- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Lévis—Lotbinière
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $145,672.97
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. As I already said in the House, the only people who will defend French in this country are francophones themselves. We cannot expect others to defend the French language.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for all his great work and the leadership he showed in committee this entire year working with the Liberals. It is not easy to work with the Liberals and it is harder still to work with the NDP‑Liberal coalition.
Unfortunately, after all this great work that was done by our colleagues we are going to end up with a bill akin to the mountain that laboured and brought forth a mouse. As we know, in this great building, a mouse can easily get lost in the walls.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise in the House to speak to Bill C‑13, an act to amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the use of French in federally regulated private businesses act and to make related amendments to other acts.
If I wanted to sum up the clause-by-clause study of this bill in committee, I would say that this bill is like the mountain that laboured and brought forth a mouse. Modernizing the Official Languages Act was 50 years overdue, much like EI reform, which is still long overdue. We worked on this bill for a full year at the Standing Committee on Official Languages, and now we are finally at report stage, with additional amendments and yet another one of the Prime Minister's broken promises.
Should we be surprised? Making promises and not keeping them seems to be in the air in the spring of 2023 for this Prime Minister. Thousands of people across the country are extremely disappointed right now, and for a variety of reasons. Whether we take the Prime Minister at his word or believe he has been caught red-handed, his Liberal incompetence is pervasive throughout the machinery of government, and Bill C‑13 is no exception.
We could hardly manage after all the delays caused by the pandemic, which was blamed for many things. I am thinking of passport delays, immigration, foreign workers and the labour shortage. Now the public service is on strike even though the Prime Minister had promised that it would not have to happen. In the middle of tax season and tax refunds, hard-pressed families waiting for their money will have to patiently put up with one more thing.
I like to be optimistic, but I am also a realist. With this Prime Minister, we can never say, “promise made, promise kept”. For eight years, the Prime Minister has been perfecting the drama skills he learned at school, but it is sad to see that it has made him a man of all talk and no action. The last thing Canadians needed was a Prime Minister who wears rose-coloured glasses like his Minister of Finance, who does not know how to count given that she is spending $43 billion more than what we have. This Prime Minister does not keep his promises and is eroding the French fact.
We have a Prime Minister who is good at speaking in both official languages and sweet-talking people at election time, but it is a whole different ball game when it comes to getting real results in any area. I have to say that we are losing that ball game, and badly. We have also lost precious time and money. Committed, well-meaning people have now become disillusioned.
We are also seeing another disastrous consequence for thousands of French Canadians living in minority communities. I am talking about the decline of French. What I find the saddest is that, when faced with a Parliament that skimps on pretty much everything that Canadians care about the most, even the most steadfast individuals, those who have defended our country with strong, deeply-held convictions, have run out of steam and they no longer have the energy to fight the monster created by the Liberal Party of Canada: a country that is in social, cultural and economic decline.
We are now trapped in a country led by a pair of scheming, illegitimate political parties, where a laissez-faire ideology and reckless spending are the orders of the day and where fine words are never followed by concrete and sustainable action for a better future or any kind of future at all for that matter.
Providing hope for far too long only to produce mediocre results is what the Liberal Party of Canada has done yet again with Bill C‑13. In its priorities, legalizing drugs was the top priority, as was giving criminals lighter sentences. For months, if not years, we have been dealing with a flagrant lack of will and lack of meaningful actions. They are not making any real substantive changes, including when it comes to today's debate on modernizing Canada's Official Languages Act.
Both the community and the Conservative Party of Canada are unanimous: Bill C‑13 does not meet the objective of offering solutions to the problems regarding French as the language of work and as the language used in society.
As a diligent legislator, and I know what I am talking about because I worked on the amendments to Bill C‑13 in committee, and a concerned citizen who cares about promoting French, I read the disparaging newspaper articles about the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party and their desire to protect French in Canada.
As a member of Parliament for the people of Lévis-Lotbinière, who I proudly represent in my mother tongue, French, I would like to bring to the attention of all members two proposed amendments to Bill C‑13.
Motion No. 9 adds an obligation in the English version.
It states:
The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall advance the equality of status...
In contrast, the French version is weaker. We would like to see a way to ensure that the two texts are consistent, so that the French version reflects the English version with that obligation.
I also want to draw my colleagues' attention to Motion No. 13. This motion does not put Canada's two official languages, English and French, on an equal footing. The Conservative Party of Canada supports bilingualism in Canada and equality of status. We can and must protect and promote French in a way that does not take away from the English language.
As we know, Bill C‑13 is a failed attempt by the NDP-Liberal Party coalition to make us believe that bilingualism is being adequately protected in Canada. However, the Standing Committee on Official Languages did not listen carefully to a very large majority of the amendments called for by the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada and the Commissioner of Official Languages. Their amendments are not included in Bill C‑13.
