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(Courtesy of The Canadian Press) OT: How about also raising the spending limit for shopping in the US. Would be nice if we could come back after a a day with $500 CDN (goods) and week with $2000 CDN (goods)
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(Courtesy of CanWest News)
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Globe and mail : Canada's tenuous French connection
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans Discussions générales
L`article est un peu facultatif, je veux porter votre attention aux nombreux commentaires en relation avec celui-ci. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071204.wcensusmain1204/CommentStory/census2006/home/ Canada's tenuous French connection BRODIE FENLON Globe and Mail Update December 4, 2007 at 4:12 PM EST Just a day after the Prime Minister appointed Bernard Lord to head a committee on bilingualism, newly released census figures suggest that Canada's official-languages policy and the vitality of the French language are under increasing pressure outside Quebec. There are nearly as many Canadians with a non-official language as their mother tongue as there are francophones, while the peak rate of bilingualism for anglophones living outside Quebec has dropped again. The new figures on immigration, language and mobility, gleaned from the 2006 census, paint a dramatic picture of Canada's changing demographics. Among the highlights: • One in five Canadians – 19.8 per cent of the total population – was born outside the country, a rate not matched since 1931, when the percentage of foreign-born citizens peaked at 22.2 per cent. Only Australia has more foreign-born residents. • More than 60 per cent of immigrants live in the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; only about 5 per cent live in rural parts of Canada. • Most of the recent newcomers to Canada are from Asia – 58 per cent when those from the Middle East are included. Europeans, the dominant immigrant group for most of the 20th century, represented only 16 per cent of those who moved to Canada between 2001 and 2006. • Canada's foreign-born population increased by 13.6 per cent, four times greater than the growth rate of 3.3 per cent for the Canadian-born population. But it is the language numbers released Tuesday that will likely make headlines, following as they do on the heels of Mr. Lord's appointment by Stephen Harper to head a high-profile committee on bilingualism in Canada. The former premier of New Brunswick will travel to seven cities across the country during the first two weeks of December to speak to members of English and French minority communities and provide advice and guidance to the federal government. Mr. Lord will then report to Official Languages Minister Josée Verner in January. What Mr. Lord will find outside Quebec and New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province, is increasingly isolated French-language communities, the census suggests. One indicator is mother tongue, defined as the first language learned at home and still understood at the time of the census. For the first time, allophones – those who speak neither English nor French as their first language – represent fully one-fifth of the population. The numbers jumped to 20.1 per cent from 18 per cent in the last census, driven primarily by immigration. Conversely, the proportion of francophones and anglophones decreased slightly after population growth is taken into account. This will be no surprise for Canadians in many parts of the country. For several years, Chinese has topped French as a first language in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. The 2006 census reaffirmed the position of Chinese languages as Canada's third most common mother tongue group. More than one million Canadians reported one of the Chinese languages as their first language, a jump of 18.5 per cent. Experts are quick to note that allophones speak about 200 languages and are not a homogeneous group. Francophones still represent about one-quarter of the population; people who report Chinese as their mother tongue represent 3.3 per cent of the total population. Moreover, the census showed that nine out of 10 Canadians speak English or French most often at home: Just over one-fifth spoke French, 67.7 per cent spoke English, and 11.9 per cent spoke a non-official language at home. It is important to note, however, that the English and French numbers dropped from the previous census, while the non-official language numbers increased by 1.5 per cent. Even in Quebec, the percentage of people who spoke French most often at home dropped to 81.8 per cent from 83.1 per cent. The bilingualism rate is another indicator of the tenuous French connection. Outside Quebec, only 5.6 per cent of allophones in 2006 reported knowing both official languages. While there was a slight increase – 7.4 per cent from 7.1 per cent – in the number of anglophones outside Quebec who said they could carry on a conversation in both official languages, the