerable across Canada and that this causes even wider gaps. However, this is new in the modernized act, and I believe the previous panel mentioned it as well. It’s along the lines of it’s important to introduce positive measures that can narrow the gap to achieve substantive equality. That’s why we also talk about evidence when we do consultations, to remind us that we need to get analyses and good data. This will help us, and it will help the various federal institutions to narrow the gap between the anglophone majority and the minority. This is new in the modernized act; it wasn’t there before. That’s why the regulations are silent on it: It’s as if no one talked about it and the regulations were submitted to suit the old version of the act rather than the new version.
Mr. Dupuis: I would add that the act is very clear: Official language minorities have different needs and they must be taken into account. One can imagine that, in a consultation process, for example, there would be separate consultations between the francophone and anglophone minority to discuss their issues and priorities, which are not always the same. I like to cite francophone immigration as an example. Restoring the demographic weight of the francophone minority is a positive measure that takes into account a specific need of the francophone minority.
Now, the new act allows us to take measures that are not the same for the two minorities, recognizing the fact that they have different realities.
We think that federal institutions could and should take these differences into account in their consultation processes and in developing positive measures. So that should be planned for in consultations and in the mechanisms for assessing and measuring the impact of positive measures. If the same measure is taken for the anglophone and francophone minority, it won’t have the desired impact for both groups.
The other thing to remember is that Part VII also talks about promoting both official languages. It doesn’t focus only on the francophone or anglophone minority. The act recognizes that the French language is in a unique situation and is in decline because of its minority status in North America. Therefore, more needs to be done. This can pave the way to positive measures, not just for the minority, but also for the Canadian francophonie, which would also include Quebec.
Mr. Keyes: I would like to add a clarification. The issue of consultation is a good example of a place where we believe having a little more detail would be very helpful. Not all minority groups have the same capacity to be consulted. Therefore, we believe that should be flagged in the regulations. We have to be attentive to the capacity of the groups consulted. We can’t have the same consultation measures for everyone, since not everyone has the same capacity.
Senator Gerba: My next question is about consultations. Did the Treasury Board Secretariat consult you about the policy instruments, directives, guides and tools to direct the actions of federal institutions in implementing Part VII of the Official Languages Act?
Mr. Dupuis: Throughout the consultation process since the act was passed, the Treasury Board Secretariat has pointed out that it’s possible to adopt directives, tools or guides. That said, we were not consulted specifically on those tools, because I believe the Treasury Board Secretariat preferred to see the content of the regulations before determining the directives and tools. It’s very clear to us that it’s more legally sound to have guidance in the regulations than in related tools.
The Chair: Thank you. I have a question before I ask my question about analysis. In your consultations and the suggestions you made to the Treasury Board Secretariat, did they take the elements you had presented into consideration, in keeping with your wishes?
Ms. Roy: Very little was taken into account.
The Chair: Were some things completely disregarded?
Mr. Dupuis: I think all of our recommendations show that the regulations could be made clearer in every way by adding a purpose that would clarify procedures for determining positive measures, consultation procedures that meet needs, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
They are minimalist regulations. Mr. Keyes could also add that there’s a lot of room to develop clearer processes for the public service.
The Chair: You also mentioned one of your priorities, which is consultation-based analysis.
I guess it’s not clear. You talked about action plans and departments. In your brief, will you be presenting clarification procedures? That will surely have an impact on our minority communities.
Mr. Dupuis: Yes, there are a number of recommendations that we will make very clear in the document we’ll be submitting to you very soon. For example, we’ll talk about the analyses and results that the departments will use to determine whether any positive measures can be taken. These analyses should be made public and presented to stakeholders once they are invited to a consultation.
In terms of consultations, several elements could be further codified, including reasonable notice. We’re talking about reasonable notice, but for a government institution, it’s a matter of a few days’ notice. For a community-based organization that may not have in-house experts, that has to look at data and consult with its people to develop recommendations, advance notice is a new concept. It’s not the same thing for the minority community consulted as it is for a federal institution.
Mr. Keyes mentioned that federal institutions must take into account stakeholders’ capacity to respond. If you need to hire a lawyer or consult a large group to act on a recommendation, but the federal department doesn’t provide financial or human resources to support the community group for that work, you have quite a challenge. We want capacity to be taken into account in consultation activities.
Consultation processes also talk about jointly developing a schedule. In the four months leading up to the holidays, the FFAC was consulted 12 times by various key departments. We had to prepare for 12 separate processes. Now, we see that groups are less responsive because they’ve been over-consulted. Far be it from us to say that we want to be consulted less — we asked to be consulted — but we especially want departments to take this ability to act and schedules into account when developing processes.