After eight years of talk about protecting the French language, it is safe to say that this bill is nothing but smoke and mirrors and does not guarantee that the French language is going to flourish in the future.
The objectives should have been to stop the decline of French and to protect and promote both official languages, but Bill C‑13 achieves neither of those very laudable goals.
The Treasury Board should be the central agency for coordinating the implementation of the Official Languages Act. To ensure this coordination, the powers of the Treasury Board should have been extended to the entire act. The Treasury Board's powers in part VIII have not been extended to the entire act, not even to part VII. This is completely inconsistent, since all stakeholders were calling for the Treasury Board to become the central agency and to be given the tools to do so.
I would also like to call attention to another flaw in the bill. The current wording of the bill does not ensure that all children of rights holders will continue to be counted under section 23 of the Charter. It merely sets out a commitment to estimate the number of rights holders. There is no obligation to include these questions in the census, as they were in the 2021 census, which will lead to an underestimation of the number of children of rights holders.
Let us now look at how the legislation will be reviewed, since the Conservative Party of Canada proposed that a five-year review be conducted. Given the accelerating decline of French in Canada, this amendment could have provided an additional tool to react quickly and recalibrate.
As for the powers of the Commissioner of Official Languages, they were completely ignored. His order-making powers should have been extended to part VII of the act to enable him to do his job properly.
We worked hard, but in vain, to move amendments required to strengthen part VII. We needed to add obligations to ensure that federal institutions take the positive measures needed to protect and promote both official languages.
I will close by addressing an issue that is at the heart of this bill, the definition of francophone minorities. The bill should have included an explicit definition of the term “francophone minority” so that it would continue to refer only to minority francophone communities outside Quebec and thus avoid any interpretation by the courts.
In conclusion, this is once again a failed attempt in the history of Canada to protect and promote the French language. It is an example of the disastrous legacy of the Liberal Party of Canada and of the Prime Minister, who really is not interested in what Canadians across the country really care about.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her excellent French. It is a testament to what is possible right across Canada.
Could my colleague say a few words about the Liberal government's failure with respect to francophone immigration?
Since 2015, 2.5 million immigrants have entered Canada. Of that number, only a small fraction, in the tens of thousands, are francophones.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that very interesting question.
One thing the government can do is prioritize francophone economic class immigration, especially in provinces like Alberta. There is currently a shortage of francophone teachers in Alberta, which means that not all Canadians who want to learn French can do so.
Making it easier for francophone teachers from around the world to become economic class immigrants would certainly help address the problem in Alberta and would have a positive impact.
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Mr. Speaker, we are witnessing a historic event, the modernization of the Official Languages Act. As parliamentarians, we should all take our time, even though the government seems to be rushing us and asking us to cut corners. Nevertheless, we truly intend to work with the government and work in committee stage by stage and line by line on this bill.
Very little has happened in the past 50 years to modernize the act, and we are not expecting to see much in the next 50 years. That is why we have to act now, this year, with this bill, to make sure that, for the next 50 years, the decline of French will be slowed, stopped and even reversed. That is why it is so important to do all the necessary work.
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Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleague that our former government implemented two roadmaps. We were the first to invest more than $1.1 billion. This had never been done before.
Furthermore, we made education a priority in these roadmaps and allocated as much money as possible to this priority. We believed that education was the way to ensure that all Canadians who were interested had the opportunity to learn in French, and that this would improve our relations with francophone minority communities.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.
It is an honour for me to speak to Bill C-13, an act to amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act and to make related amendments to other acts.
From the outset, I would like to point out to the hon. minister that I was parliamentary secretary for official languages during the 41st Parliament from May 2011 to September 2013. Not to upset or offend her, but I would remind her that her government is not the first to give Canada's two official languages the importance they deserve. The fact is that French has never ceased to be under threat, and there is no doubt that threat looms larger than ever since 2015, both in Quebec and the rest of Canada.
I worked on the road map for Canada's linguistic duality, which ended in 2013. We made an unprecedented investment of $1.1 billion to support linguistic duality that brought together 15 departments and agencies.
I will excuse the minister, since she was not yet elected and so many of the previous Conservative government's accomplishments were literally deleted from the Internet with the arrival of the Liberals in 2015.
We have been keeping a close eye on the act for quite some time to make sure it strives to achieve substantive equality between Canada's two official languages.
As a unilingual francophone, I am very familiar with the challenges of being from a small, practically unilingual francophone community, but I am very proud of my roots and my mother tongue.