number dropped for a key demographic: young Canadians. Because most anglophones learn French at school, the peak bilingualism rate for Canadians outside Quebec occurs in the 15-19 age range. That rate has slipped over the past decade, to 13 per cent in 2006 from 16.3 per cent in 1996. The ability of young anglophones to maintain their knowledge of French as a second language appears to decline with time. In 2001, 14.7 per cent of anglophones aged 15 to 19 were bilingual. Five years later, only 12.2 per cent of that same cohort reported being bilingual. The numbers are disappointing, considering that one of the chief objectives of Ottawa's $787-million plan on official languages – launched by the previous Liberal government in 2003 – is to double by 2013 the percentage of young bilingual Canadians to 50 per cent. Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies and advocate of official bilingualism, warned against an “ethno-local” reading of the numbers, which he said could foster tensions and challenge public support for French in areas where other languages dominate. “When you start breaking things down locally, then you risk tearing away at the fabric of national unity. ... That's the Canada of multiple parts, not the Canada with a national vision both of its demographic reality and its history,” he said. “Bilingualism is the fundamental feature of a strong Canadian identity to the extent that more than a quarter of the country, nationally, consists of people who are French speakers.” Others suggest, however, that such sentiments are antiquated in a multicultural Canada and ignore the demographic reality of much of the country, especially urban areas such as Toronto or Vancouver. “Nobody's asked any longer what is the place of French. Now I walk on hot coals to even say that out loud,” said Heather Lotherington, associate professor of multilingual education at York University. “We're living in a global society. We have this influx of people who speak the languages of the world, and we're not doing a damn thing with these languages. We're just letting them go to waste.” Ms. Lotherington, whose research is focused on Toronto-area schools, advocates for the inclusion of students' mother tongues in the curriculum. She said decades of research shows that if you maintain the languages children know, they learn other languages better, fast and more easily. “French immersion needs to be looked at critically,” she said. “I do not want to throw it out. Canada is a world leader in immersion education. But you have to think about the way we learn languages and the possibility of learning more. "It's a very colonial stance to say that English and French are the languages of Canada.” Concerns about official bilingualism and the impact of immigration on the French language inside and outside Quebec are not new. In September's Throne Speech, the Prime Minister pledged to extend official bilingualism programs for minority communities. The appointment of Mr. Lord is seen as the first step in that commitment and a response to the critical report by Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser, who accused the Harper government of having “directly undermined” the official languages plan with budget cuts and by eliminating the Court Challenges program, which financed minority-rights court cases against the government. Citizenship and Immigration recently set targets through 2011 to attract between 8,000 and 10,000 French-speaking immigrants a year to francophone communities outside of Quebec. Driving these targets are demographic data showing that for every new immigrant whose mother tongue is French, there are 10 whose mother tongue is English, and that the vast majority of newcomers adopt English upon arrival in Canada. Meanwhile, the debate over immigration and language continues in Quebec, where the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation of minorities heard last week from a prominent Parti Québécois strategist that only an independent Quebec could protect the French language. The commission also heard from French-speaking immigrants to Quebec who said their lack of English was impeding their ability to get jobs. And in October, PQ Leader Pauline Marois caused a small furor when she proposed the Quebec Identity Act, which would require all new immigrants to the province to learn French within three years. Those who failed a language test would not be permitted to hold public office, raise money for a political party or petition the National Assembly. The bill was widely condemned. The Official Languages Act, first passed in 1969 and updated twice since, stipulates Canadians' right to receive federal government services in either English or French where numbers warrant, the right of public servants to work in either language in certain areas, the right of either English or French speakers to advance in the public service, and that the government must promote bilingualism.- 9 réponses
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Skip GST cut, use cash to fight child poverty: report
