Hon. Réjean Aucoin: It’s getting late. I thought I could count on my colleague Senator Cuzner to put a hand on my arm in case I fell asleep, but he’s not here.

Thank you to everyone who spoke before me in favour of the motion. I agree with your comments. Thank you to Senator Patterson, who made it clear that Indigenous communities and official language communities should work together, and that this bill and amendment do not go against either of them.

Colleagues, thank you for giving me this platform tonight, and thank you for the kind words when I was sworn in. It was very touching. I hope I can live up to all the praise.

I am speaking to you not long after my appointment because I cannot stay silent concerning the motion to amend Bill C-35. Who am I? The answer will give you some idea of the reason I am rising.

I come from Chéticamp, a small French-speaking Acadian enclave in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Today, about 2,500 people there still speak French.

In 1991, francophones and Acadians from Nova Scotia were spread out across a dozen or so villages and accounted for about 3.9% of the population, or 35,000 people. Today, 26,775 Nova Scotians still speak French as their first language, or 2.8% of a population of more than a million.

I grew up in Chéticamp, but I went to school in Moncton and Paris. Before I became a lawyer at age 37, I worked as a journalist and radio producer for Radio-Canada, and I also worked in the community development sector at the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse. I am very familiar with Canada’s Acadian and francophone communities, because I have travelled all around my province and from one end of the country to the other.

At school, I did all of my classes in English in my village, except for French class and, as of grade 9, history class. At the time, the school board was made up of about nine unilingual anglophone members who decided the curriculum for dozens of English schools, as well as for the school in Chéticamp, which may have also been an English school. Needless to say, French education for Acadians was not that school board’s priority. The Indigenous senators will no doubt understand what I am talking about.

As for education in Nova Scotia and section 23, in 1982, with the adoption of the Charter, I thought that our community would finally get its French school, but I could not have been more wrong. In 1985, we had to organize a “yes” campaign, a petition to respond to a plebiscite by the municipality, which had no recourse and no jurisdiction over the matter. We also had to show the government that we did indeed want a French-language school. We had to deal with being labelled as separatists and racists by the anglophone media and the general public.

The people who were against French schools argued that graduates of a French-only school in Chéticamp wouldn’t speak English at all. I can tell you that, by the age of five, my daughter already spoke English. I wasn’t the one encouraging her to do so.

At a public meeting attended by roughly 500 people, the warden of Inverness County at the time said, and I quote, “Over my dead body that there will be a unilingual French school in Chéticamp!” Well, that reeve has since passed away, and God bless him, because we got our school. However, it was not without repercussions. People were threatened, a car was set on fire by the folks who were against it, and to this day, some people are still identified based on whether they were in the “yes” camp or the “no” camp. I’ll let you decide which side I was on.

At the time, I had no idea that, seven years later, I would be a lawyer, let alone that I would be standing before you today to share all of this.

Nova Scotia, notwithstanding the party in power, did much the same thing in every Acadian community in the province, asking the communities if they wanted a French-only school. This led to conflict in every community and delayed the provincial government’s obligations to establish some French-language schools, despite section 23 and the Charter, which was enacted in 1982.

On a personal note, my daughters were born in 1988 and 1990 and graduated in 2000 and 2002, both from our old school that had been around for over 40 years. During that time, a brand-new English-language school was built, as would be the case in Chéticamp, Margaree and Belle Côte, and many of our Acadian students attended it. Needless to say, many of them were assimilated.

[English]

Honourable colleagues, you may be asking yourselves why I am telling you all this. Bear with me — I intend to make a parallel between Bill C-35 and the amendment proposed by Senator Cormier. I will talk about the history of minority language education in Nova Scotia. In order to do that, I have to talk about Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education).

This case, which went up to the Supreme Court of Canada, dealt with the right to French-language schools for the Acadians and francophones in Nova Scotia. In 1998, 16 years after the enactment of the Charter and section 23 guaranteeing the right to official minority language education, the province had yet to award the funds necessary to construct, renovate or provide the programs needed.

