The amendment to Bill C-35 which aims to guarantee long-term funding for French-speaking daycares has been accepted by the Liberal government, announced Wednesday the Minister of Families and sponsor of the legislative text, Jenna Sudds. It is now up to the opposition parties to accept or not the amendment, already adopted by the Senate.
When a bill is amended by the Upper House, the House of Commons must then approve, in turn, the text in its new form, so that it receives royal assent.
“We are not quite at the finish line,” recalled the president of the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities (FCFA) of Canada, Liane Roy, calling on “all parties in the House to support the motion of the government “.
The Bloc Québécois spokesperson for official languages, Mario Beaulieu, assured the Duty that his party “will support the amendment […]. We stand alongside the Acadians and French-speaking communities of Canada. »
At the time of writing, the New Democratic Party and the Conservative Party of Canada had not indicated to the Duty their position.
Mme Roy declared two weeks ago that the opposition parties had had a “fairly favorable reception”. What rather worried the FCFA and the National Commission of Francophone Parents was the “total silence” from Ottawa, which had “given no indication of its intention to support or not this amendment”. The two organizations then mobilized French-speaking parents, asking them to write to their MPs to encourage them to vote in favor of this modification. “This is an important step forward and we owe it to almost 3,500 French-speakers who wrote to their parliamentarians,” underlined Mr.me Roy.
“I am very pleased to announce that our government accepts the amendment proposed by the Senate on Bill C-35,” Minister Sudds declared Wednesday morning, thanking “all stakeholders, [ses] colleagues and [les] senators who worked hard to propose this amendment.
Liberal senators and the government representative in the Senate, however, opposed the amendment proposed by Acadian René Cormier during its study in the Upper House.
In March 2022, the Ontario and federal governments implemented a five-year plan to reduce the cost of child care to an average of $10 per day. Bill C-35 would ratify these agreements.
The only modification adopted by the Senate, it aims to ensure that article 8 commits the Government of Canada “to maintaining long-term funding” for childcare services intended for “official language minority communities”, in the same way as mention is made of centers “intended for indigenous peoples”.
The director general of the National Commission for Francophone Parents, Jean-Luc Racine, estimated, based on the opinions of three jurists who testified in the Senate, that without this clarification, it would have been “possible to read in the draft law a deliberate intention not to include official language minority communities.” “The only thing that is permanent and lasting is the laws,” he declared.
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.