Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you for the question.

There is no doubt that the issue of protecting and promoting French is a top priority for me as Minister of Official Languages and for the government. I think our work on Bill C-13 shows that we want to move forward with a bill that has teeth, a new version of the bill.

The Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, Brenda Murphy, is a very dedicated woman who has served her community. She improved her French language skills by taking courses for several years.

Mary Simon is another woman who has made an effort. She wants to learn and be able to communicate with all Canadians.

Let us be clear: Many criteria are considered during these appointments to ensure that the best person is chosen to serve Canadians. As an Acadian and as Minister of Official Languages, I think it goes without saying that the ability to communicate in both official languages must always be at the top of the list of criteria to be considered, and it is important for our leaders to lead by example. That is why I am pleased that Ms. Murphy and Mr. Simon are taking French courses, since they know how important it is to represent all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Hon. Brian Francis: Welcome, minister. Prince Edward Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. At the same time, a wide range of industries face ongoing labour shortages, especially in remote areas. What exactly is the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, or ACOA, doing to address the mismatch between people without jobs and jobs without people on Prince Edward Island? Could you point to specific programs and initiatives?

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you very much for your question, senator.

Obviously, I have spoken to many stakeholders and the commissioner himself in my six months as Minister of Official Languages and before I introduced Bill C-13. They all asked us to ensure that the Commissioner of Official Languages would have more tools to do his job. The government recognizes that the Commissioner of Official Languages has a very important role to play in protecting and promoting official languages in Canada.

Since Bill C-13 has not yet received Royal Assent, the only tool that the commissioner has at his disposal right now is the ability to conduct investigations and publish reports. This bill, which will have more teeth, will give him more tools to do his job. Now, the commissioner will be able to mediate between the parties and negotiate compliance agreements. He will also have the power to make orders and will be able to impose administrative monetary penalties on companies in the transportation sector that are already subject to the Official Languages Act.

The regulations cover companies like Air Canada, CN, VIA Rail Canada and the airport authorities. We have been very clear that these institutions will be identified in a regulatory framework, but so far, we have clearly stated that these four companies will be subject to administrative monetary penalties if they fail to comply with the Official Languages Act.

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that question. Once again, I’m fully aware and have read the report that was provided by the commissioner. The transition to a low‑carbon economy is a massive economic opportunity, and ACOA is certainly vigilantly working towards that. Creating sustainable jobs will look different across the country to meet the needs of each region’s unique landscape. Because a one-size-fits-all approach is not ideal, ACOA officials are working closely with communities across Canada to build inclusive solutions that can mitigate potential future projects for employers and workers. We are focused on outcomes that create non-coal jobs that diversify local and regional economies and that allow our communities to develop and prosper economically now and well into the future.

Once again, we welcome the commissioner’s report, and we really are looking at finding ways to boost economic growth while also doing so in a green way.

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Again, thank you for this very important question.

[English]

It is a truly important question, and one I take to heart. In our official languages legislation in Bill C-13, we have made it clear in two or three areas of the legislation that through our legislation we absolutely do not want to infringe or impede on any part of Indigenous languages.

[Translation]

We recognize that there are 70 Indigenous languages in Canada. As Minister of Official Languages, I want to be clear that we absolutely do not want to impede the development of Indigenous languages. A bill on official languages designed to promote and protect the 70 official languages of Canada received Royal Assent in 2019. Furthermore, our government has allocated funds to ensure that these official languages will continue to be taught.

[English]

It’s important to make sure we recognize that our language is a part of our identity, a part of our culture. That is why the Indigenous language legislation that passed in 2019 was so critical.

For myself, as the Minister of Official Languages, I was eager to speak to the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages, Commissioner Ignace. We spoke about the work we could do collaboratively. They also indicated that while they are putting the Indigenous language office together, that if the Commissioner of Official Languages could work collaboratively with them, they were absolutely pleased to do so.

[Translation]

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: First of all, I thank honourable senators for inviting me to this Question Period. This is the first time I have met you for such an exercise, and I am very pleased to appear before you today.