In his decision, Justice Leblanc declared that although the province did not deny that the Acadian and francophone minorities there were guaranteed an education in their language, it had failed to deliver on its promises. Here is what the judge said in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6.

Paragraph 4 notes that:

Although the government eventually announced the construction of the new French-language school facilities, construction of the promised schools never began. . . .

Paragraph 5 notes that:

. . . the real issue was not the existence and content of the applicants’ s. 23 rights, but the date on which the programs and facilities would finally be made available.

Paragraph 6 notes that:

. . . the respondents had not given sufficient attention to the serious rate of assimilation among Acadians and Francophones in Nova Scotia. The Province treated s. 23 rights as if they were but one more demand for educational programs and facilities, and failed to accord them due priority as constitutional rights. . . .

This situation from Nova Scotia is not unique. Cases like Doucet-Boudreau can be found in most provinces and territories, as parents of the francophone minorities had to go to court over a number of years to obtain the right to have their children educated in their language.

[Translation]

That brings me to the proposed amendment. Official language minority communities are mentioned three times in Bill C-35, but not in the preamble and not in clause 8 on funding.

The amendment takes nothing away from the bill. It simply adds to clause 8 to provide that the funding is also for official language minority communities. The courts would need to take that into account in the event of legal action.

It is a statement that removes any ambiguity as to whether the funding applies to minority language communities. You may have heard this quote before, but here is what Professor Larocque, who holds the Research Chair on Language Rights at the University of Ottawa, told the committee:

Without the proposed amendment to clause 8, official language minority communities risk being deprived of the federal funding they need to maintain their early learning and child care programs and services over the long term.

He went even further and said that we would be wrong to think that the current version of the bill, without the amendment, guarantees funding for minority language communities. On Friday, I spoke with Suzanne Saulnier, the executive director of the Centre d’appui à la petite enfance de la Nouvelle-Écosse, or CAPENÉ, which was established about 30 years ago. This association includes about 16 francophone child care centres in Nova Scotia, in other words, all francophone child care centres in Nova Scotia.

Here’s what she told me:

Despite a federal-provincial agreement signed on July 13, 2021, very few new spaces have been created specifically in French-language child care centres for the Acadian community. Despite the 18 new spaces announced for the Wedgeport region, these spaces are still not available because of school construction delays. We submitted a request for funds in February 2022 and again in October 2022, but we are still waiting to receive the additional funds promised under this agreement. There are not even any spaces for little ones from 18 months to 3 years of age.

We represent 16 Acadian and francophone child care centres in the province, but we have no idea how much money will be coming our way under this new agreement, how much has been set aside for Acadians, or when we will get it.

Furthermore, our association has no seat at the consultation table created following the agreement, despite our 30 years of involvement.

I note the comments by Senator Cordy about the funds that Nova Scotia is going to allocate to child care. However, what guarantee do we have that the province’s Acadians and francophones will receive their share?

Nicole Arseneau Sluyter, president of the Acadian Society of New Brunswick, with whom I spoke on Friday, said she was in favour of adding official language minority communities to clause 8, because that would do more to guarantee funding, if ever the matter went to court.

She said, and I quote:

There aren’t enough daycare centres in French, and some parents have no choice but to enrol their children in English-language schools. As a result, their children end up losing their mother tongue.

Perhaps francophone parents in each province and territory will not be obligated to take their respective governments or administrations to court in order to get francophone daycares, but, as senators, are you willing to take that risk? I’m not, given the recourse in Nova Scotia and what Suzanne Saulnier told us. I’m still not seeing any results following the signing of the new agreement in 2002.

As for the Indigenous people of this country, even though this bill makes multiple references to them, nothing is guaranteed.

Our communities are not in competition with each other. They need to work together to claim their share so that they have early childhood education centres for generations to come.

I am here to tell you that, even if we adopt this small amendment, which is not even in the preamble of the bill, there are no guarantees that my province will provide francophone child care spaces, and even if it does, there are no guarantees as to when that will happen. The situation is similar in the other provinces.

I would urge you, honourable senators, to vote in favour of the motion. Thank you very much.