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans Hors Sujet
Skip GST cut, use cash to fight child poverty: report The Canadian Press November 26, 2007 at 12:19 PM EST OTTAWA — A social action group is calling on the federal government to cancel the next one-percentage-point cut to the GST and divert the money toward efforts to eliminate child poverty. In releasing its annual report Monday, Campaign 2000 said the level of child poverty in Canada has not improved since 1989, despite repeated promises by governments to tackle the issue. “Eighteen years after the 1989 all-party resolution of the House of Commons, the child poverty rate is exactly the same,” said the report, which received endorsements from all three federal opposition parties. “Some important initiatives in child benefits, early-learning and child-care services and affordable housing were started. Some of these have been stalled and others have been rescinded. Related Articles Proportion of poor families skyrocketing in Toronto, report says The Globe and Mail “It is time for Canada to adopt a poverty-reduction strategy that will honour the commitments to children and their families.” The group says 788,000 children — 11.7 per cent of children in Canada — live in poverty, despite a growing economy, a soaring dollar and low unemployment. Government undertakings have lacked specific targets, timetables and other specifics, undermining political will to take effective action, the group said. The Conservative government has opted to cut the GST and implement billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts while Canada has failed to honour numerous commitments to children: — the unanimous, all-party resolution in the House of Commons, calling for an end to child poverty by 2000. — the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified by Parliament and all provinces by 1999, recognizing an adequate standard of living for children. — the Early Learning and Child Care Agreements signed by the federal government and all provinces in 2005 that laid the foundation for a universally accessible system. — an agreement among first ministers and First Nations leaders in Kelowna in 2005 that promised to improve quality of life for First Nations, Métis and Inuit children and their families. Quebec is the only province where child poverty rates have been consistently declining since 1997, the report said, partly because of a package of family-support benefits implemented in 1997. Despite the province's booming economy, Alberta's child-poverty rate has fluctuated between 14 and 15 per cent since 1999, the group says. British Columbia remains the province with the highest child-poverty rate, at 23.5 per cent. “There are too many working-poor families in B.C. who are unable to get jobs with sufficient pay, hours and benefits to lift them above the poverty line,” the report says. Indeed, the group says jobs are not always the answer — 41 per cent of impoverished children in Canada live in families where at least one parent works full-time all year. “More parents are working, but they're still poor,” the report says, calling for increases to the minimum wage. “Full-time work at minimum wage is not an escape from poverty. “The economy is growing, but prosperity doesn't benefit everyone equally.” Child care is a critical element of poverty reduction, it says, and notes that affordable housing leaves more money for food, clothing, school supplies and transportation. And the group says the risk of living in poverty is higher in First Nations and recent-immigrant communities. -
Ottawa pledges tax cuts as surplus soars STEVEN CHASE Globe and Mail Update September 27, 2007 at 1:02 PM EDT The Canadian government racked up a monster surplus of about $14-billion for the last fiscal year, Ottawa reported Thursday. It said it has used the surplus to retire national debt and will funnel the $725-million interest saved as a result to Canadian taxpayers through tax cuts. That is a break of about $30 to $40 per tax filer in annual savings, depending on how it is allocated. That surplus far exceeds the $9.2 billion forecast in the last budget. Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulates Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on March 19 after the government's budget speech. It is an embarrassment of riches for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which said Canadians were overtaxed when it took office and vowed that there would be no more surplus surprises. Ottawa's coffers are swollen by extra personal and corporate income-tax revenue generated by richer profits from a commodity boom. By law, all this excess cash – $14.2 billion – has been used to pay down Canada's debt and is not available for spending. However, the interest savings generated by the debt paydown – a fraction of the overall surplus – will be used to fund tax reductions, as promised by the Harper government. The surplus hit $13.8-billion and Ottawa ultimately reduced its debt by $14.2-billion last year, the government announced.