Of course, separate consultations must be held for the two official language communities, because their needs are different. Those are a few examples of the elements we’d like to see codified.
I’m going to add the issue of evidence, because we’re talking about analyses that must be based on evidence. Departments often don’t have access to data on the realities of the minority. Their only mechanism to generate data is to consult with us. If we don’t have access to any because we haven’t collected the data, there won’t be any. This obligation to provide evidence must be founded on a data collection process. If an institution doesn’t have data on the minority, it must collect it.
To determine labour needs, for example, Employment and Social Development Canada collects data and analyzes Canadians’ labour needs, and every three months, the department sends out surveys across the country to determine needs. They don’t oversample to determine the needs of the francophone minority in 12 provinces and territories. They come up with labour force data for the general population, which is not the same as for the minority. Employment and Social Development Canada is not required to order additional data on our communities from Statistics Canada.
On the issue of evidence, if there is no obligation to collect it and if it doesn’t exist, positive measures may have no real impact on our communities, especially when it comes to narrowing gaps between communities.
The Chair: From a technical point of view, in this case, the act doesn’t impose anything? Does the government want to establish a process, adopt action plans and report publicly? There’s nothing in the act that doesn’t allow that. The regulations can easily do that, right?
Mr. Keyes: Yes.
The Chair: If the regulations can’t do it, the directives can do it afterwards?
Mr. Keyes: Yes. It can be done in both regulations and directives, but we believe that if it was necessary to ensure the implementation of the act, it must also be included in the regulations.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Cormier: Mr. Dupuis, in everything you just described, it’s as though you’re describing the elements that are part of the architecture for implementing the act and its regulations. You’re painting a picture. I wanted to ask whether you were going to end up at the head of Treasury Board to be able to influence the implementation, but I won’t do so out of respect for Minister Ali and his advisors.
What do you know about the collaboration between the Treasury Board Secretariat and Canadian Heritage to develop the framework and instruments that should guide this implementation?
Obviously, if I understood correctly, Treasury Board is responsible for implementing Part VII of the act and for the overall coordination of its implementation.
So, at this point, we can determine everything that the regulations should contain, but we still have to be well equipped to implement them. What can you tell us about that relationship and the capacity of the machinery of government to really implement what you want to see in the regulations?
Mr. Dupuis: I think there’s obviously a dialogue, but you’d have to ask the two institutions how they worked together on the development of this draft regulation.
Senator Cormier: In your opinion, what challenges do Treasury Board and Canadian Heritage face in implementing these regulations?
Mr. Dupuis: I think the people best placed to understand what should be defined are, indeed, the communities. As my president said, the FCFA has had 50 years of experience in this. I’ve been in my position for eight years, and from the number of times I’ve been invited to interdepartmental dialogues and to discussions with people responsible for Part VII, it’s very clear that the ideas of positive measures, consultation and accountability are understood very differently from one department to another. The importance of positive measures and the very realities of our communities aren’t well known.
We’re asking the Treasury Board Secretariat to put itself in our shoes a bit, but I can see that they don’t have a full understanding of the challenges we’ve experienced over the past 50 years in implementing the act. The hope that had been placed in the modernization of the act fades when we read this draft regulation, because we ultimately think that the clarity we were looking for will not be achieved if this regulation is adopted.
So all the pressure will fall on groups like ours and our networks, which will have to explain and argue — my colleague from TALQ said it earlier — what the floor is in terms of positive measures and what it could be if we had truly stimulating processes that produced convincing results for our communities.
Senator Cormier: Thank you.
Senator Moncion: I apologize for not being here at the beginning, so maybe my questions have already been asked. I’m going to pick up on a couple of things you said, and then I have a question.
You just mentioned comprehension, and I wrote next to it, “as opposed to will”. How close or how far apart is it?
Ms. Roy: When you read the regulations that have been tabled, we see a huge lack of clarity in terms of reflecting the point of view or what legislators put forward in Bill C-13. I do not know if it is a lack of willingness or understanding, but certainly the spirit of the act, or of Bill C-13, which we all worked so hard to get passed, is not reflected in the regulations as presented.
Senator Moncion: We can all agree that, whether we are on the side of francophones or anglophones who belong to provincial minorities, we are collectively disappointed with what has been presented, because we expected much better. I have to be careful with what I say, because it might upset the people who worked on this, but our expectations were much higher than what we received.