Thank you for this very important question about our veterans. It is completely unacceptable that our francophone veterans have to wait longer to access services. As Minister MacAulay mentioned in the House of Commons a few months ago, the government has hired additional staff to address the issue of wait times, so that veterans have access to services in their first language.

It is vital that Canadians have access to services in the language of their choice. That is why Minister MacAulay made it very clear that additional staff were needed to address this situation, and that is exactly what has been done.

[English]

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you for that important question, senator.

The government is committed to ensuring that Canadians have access to justice in the official language of their choice. Many important parts of the Constitution, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, are officially bilingual. However, as you mentioned, many equally important documents, such as the Constitution Act, 1867, were passed in English only, and their French versions are not legally binding.

My colleague, Minister David Lametti, recognizes that it is his duty to prepare and propose, for communication purposes, a French version of any Constitutional statutes that have not yet been made official in French. This work is ongoing at the Department of Justice.

The Minister of Justice also stated that he is fully committed to ensuring that the work done by the French Constitutional Drafting Committee is publicly known and easily accessible.

As Minister of Official Languages, I am pleased to support him in this important work since, once again, access to justice is a fundamental right for all Canadians. We want to ensure that the document is prepared properly.

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you very much for that important question, senator.

Our government has made significant investments in official languages in recent years, and I’ll mention three of them.

As part of our action plan that ends in 2023, we made investments to support official language minority communities.

We want to affirm and support the vitality of official language minority communities, and that means making the necessary investments. These investments must be made in the areas of post-secondary education, as well as in community activities and centres, in order to ensure, again, that francophones can come together and receive support. In recent months, we have made some very important announcements about post-secondary education, again to support these communities. We recognize that we want to encourage our young people by promoting the French language so that they can speak it, and to do that, you have to start at a young age.

All of this, supporting this education continuum, from early childhood through to post-secondary education, is extremely important. That is why our action plan provides for the necessary investments.

In addition to Bill C-13, we want to ensure that we are doing everything we can as a government to protect and promote the French language, both in Quebec and outside Quebec, because that’s one of our top priorities. We recognize that French is in decline in Canada, and we need to ensure that we continue making investments to promote our wonderful official languages.

[English]

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that question.

With respect to the work that is being done at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, a lot of great work is being done on the ground with respect to helping and supporting small- and medium-sized businesses. Being the minister responsible for ACOA, I oftentimes indicate that the secret sauce for the success of ACOA is the folks on the ground and the staff that we have in over 40 offices across Atlantic Canada, to make sure that they really know the pulse of what is needed in the communities. That is really the beauty of ACOA.

I’m happy to say that we’ll be celebrating 35 years this year for ACOA in Atlantic Canada. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been operational for that long, but we have certainly seen a lot of progress and a lot of support provided to small- and medium-sized businesses.

With respect to the Black Entrepreneurship Program, ACOA focused on a group in Nova Scotia that was able to deliver the programs that were needed for Black entrepreneur small- and medium-sized businesses. Through that Knowledge Hub as well, the monies have been provided to that group, and then from there they are able to do the analysis to make sure where the money should be invested.

Again, we’re extremely pleased to say that there is also a partnership that has been provided through another group in Moncton to make sure that through the Knowledge Hub program there was also a francophone component, because we wanted to make sure that the francophone Black entrepreneurs as well were going to have access to that program. The group in Nova Scotia is the lead, but we also have a group in Moncton that will be able to ensure the analysis of the funding requests that are made, and then from there, the proper disbursements of the funds will be able to be provided to them.

[Translation]

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that important question.

We recognize that the need for making investments in post-secondary institutions is truly important. Yes, in Atlantic Canada I have met with a series of university presidents who are looking for investments from both the federal and provincial levels of government.

Just last week alone, I was at Université de Moncton, my alma mater. We were able to make an announcement not only for Université de Moncton but also for UNB to make sure that increased funding was provided so that we could prepare the youth of today for the jobs of tomorrow. That involved increased enrolment in the field of cybersecurity and others.