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Montreal fest maverick Serge Losique conquers Montreal scene By SHANE DANIELSEN Claude Miller's "Un Secret," starring Cecile de France and Patrick Bruel In an increasingly corporate fest milieu, Serge Losique is a maverick. Pugnacious, unpredictable, the 76-year-old Montreal World Film Festival chief has for over three decades run his event as a personal fiefdom, as shuttered and inscrutable as the court of Tamburlaine. He's also a survivor, having seen off a recent challenge that would have sunk many a less determined adversary. Launched amid great fanfare in February 2005, the New Montreal FilmFest quickly signed a high-profile director (former Berlin and Venice topper Moritz de Hadeln) and boasted coin from Canada's major government film offices. It was, its backers claimed, the breath of fresh air the Montreal film scene badly needed. But in fact, the newcomer proved one of the fest world's more conspicuous train wrecks. The omens were not good: Both the fest's staff and its board were castigated by de Hadeln in the Canuck press just days before opening night -- but the reality proved far worse, with few (and flummoxed) guests, an empty red carpet and most films unspooling to near-empty houses. "It was," one attendee commented, "like watching the Lusitania go down. For 11 days." From across town, you could practically hear Losique's sigh of satisfaction. Sure enough, after that first, disastrous edition, the plug was pulled. Bloodied, but defiantly unbowed, the veteran fest celebrated its 30th anniversary last August. However, the very creation of a rival fest signaled other, more serious concerns -- specifically, a deepening feud between Losique (who runs his event as a private company, even owning its principal venue, the Imperial Theater) and his chief funders, Canadian government bodies Telefilm Canada and Sodec, the Quebec film agency. Both claimed disenchantment with Losique's autocratic managerial style and "lack of accountability" to the local film community. In electing to side with the NMFF, they expected his event to fold. Instead, the tyro event went under, leaving both bodies with oeuf on their faces. "The problems we encountered in the last two years with Telefilm Canada and Sodec are due to the fact that they are judge and jury," Losique reports. "Sooner or later, this approach to culture has to change." Losique has challenged the status quo before: "We raised these questions (just) as we raised questions about the rules of FIAPF (the Intl. Federation of Film Producers Assn.). We quit them. Now FIAPF is better, with new rules, and we are a member again." In the same way, he says, the relationship with Telefilm Canada is "becoming more normal." His lawsuit against them has quietly been dropped: "We're not yet kissing each other, but we are talking to each other." Unpredictable programming Still, Telefilm has not committed to reup its funding: a spokesman would say only that MWFF was still "under evaluation." Sodec, however, has returned to the fold, announcing in June that Losique's event would be once again among the eight Quebec film fests to share its annual C$800,000 ($750,000) pot. For many attendees, the chief virtue of the World Film Fest -- and the reason for its enduring importance on the fest landscape -- is the sheer unpredictability of its programming. Where Toronto, true to its origins as the Festival of Festivals, essentially culls a greatest-hits lineup from Berlin, Cannes and Venice, the Montreal slate comprises many off-the-radar pics from across the globe. Last year saw entries from 76 countries; this time, filmmakers from Chad to the U.S. will compete on equal terms for the Grand Prix of the Americas, the event's major award. Many of these will be world premieres. As such, it's a distinct change from the homogenous, shopping-list selections of most fest selections. Or as Losique puts it: "Our goal is to find the best films from as many countries as possible. We are not looking for 'names,' because even great names can produce bad films. In some festivals, you see the parade of stars and starlets offered by the marketing junket machine of Hollywood. We are not here to please dubious merchants, but to display the gems of the film industry." Still, he admits to a growing sense of dejection: "The emotional mystery of cinema is disappearing. Today you can buy any film on DVD on the same shelves with cat and dog food. Films d'auteur are gradually dying at the box office, and that's a danger for a quality film festival and also for cinema in general." The only way forward, he believes, is to retain a sense of perspective: "If you're too big, it's not good for cinema and discoveries. If you are too small, you do not exist for the media and sponsors. A festival should not be so big that you cannot even appreciate the films. Some middle road must be found."
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Ottawa sells buildings in $1.64B lease-back deal Aug 20, 2007 04:48 PM Canadian Press OTTAWA – The federal government has sold nine office properties to a Vancouver-based real-estate company for $1.64 billion, but will lease them back for the next 25 years. Larco Investments Ltd. made the purchase after what the government called "an extensive open, transparent and competitive process" involving properties in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Public Works Minister Michael Fortier says the government sought independent advice from Deutsche Bank before making the sale, concluding it is a fair deal for taxpayers, particularly since markets were favourable at the time. A government statement says the deal makes good sense because it transfers ownership risk for major capital costs to the private sector and ensures the buildings are properly maintained. It says the conditions of the leases are fair and stable, and Ottawa will maintain the right to name the buildings. Fortier says office space is a commodity and government does not need to own it to use it. The transaction increases the percentage of leased properties in the Public Works portfolio from to 47 per cent from 43.