Our two official languages are an integral part of our identity, and I am privileged to see my children function in both languages more comfortably than I ever did at their age. It is extremely important to be able to grow up, work and live in one's mother tongue. I understand the fragility of our official language minority communities and the many challenges they face.
Ensuring that francophones can access federal government services in their language and that federal public servants can work in the official language of their choice is still a very real challenge in 2022, and there is no denying it. This government has been in power since 2015, and things have not really improved on its watch. I will not even talk about balancing the budget or deficits or the possibility of losing our AAA credit rating, nor will I talk about our justice system or the legacy the Liberals have left our young people by legalizing both soft and hard drugs.
All that is scandalous, but let me get back to today's topic, Bill C‑13.
We have wasted precious time since 2015, and the Liberal government appears to have just recently realized that the Official Languages Act needs to be amended and modernized. I can guarantee that as a member of Parliament and a member of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, I will personally work with my colleagues to ensure that Bill C-13 finally reflects the current linguistic realities and that it promotes substantive equality between French and English, while contributing to the vitality of official language minority communities, which greatly need us.
This bill could have passed in the previous Parliament as Bill C-32, but let me remind members that the Prime Minister felt the need to plunge us into a costly and unnecessary election. We are finally getting around to it now. Still, as the saying goes, better late than never.
Contrary to what the minister claimed last week, we have been working for quite some time already with community stakeholders, the provinces, the territories, the Commissioner of Official Languages, the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages, which is very important to me.
The common goal is noble and reflects our commitment to ensure that the modernized bill reflects the reality of francophones living in Quebec, anglophones across the country, francophones living in minority situations, Acadians and anglophone Quebeckers.
The hardest work is yet to come, but we need to ensure that the Liberal government does not start playing dirty tricks, passing the buck or dragging the process out.
The situation of French is very worrisome, not to mention critically at risk. With eight million francophones in Canada in a sea of more than 360 million anglophones in North America, the protection of French is an issue that deserves close and immediate attention. We will push this federal government to play its role with respect to protecting official language minority communities.
We will ensure that Bill C‑13 responds to the challenges that the French language is facing in North America and the challenges that official language minority communities are facing. First, we will ensure that the bill recognizes the linguistic realities of each province and territory.
The federal government collaborates with provincial and territorial governments that provide services in the minority language and promote the vitality of the official language minority communities. However, the federal government must also make it a priority to work together with indigenous communities across the country to ensure that indigenous languages are preserved and protected. The modernized legislation would therefore explicitly state that it does not affect the strengthening and revitalization of indigenous languages.
As everyone knows, I do not like scandals. We will continue to speak out against the fact that French is in significant decline in this country in 2022, and it is scandalous that this is still happening. The Liberal government needs to take concerted action to reverse this trend.
More must be done to protect and promote French across Canada, including, of course, here in Quebec. We will ensure that francophones can live in French. We must establish new rights to enable francophones to work in French and to be served in French in federally regulated private businesses.
In this respect, the minister said on April 1 that these new rights will be enshrined in a new act, namely, the use of French in federally regulated private businesses act, and that these rights will apply in Quebec as well as regions with a strong francophone presence.
We will, of course, ensure that the Liberal government does not forget that the private sector also has a role to play in promoting our official languages and enhancing the vitality of official language minority communities.
I look forward to seeing how the government might ensure better access to justice in both official languages by introducing a new bilingualism requirement for the Supreme Court of Canada. That is a major challenge and, unfortunately, such challenges are not this government's strong suit.
That being said, we will ensure that Bill C‑13 fulfills the promise of strengthening the Treasury Board's role as a central agency to coordinate and enforce the Official Languages Act. The discretionary aspect of its monitoring, auditing and evaluating powers will now become mandatory. We will also ensure that the powers of the Commissioner of Official Languages are strengthened. It is imperative that he be given more tools to do his job so that he is able to impose administrative and monetary penalties on certain privatized entities and Crown corporations operating in the area of transportation serving the travelling public.
Air Canada's recent appearance at committee gave us a good example of how francophone Canadians are basically being neglected because employees are not really encouraged to learn or improve their French-language skills.
The bill also includes important clarifications regarding part VII on federal institutions taking positive measures that will benefit official language minority communities. It will be mandatory to take into account potentially negative impacts that decisions could have on the vitality of the communities and on the promotion of both official languages. lt must also strengthen Canada's francophone immigration policy, which must include objectives, targets and indicators with the aim of increasing francophone immigration outside Quebec.
We will ensure that Bill C‑13 will increase supports for official language minority communities to protect the institutions they have built, both for francophones outside Quebec and for the development of the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
The bill must ensure that the Official Languages Act reflects the challenges of the 21st century. We are embarking on a legislative process that the Liberals have finally initiated to significantly advance Canada's linguistic framework, and not before time.
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