Senator Rose-May Poirier

Senator Poirier: Thank you for being here and thank you for the presentation.

I have a couple of questions. The government just wrapped up its consultation regarding the next plan for official languages. Did you participate in the consultations?

Ms. O'Donnell: I have been invited to several aspects of the consultations, so the answer is yes.

Senator Poirier: Could you share with us what you recommended to the minister and what your expectations are for the next plan?

Ms. O'Donnell: I would like to talk about the different consultations. I participated in a consultation on health, with Health Canada; I participated in a consultation about Acfas and the research communities; and I made some online recommendations as well.

My recommendations are always in the same direction. They are that we continue to support research for English-speaking communities. We need to have research on English-speaking communities for several reasons. One is because we need to have knowledge-based policy decision making, and therefore research for the communities is essential.

Second, research is important to the communities themselves. It allows us to know ourselves and to be able to have a clearer understanding of the different communities that together make up what we call our English-speaking community.

I also regularly recommend that we support what I call "knowledge mobilization.'' Knowledge mobilization refers to activities like I described today, such as conferences, websites, bibliographies and newsletters. Having a report or research study that is produced and then sits on a shelf is only part of the activity. What we need to do, and what we do at our research unit, is make the research available to communities through different activities that speak to different groups of people at different levels so that we can make more informal and scholarly settings to bring people together in order to receive the information.

Senator Poirier: In your presentation, on page 4, you talked about the funding received in the two years. From my understanding, if I read this right, the funding comes from Canadian Heritage.

Ms. O'Donnell: That is right.

Senator Poirier: The anglophones in the province of Quebec are a minority group, and then in other provinces across the country we have minority groups in French.

Do you know if the level of funding, compared to the other provinces where a minority group is francophone, is different, or is it very similar to what you're receiving in Quebec for the anglophone minority?

Ms. O'Donnell: I'm unable to talk about specifics. That's not a question I have asked specifically, about how the different provinces fund research on their linguistic minority.

What I can say, as I mentioned in my presentation, is that there are simply more resources available in terms of research centres and institutes, and also umbrella organizations like L' association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne.

My understanding is that de facto there is overall more money going into francophone minority communities. We're both national official language communities, but at the provincial level I cannot say.

Senator Poirier: Do you have ongoing dialogue with the different ministers when the time comes to share research and to receive funding?

Ms. O'Donnell: The federal departments?

Senator Poirier: Yes.

Ms. O'Donnell: I have good contacts with some of the federal departments. I have collaborated on research projects with Industry Canada. We did a report on the creative economy, which I brought here today, if anybody would like a copy.

At Industry Canada we worked on the creative economy. I worked with what was formerly called Citizenship and Immigration Canada on several projects on immigration. I've worked, of course, with Canadian Heritage over the years. I have some contact through two projects I work on with the Quebec Community Groups Network with Justice Canada and ESDC.

To answer your question, I have varying levels of contact with the different departments, but I have also reached out to the official language champions, which are located in every single department and government institution, making available my newsletter and reaching out to invite them to attend our events.

In answer to your question, I would say I am in contact. I have done outreach, and I have closer relations with some ministry departments than others so far.

Senator Poirier: Of the challenges that you have, funding was one. You mentioned a couple of other challenges, but are there regular meetings that go on from the different minority groups across the country to discuss these challenges and see how they deal with them, if there is anything you can learn from one province to another in terms of helping out?

Ms. O'Donnell: We've made preliminary steps in that direction. I mentioned before that we have an annual conference at Acfas, the Association francophone pour le savoir.

I'm speaking a bit of jargon here. The ACUFC, one of our francophone counterparts, also does an annual conference at Acfas. We have had preliminary discussions with their office around the possibility of joint conferences. We have not succeeded to date, but we have made the contact and shared some information.

When we got our latest round of funding, I was in discussions with Roger Paul, who is head of the Table nationale sur l'éducation, to ask for advice and guidance on the new table that I'm setting up. There is not a structured regular setting for that kind of discussion, but we have done outreach in that direction.

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Senator Poirier: To follow up on one of Senator Mockler's questions, you mentioned that you get requests from other groups or individuals to do a study on a certain topic, like seniors or immigration. When you get the request to do that supplement, does the cost to do that research come out of funding you receive here that you mentioned, the $190,000, or does extra funding come from the group that asked you to do the research to help pay for this research?

Ms. O'Donnell: When I have done applied research projects for the government, it's additional funding, so I'm able to hire people. I supervise the project and I'll hire people to conduct interviews, for example.

In other cases, as with the Quebec Community Groups Network research on seniors, I was offering my services, you could say, for free or as an in-kind contribution in support of a research project that they carried out.

Most of the time it's funded and sometimes I offer my support as an in-kind contribution.

Senator Poirier: If it's federal funding, would it come from different departments?

Ms. O'Donnell: Different departments, yes. They have included Immigration Canada, Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage. Those are the three that come to mind.

There's a new project from Justice Canada that I've just started working on with Quebec Community Groups Network.

Senator Poirier: What type of funding are you looking at and how often? Is this a one-time deal?

Ms. O'Donnell: Yes, it's a one-time deal. The seniors' project was provincial and was around a quarter of a million dollars, but generally the research projects I carry out are around $25,000, $30,000 or less. They are modest amounts.