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Invest in major cities now or pay price, report warns
un sujet a posté mtlurb dans Discussions générales
Conference Board of Canada Report Calls for City Investments Invest in major cities now or pay price, report warns Environment, global competitiveness, arts and culture at risk, board advises Toronto Star 6 February 2007 Failing to boost Canada's cities will damage the environment, cost billions of dollars in productivity and perhaps even kill Canadian arts and culture as we know them, a new report says. A long-awaited study by the Conference Board of Canada released today says Canadian cities have been forgotten for too long and that failing to inject needed capital will hurt the entire country. "The distinctive needs of Canada's six big cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary and Edmonton) are being ignored. Chronically short of resources and poorly equipped with governance powers, our big cities are struggling to fulfill their potential as engines of national prosperity. Citizens and leaders alike must recognize that big cities are intrinsically different from smaller cities and towns in both their higher economic potential and their greater needs." Canada has slipped to 12th from third in the world in comparative economic performance in just two years, the board said, and the only way to fix that is to make up for decades of neglect in Canadian cities by making investments now. "Neither our cities nor our economy will be globally competitive" if that investment doesn't take place, the report states in the kind of language that big business and the federal Tories might relate to. "We are also unlikely to sustain the arts and culture that are so important to Canadian identity." The report said 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban areas. But Canada is still using government structures and ideas brought in when most Canadians awoke to the sound of mooing cows or chirping birds and not garbage trucks and car alarms. "We still think of ourselves as a rural nation, and we have to start internalizing the fact that we're urban," Conference Board president and CEO Anne Golden told the Star's editorial board yesterday. While some of the themes aren't new, the fact that the report comes from such a highly respected body - the Conference Board of Canada is a non-profit and non-partisan group - lends further weight to the arguments of those pushing for a new deal for Canadian cities. "Big city mayors are right when they say there's all this talk about fiscal imbalance vertically between the federal government or horizontally among the provinces, but the real fiscal imbalance is at the city level, the municipal level," Golden said. "It's a combination of rising needs and expectations and shrinking resources. It's impossible to ... really compete with the cities in the world that are competing with us, from Tokyo to Glasgow to New York to London, unless we put our own house in order." The report says Ottawa and provincial governments should "work to end the municipal fiscal imbalance for major cities, potentially through such means as granting access to a growth tax, increasing transfers and reassuming responsibility for previously off-loaded services." It also argues that provinces have to give cities wider taxation powers and that cities have to find cost savings and better use the tools they already have. The Conference Board report, titled "Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities," found that investing in nine key cities would be a "win-win" proposition for all residents of the country. "New research by The Conference Board of Canada shows that economic growth in each of the nine Canadian 'hub' cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton) generates an even faster rate of economic growth in other communities in their province or region," the report states. "Increasing resources allocated to major cities would have a substantial impact on accelerating national economic growth." "We're not saying invest all money in our major cities," said Golden, who's slated to speak to the Toronto Board of Trade today and will appear with Toronto Mayor David Miller on Friday at an Ottawa gathering of Canada's big city mayors. "We're arguing for strategic investment." The board said a 2004 report found that Toronto was the only Canadian city to make a list of so-called "well-rounded global cities," and it said it will take willpower and co-ordination to boost Canadian cities up the rankings. "At the very least," the report said, "Canadian public policy should focus on ensuring that Toronto has the resources to maintain its singular status among global cities." While the report pushes for major investment in big cities, it also argues that governments must continue to help smaller cities. Among the recommendations: Governments work together to intensify urban growth and cut down on damaging suburban sprawl. The federal and provincial governments prepare a national urban transportation strategy. Federal and provincial governments increase their investments in affordable housing in major cities. Federal and provincial governments "design new approaches to municipal funding to permit the strategic allocation of funds in line with the distinct needs and potential of major cities." The board states that municipalities are hampered because senior levels of government have shifted responsibilities to local governments and that cities don't have access to taxes that grow when the economy grows. In 1993, federal and provincial transfer payments to local governments accounted for 25 per cent of municipal revenues. By 2004, the board said, that had dropped to just 16 per cent. The authors note that citizens expect their municipalities to provide parks, police, garbage collection and snow removal. But cities today also have to manage high-cost security concerns to prevent terrorism and handle a growing array of environmental problems related to energy use, waste management and urban transportation, the board said. Thirty one U.S. states have a local sales tax, the report said, while 3,800 local governments in the U.S. have local income taxes. But Canadian cities rely almost entirely on property taxes.- 3 réponses