French Language Services Commissioner

During the summer, the population of French River triples.  Of course, the community wants to benefit from this seasonal growth on the cultural aspect. People wish to make French River a little cultural capital, with a summer school of arts, an arts festival, a historic museum, and could also welcome artists in residence during this period.

The French River High School has a huge new gymnasium, with retractable terraces, ready to host many community activities. It is the perfect location to hold such events.

There’s only one major thing here. As the community was telling me, it becomes really difficult for the community health center to provide services to this population during the summer without a full time doctor in its offices!
 

Here is the first part of my meeting with the French River community last Tuesday. Read more »

I just wanted to say few words about the recent inauguration of the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA), attached with the Ottawa University. CURA will study, evaluate and compare knowledge on community governance within linguistic minorities in order to extract concrete action strategies. It is certainly a promising Alliance with a team of thirteen experienced researchers and seven community partners.

“The CURA will prepare community governance profiles, particularly in Ontario and New Brunswick. It will include case studies of potentially innovative practices in the community development sector in Canada and abroad. Some comparisons will be made with the United States, Ireland and Wales. It will also give rise to incubation practices within the CURA. It will allow the identification of community governance knowledge bases within minority communities and specify their impact on the mobilization of linguistic minorities toward their development.”

For more information… 

My New Brunswick colleague, Commissioner Michel Carrier, has just published a very interesting insert. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Official languages Act, People are Talking… about Official Languages reveals personal accounts by persons of all backgrounds in this unique and only one bilingual province in Canada.

“The personal accounts help us realize the progress we have made over the decades, the benefits of knowing more than one language, and the challenges that lie ahead”.

Michel Carrier, Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick

It is excellent news for Ontario that Toronto will host the 2015 Pan Americain and Parapan American Games. There’s no doubt that it will certainly be profitable for the provincial government, in terms of visibility, and will have an impact for the tourist, cultural and economic fronts.

But when I learned the news last Friday, I couldn’t avoid the question of figuring out how far the committee, in charge of the whole organization of the Games, will integrate French in the planning of the event. Of course, it is a good opportunity for the provincial government to demonstrate its recognition of Francophones and all residents with Latin roots. Let’s not forget that Haïti, like Canada, has also French as one of its official language. The question is justifiable considering the proportion the event will take from a tourism point of view.
 

Last Tuesday, I gave a presentation to 30 bilingual justices of the peace from across the province. It was a wonderful opportunity to provide them with information about the French Language Services Act (FLSA) and my responsibilities. However, it quickly became apparent to me that many had not received any training in language rights. Read more »