Hon. Maria Chaput:

Honourable senators, I have initiated this inquiry to call your attention to the discontinuance by the Government of Canada of the Interdepartmental Partnership with the Official-Language Communities, or IPOLC.

The elimination of IPOLC happened very quietly, without notice and without consultation. This fund, created in June 2000 to strengthen cooperation between official language minority communities and federal organizations, was abolished on March 31, 2009. No new government fund, program or initiative has been proposed by the current government to fill the void.

The Conservative government's decision to terminate IPOLC without notice or consultation goes against the will of Parliament, as expressed in sections 41 and 42 of the Official Languages Act.

I remind you that, under section 41:

. . . the Government of Canada is committed to (a) enhancing the vitality of the English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and supporting and assisting their development; and (b) fostering the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

Under section 42, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, in consultation with other ministers of the Crown, shall encourage and promote a coordinated approach to the implementation by federal institutions of the commitments set out in section 41.

Also, since 2005, section 41 of the act provides that every federal institution, and I quote:

. . . has the duty to ensure that positive measures are taken to implement these commitments.

Positive measures mean active measures. Regardless of the definition that, some day, will be given to the legal notion of "positive measures", it is clear that this expression imposes on the government an obligation to act.

This obligation to act imposed upon the federal government falls within a very specific legal context. Indeed, the Supreme Court reminds us that the Official Languages Act, and I quote:

. . . belongs to that privileged category of quasi-constitutional legislation which reflects certain basic goals of our society.

The Official Languages Act is therefore not an ordinary act.

Thus, the obligations imposed on the federal government under that act cannot be brushed aside. Not only is the obligation to take positive steps imperative, but it also falls within a quasi-constitutional framework.

In other words, the federal government must take action in order to ensure the vitality of official language minority communities. That is its duty.

IPOLC, as it existed before being summarily eliminated by the Conservative government, was a positive step aimed at encouraging federal departments and agencies to promote the implementation of section 41 in their respective programs. It provided funding to complement the contributions made by participating federal institutions toward the fulfillment of their responsibilities under the Official Languages Act.

Ironically, although the IPOLC was established in 2000, before the legislation even obligated the federal government to take positive measures, it was abolished by the government under the new legislative regime, with no consultation and without any new positive measures being introduced. Instead of acting, the federal government chose to stop acting.

Inaction seems to be the order of the day for the current government, despite an obligatory, clear and precise statutory requirement that requires the contrary. So, what was this IPOLC?

The IPOLC was a Canadian Heritage initiative, with an annual budget of $5.5 million, that aimed to enhance the vitality and development of official language minority communities. The money was intended to create partnerships, especially new partnerships.

According to the IPOLC's general guidelines, Canadian Heritage:

. . . seeks to promote activities that can have a multiplier effect by establishing best practices and models to inspire other initiatives in other regions of the country and engage other Canadian target groups. Within this mandate, the department has created the Interdepartmental Partnership with the Official-Language Communities.

Between 2000-01 and 2005-06, about 20 memoranda of understanding were signed by the Department of Canadian Heritage and various federal institutions thanks to IPOLC. Although a variety of organizations have participated, including Health Canada and Western Economic Diversification Canada, IPOLC has been particularly useful to the cultural community.

Under IPOLC, the Canada Council — one of the main recipients of funding — was able to award grants to individual artists as well as to arts organizations in order to encourage artistic creation in official language communities.

These grants were awarded in the media arts, visual arts, dance, writing and publishing, music and theatre.

According to a recent study by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, "It is nevertheless clear that the IPOLC has contributed to an increase in the number of projects being funded and the amounts of funding" for artists and artistic organizations in a minority situation.

However, the study points out that this increase was very modest, generally less than 1 per cent.

While Canada Council financial assistance for the francophone minority has been declining since 2002-03, IPOLC was able to compensate for this reduction. Year after year, according to the Commissioner's study, the francophone minority receives only 2 per cent of all Canada Council funding. Within the Canada Council, IPOLC was the only support that exclusively targeted official language minority communities.

According to the study by the Commissioner of Official Languages, the IPLOC was "a targeted funding initiative that has enabled OLMC artists to make significant progress."

That said, although the IPLOC was designed as a temporary measure to build new, stable, sustainable initiatives, there is some skepticism regarding the effectiveness of this partnership. The IPLOC, as an incentive, did not increase funding for official language minority communities to the degree its designers hoped it would.

The IPLOC targeted short-term projects and was unfortunately not structured "to provide the stable, long-term support required" to build the sustainable initiatives that had been hoped for.