With respect to the federal government, Minister LeBlanc and I are always committed to making sure we can do all that we can to support our post-secondary institutions, because we know they are vital for the growth of our communities in the Atlantic region.

Finally, with my ACOA hat on, I often meet with employers who indicate to me that they sometimes need to ensure that their workforce receives specialized training in specific fields. That is why, through ACOA as well, we have been making strategic investments to make sure people could get micro-certifications to advance the skills they need in certain areas. That is one investment area.

With respect to infrastructure, I know Minister LeBlanc is committed to looking at ways to properly support our Atlantic-Canadian institutions, because we have stellar institutions here that are well known internationally.

[Translation]

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Minister, thank you for being here. I hear nothing but positive comments about the work you are doing as Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. It’s in that capacity that I want to ask you a question.

One of your duties regarding ACOA is to “. . . promote . . . long-term job creation and economic development in Atlantic Canada . . . .” To that end, will you be instructing ACOA officials to look at increasing regional employment opportunities by reversing the concentration of federal government jobs in the greater Ottawa area? Historically, only one third of federal jobs were based in the greater Ottawa area, but that has grown in recent years to almost one half.

Given the success many years ago of moving the national headquarters of Veterans Affairs Canada to Charlottetown, bringing some 1,600 employees and an annual payroll of over $120 million, can you, as minister, push for more federal departments to relocate their national headquarters to the other provinces of Atlantic Canada?

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much, senator, for your work and for those questions.

Again, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is an agency on the ground mandated to help tackle the challenges of small- and medium-sized businesses. I like to say that if it’s an economic issue or hurdle, it becomes an ACOA issue; if it becomes an ACOA issue, it becomes a Minister Petitpas Taylor issue. We want to ensure we can address these issues hand in hand in order to promote economic growth within the area.

When I meet with small- and medium-sized businesses — whether in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or Newfoundland and Labrador — the number one issue I am hearing about from businesses is the labour force shortage, especially when it comes to rural parts of the country. That is why, through ACOA, we are looking at ways that we can help address those matters. One thing is for certain: We know the issue of automatization and digitalization is a tool that many small- and medium-sized businesses are using. However, we recognize that, for some jobs, it is very difficult to find people who want to do them day in, day out. So automatization and digitalization are really key. That is why ACOA is providing specific funding, namely, to encourage small- and medium-sized businesses to incur the expenses and make the needed investments in order to automate and digitalize their industries.

ACOA has supported some community groups with respect to immigration-type projects as well. If we are finding small communities that are successful in receiving immigrants in their areas, we have to ensure that we have the support services in place to keep them in those communities. I’ll use Chipman, New Brunswick, as an example. It is a small, rural community —

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that important question. Again, as I have indicated, there is a lot of benefit to the decentralization of jobs. I am a strong proponent of that as well.

You are absolutely correct. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, namely, it is that we can work from any part of the country; we can work remotely. With respect to ACOA, for example, many of our staff are still working from home but are still extremely — if not even more — efficient with their time. Therefore, when it comes to the decentralization of different departments, I don’t think all jobs need to be in the National Capital Region or in capital areas across the country. I think we can look at ways to disperse jobs across the country in order to provide opportunities for different provinces and territories along the way.

Hon. Patricia Bovey: Welcome, minister. My question is about Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency funding for culture.

[English]

With Atlantic Canada so rich in cultural diversity — Indigenous, Acadian, Black and Scottish, amongst others — what support exists at ACOA to promote these rich cultures and their histories to the benefit of all aspects of life, including business, in each of these communities?

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you very much for that question. Again, I apologize for having to step away for a few minutes to participate in a vote.

I am very pleased to announce that we will soon begin consultations for our 2023‑28 action plan. Over the coming months, I will have the opportunity to hold cross-Canada consultations to hear from stakeholders and have them share their priorities for the next five‑year plan.

We would also like to begin consultations on the regulatory framework of the bill, since that will establish the nitty-gritty details. However, we cannot begin those consultations until Bill C‑13 receives Royal Assent.

We hope that both chambers will be able to work together to pass this bill so that we can pursue our very important work on implementing the bill and on the 2023‑28 action plan.