I think it’s unfortunate, and you said it well: It’s due to a lack of understanding of the needs of minorities in the different provinces. I sometimes think of the fact that we are reluctant to overregulate languages in Canada, whether it be English or French in the provinces where these languages are in the minority. That’s my opinion, but —
Ms. Roy: What’s also important at this time is that we have the opportunity to change the culture of federal institutions with respect to official languages once and for all and to put forward draft regulations that will be suitable for our communities. I think that’s what this proposed regulation must do, and that’s a culture change that’s found in Bill C-13.
Senator Moncion: If we give the regulations more teeth or impose additional requirements within them, do you think it will take anything away from the majority anglophone communities outside Quebec or from the majority francophone community in Quebec?
Ms. Roy: I think we can clarify the regulations without it being coercive towards the people who have to implement them. This would provide more clarity for the federal institutions that must implement positive measures or measure negative impacts rather than introduce coercive measures that will require them to do certain things. Under the act, they have to do X, Y, Z, and to do that, they have to be told what the parameters and processes are for implementing positive measures, conducting consultations, and assessing whether a measure is negative or will have a negative impact.
I think it’s very important that we be able to find these clarifications in these regulations to be able to operate. There’s no clarity right now, as was said earlier, and if the act ends up in the courts, we won’t be better off than with the previous act, which always left positive measures poorly defined or insufficiently precise to allow for clearer judgment.
So I think it’s very important, and we agree that certain elements really need to be clarified.
Mr. Dupuis: I would add that, since the act was passed in June 2023, several federal departments and institutions have told us that they were waiting for the regulations to be adopted — because the act was not clear enough — before consulting us and developing new positive measures. Just last week, we received this response again: “We can’t begin a dialogue or consultation process with you because we’re waiting for the regulations.”
If the regulations don’t provide clarity and simply repeat what’s in the act, I think a lot of public servants will also be disappointed because they won’t have the necessary clarity. They want to do a good job and meet the needs of Canadians, including minorities, but if we don’t give them this tool, we will all lose out.
To answer your first question, I think that historically we have seen that nothing is taken away from the two main majorities when minorities are well served. I would even say that we have often been ill-served by federal programs and that we have not received our fair share of the billions of dollars invested in services to Canadians.
We were hoping that the new act would change that. We are not asking for more than that; we are taxpayers, like everyone else, and are simply asking for equitable access to federal services and programs, but right now, that is not the case. We have to fight for crumbs, cute little measures, if you’ll pardon the term, that do not get to the heart of federal policies and programs.
Senator Moncion: I apologize for taking so much time, Mr. Chair, but thank you for giving me the time.
Ultimately, even adding these positive measures would benefit Canada since there would probably be a lot more francophones and bilingual people who would be able to offer services across Canada. That would help bilingualism both in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, and it would meet needs across the board. So we can see added value in the work you do, not with crumbs, but by looking at the situation through a Canadian lens and seeing the benefits for our country.
Thank you for the time, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: No problem; they are good questions and good answers.
My question is still about consultation. It seems that — as you mentioned a few times — there have been a lot of them in recent years. The Official Languages Act stipulates that federal institutions must treat the opinions of those consulted openly and seriously and be prepared to update the positive measures.
It sounds like you feel like you were not listened to. Can you suggest a process that would work better?
Mr. Dupuis: I think it is indeed in the consultation processes that positive measures must be developed in accordance with the explicit requests made by the linguistic minority. So it is not up to an analyst in a department to try to highlight our needs.
Usually, when we engage in consultations, we are very clear and make practical recommendations, but if the measures are not based on what was said during those consultations, that is a problem.
We would also like to see impact metrics in the assessment processes.
The act is very clear as to the objectives we want to achieve. We have a whole series of them: reversing the demographic decline, learning official languages, support for key sectors, such as employment, culture, economic development, and so on.
So, in our opinion, it is very possible, in the assessment processes — and this is one of our recommendations to you — to establish very clear impact metrics which will enable us to assess the positive measures and the extent of their real impact.
If the act doesn’t stipulate what the high-level impact metrics are, the objectives of the act will unfortunately be analyzed at the whim of each department. That means that in many cases they will not be analyzed based on their direct impact on our communities or on potentially achieving equality.
Senator Poirier: My question is on the same topic.
When we talked about consultations, you said you had been consulted several times. Ms. Roy, when you were asked, “Have your consultations and recommendations been listened to?”, you said, “very little”, as I recall.
Is there a way for you to ask why you were not listened to and why your recommendations were not followed and are not indicated here?
Can you get those answers? A lot of work goes into preparing for consultations. You have conducted a number of them over the past few months. So could you go back to them and ask them why very few of your recommendations were taken into account, even though you were consulted?