While some of the findings are less than stellar, others are more positive. For example, let us look at the impact the IPLOC had on the anglophone community in Quebec, a minority official language community we too often forget.

In English Quebec, the IPLOC helped fund several new initiatives such as the National Film Board's Doc Shop and Voices from the Hood, Quebec Scene, the National Arts Centre's Programme de développement du théâtre en region and the development of English-language feature films and television dramas by Telefilm Canada.

IPLOC contributions to the Canada Council for the Arts led to a gradual increase in funding for anglophone artists and arts organizations in Quebec starting in 2000.

An independent study produced for the Canada Council for the Arts concluded that the IPLOC fund was extremely important to the anglophone community in Quebec, and I quote:

Anglophone artists in Quebec increasingly see themselves as a community rather than as an assemblage of individuals, and they are actively seeking to identify their artistic community needs. Interdepartmental Partnership with Official Language Communities funding allowed the community to clearly articulate these needs, and provided funds for artistic community building initiatives.

What will become of all the progress made by the anglophone community in Quebec now that the IPOLC no longer exists?

The IPOLC also had an important economic impact. Some $75 million was invested between 2000-01 and 2005-06. Of that amount, $26 million came from Canadian Heritage, while the other $49 million came from federal institutions and other sources.

According to the Fédération culturelle canadienne française:

Statistics show that the IPOLC made it possible for additional investments of nearly $6.4 million to be injected into the cultural sector in francophone minority communities from 2001 to 2005-06, in addition to corresponding investments by the recipient organizations and other partners, for a grand total of more than $16.5 million.

Thus, we believe that the losses caused by the elimination of the IPOLC will be much greater than the few million dollars that the program itself put into official language minority communities, since, without that program's contribution certain federal institutions will be less inclined to invest in projects that benefit those communities.

Despite uneven results, the IPOLC made a significant contribution to the vitality and development of official language minority communities. For example, in 2006-07, the IPOLC backed the production of two short, French-language dramas in partnership with Telefilm Canada, Radio-Canada and the National Film Board of Canada. Carole Ducharme, from Vancouver, was given the opportunity to present the black comedy she wrote and directed, Ben voyons, Camille!, while Pamela Gallant, from Cap-Pelé, New Brunswick, was able to present La voisine, which she wrote and directed, thanks to the IPOLC.

Those dramas, along with Rébus, Un bon gars, Embargo and Louez un mari were all produced as the result of a contest that was launched by the IPOLC. Other examples of the IPOLC's positive contribution in terms of televised material include Un monde passion and Carmen à la campagne by Productions Rivard, a film and video production company in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that was created in order to ensure a greater western francophone presence in Canada's film industry.

The current government made no attempt to enhance IPOLC by making specific changes to the way the fund worked. No concrete alternatives were proposed. No consultations were held with official language minority communities before the government eliminated IPOLC.

The Guide for Federal Institutions, published by Canadian Heritage in 2007, offers a series of key questions to help federal institutions make decisions when implementing section 41 of the Official Languages Act. These key questions include the following important questions:

What actions could be taken to consult official language minority communities and the organizations that represent them or other key stakeholders involved in the promotion of official languages? Who should be consulted, and how?

It seems that the government did not ask these questions before deciding to get rid of IPOLC. So my question is: why? Why did Canadian Heritage, the department responsible for protecting official languages, not follow its own official languages guide? How could it gauge IPOLC's effectiveness without talking to the target population?

The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne deplores the fact that the decision to eliminate IPOLC was made without consulting the communities. The FCFA speaks on behalf of French-language minority communities in Canada at the national and international levels. It submitted a complaint to the Commissioner of Official Languages about the decision.

According to the FCFA, federal initiatives like IPOLC will always be necessary. It said:

. . . there is nothing to suggest that anything has changed or that support from Canadian Heritage is no longer needed to facilitate contact between departments and communities. Rather, interdepartmental collaboration and Canadian Heritage's role in this matter are still of great importance to communities.

Canadian Heritage's most recent report on official languages, the 2006-07 report, describes IPOLC as:

. . . [bridging] the gap between OLMCs and federal departments and agencies, thereby raising the latter's awareness of their existence and needs.

Why does the Conservative government want to get rid of an initiative that it has called a bridge between communities and federal institutions?

We have received precious few answers to these questions so far. I would therefore urge the federal government to give the matter some more thought, this time together with the official language minority communities.

The federal government must take action to protect the vitality of official language minority communities. It is required by law to do so. It has a moral duty to do so. And it is in our national interest to do so.

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