Ms. Roy: That’s actually something else we are suggesting for the regulations: ensure that federal institutions can make public the results of analyses following the consultations and inform us of them.
We can also see whether their decisions have had negative impacts. That is something else that is in the act and that was not in the previous act: everything related to negative impacts that are identified. Mitigation strategies have to be proposed.
That’s why we’re talking a lot about evidence and a review of future consultations in order to access the information that was discussed or accepted following those consultations.
Senator Poirier: Thank you.
Senator Cormier: Unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t talked to us much about language clauses.
Should the draft regulations define, for example, the minimum content of the language clauses or their drafting criteria?
What can you say about this aspect, which is quite important in negotiations and relations between the federal government and the provinces and territories?
Ms. Roy: The regulations should indeed stipulate that language clauses in federal-provincial-territorial agreements must be considered at all stages of the negotiation or renewal of an accord, protocol, bilateral agreement or action plan.
We’ll make some suggestions about that, but that should indeed be in the regulations.
Senator Cormier: When you say “at all stages,” would that mean they would have to be told to include language clauses? What does that mean, concretely?
Mr. Dupuis: There are about three stages in the negotiation of a federal-provincial agreement.
There is a framework agreement negotiated between all the provinces, territories and the federal government. That is the first stage where the federal government should consider including language clauses, or linguistic considerations, when negotiating with all the provinces and territories.
For example, if the framework agreement does not include official languages commitments, then there are the bilateral accords or bilateral agreements signed between the federal government and each province and territory, where each jurisdiction can adapt the key objectives to its areas of jurisdiction, needs and the needs of its citizens.
So there is a second opportunity for the federal government to make commitments on official languages. Some provinces could sign an official languages commitment, even if it’s not in the framework agreement.
Those are the basis for action plans which stipulate how the funds will be used and what direct initiatives the money will go toward. That is the third stage where the federal government should bring forward official languages objectives or projects and initiatives that meet the minority’s needs.
Unfortunately, the Official Languages Act does not require language clauses to be included in all agreements, but there is a requirement to discuss them at the negotiation stage. We want this to be done on an ongoing basis in order to give us every opportunity to have those clauses included.
In some cases, the framework agreement isn’t renegotiated every cycle. That means that only the action plan is renegotiated for another three years. So this must be an ongoing obligation for the federal government and we must be consulted to see how we can include commitments at each stage of the process.
Senator Cormier: I don’t want to get off track, but do you have anything to say about the Administrative Monetary Penalties Regulations?
We have heard from a few witnesses on this subject, and there are some concerns about the number of criteria that the commissioner has to consider. There are also challenges relating to meeting third-party obligations at airports, for example.
This morning, I flew from Moncton: there was no service in French at security. I had to remind the lady that this is an obligation under the Official Languages Act. It is important for francophones in Canada to be able to travel across the country and have access to services in both languages.
So do you have anything to say about those regulations? Have you focused on them, or have you focused on the regulations under Part VII?
Ms. Roy: We will also be submitting a brief on those regulations shortly. We certainly do recommend fewer administrative criteria and less red tape, because it’s really important for the full implementation of the act. That brief will be submitted soon.
It’s true that what has been proposed is cumbersome.
Mr. Keyes: Those regulations actually pertain to criminal proceedings, which are a bit different from what we’re discussing now. That’s why we’re concerned about too many details weighing down the legal process. That will effectively prevent legal action.
Senator Cormier: Do you think $50,000 —
Mr. Keyes: Yes, that’s another matter. The fine is too low.
Senator Cormier: It’s too low?
Ms. Roy: Yes.
Mr. Keyes: Yes.
Senator Cormier: So we will eventually receive something on that subject?
Ms. Roy: Yes, there is a zero missing.
Senator Cormier: Thank you very much.
The Chair: The intent is not punitive but rather to ensure compliance. It’s another tool that the Commissioner of Official Languages can use. So we’ll see.
Mr. Dupuis: If I may, if the commissioner is having so much trouble . . . We wanted an act that had teeth, we wanted a commissioner who could get results. If we are going to further complicate administrative processes and we don’t trust the commissioner and his judgment with respect to the act, I don’t know why we put forward administrative monetary penalties if the commissioner would have so much trouble using them.
In our opinion, let’s give him or her the latitude to determine when they are necessary and above all to ensure that the sanctions have a deterrent effect.
The Chair: Thank you. We’re coming to the end of the meeting.
On behalf of the committee and myself, I want to sincerely thank you for your statements and your answers to the questions. We’re all looking forward to seeing your briefs on the two regulations. So thank you for being here.
(The committee adjourned.)