3. The Canada-community agreements and horizontal governance
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The Canada-community agreements constitute the first instance of horizontal governance with respect to the vitality and development of the official language minorities. Their implementation poses a challenge to the federal government and the official language minorities because horizontal governance requires a change in institutional culture, new forms of collective accountability, and an ongoing dialogue among the various networks of players. It must also lead to new relationships among the government and non-government players, based on partnership and subsidiarity rather than dependence and hierarchy.
3.1 Governance structure
Figure 4, summarizes the structure of governance of the most recent Canada-community agreements. This structure was developed in co-operation with the official language minorities and takes the form of a set of vertical and horizontal structures of governance (see appendix 8 for a more detailed description of the players and their roles in the coordination of activities related to the Canada-community agreements).
Figure 4 : Summary of the players and their roles in coordinating activities pertaining to the Canada-community agreements*
The Department of Canadian Heritage is the final authority for approval of the agreements. However, each agreement is administered by a management committee that includes representatives of Canadian Heritage and the minority communities (usually from the provincial or territorial round table).
The agreements also provide for a provincial or territorial round table, sometimes also called (depending on the location) a coordination forum, steering committee, management committee or council of agencies. This body may invite representatives of the government to sit on it, as is the case in Newfoundland; however, in general, it consists exclusively of spokespersons for the minority community. The round table therefore represents the minority community in all matters pertaining to the negotiation and administration of the agreement.
The English-speaking minority of Quebec is accordingly represented by the Quebec Community Groups Network, a group of community organizations, representing English speakers from across the province founded in 1995. In New Brunswick, the various Francophone organizations have established the Forum de concertation des organismes acadiens du Nouveau-Brunswick. However, the Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick, an older organization, administers the agreement and serves as the secretariat of the Forum de concertation.
Ontario has a management committee for the renewal of the agreement as well as an additional committee, the applications committee. The latter is intended to eliminate any suspicion of conflict of interest in administering the agreement, since most of the time the same persons sit on nearly all the committees (something not unique to Ontario).
In the other provinces and territories, the provincial or territorial representative organizations negotiate and administer the agreements on behalf of the minority community. Representatives of sectoral organizations are, however, asked to sit on management committees and evaluate funding applications.
The "national" structure is more complex and includes a table of national agencies, sectoral round tables, a coordinating committee, special committees and a management committee, as is the case for the other agreements. Thus, the round tables play an important role in coordinating action within the minority communities.
After the signing of the most recent agreements, the Department of Canadian Heritage established an additional evaluation committee, consisting of representatives of the department, for the sole purpose of reviewing funding applications from the minorities that have already been accepted by the management committees or the applications committees. The establishment of such a committee was poorly received by the minorities, who feel that they negotiated their agreements in good faith and that such a structure would only further bureaucratize the process of approving funding applications.
3.2 Negotiation of the agreements
The agreements are negotiated between the representative organizations and officials of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The costs incurred in negotiating the agreements vary from $20,000 to $40,000 and are paid out of the operating budgets of the organizations (FCFA, 2000: 1-2). Negotiations may take up to two years, as they did in the renewal of the agreements for the period from 1999 to 2005.
It should be noted, however, that groups do not participate equally in the negotiation of the agreements. Not all groups sit at the negotating table, and not all are consulted to validate the process. A number of them also severely criticize the negotation process. Some have pointed to conflicts between regional and federal public servants as a hindrance, in their view, to the progress of negotiations on the agreements. They have pointed out that the process was too slow, that employees of the Department of Canadian Heritage made contradictory statements, and that the minority communities had no room to manoeuvre when negotiating funding, since it had already been decided at the start of the process.
The FCFA recommended that Canadian Heritage clarify the process and the rules of the game. Like all the parties to the agreements, it wants the department to be more transparent, the regional employees to be given the required room to manoeuvre to negotiate, the minority communities to be regarded as accountable partners, the negotiating period to be shorter, the negotiations to be fair and equitable, perceptions of favouritism to be avoided, the Canadian Heritage negotiators to be clearly identified, and what is negotiable to be indicated (FCFA, 2000: 2-3).
These are important issues because they indicate that action has not been effectively coordinated during the negotiating period. More explicitly, they indicate that the accountability mechanisms have not functioned well, that the roles of the government and non-government players have not been well defined, and that the interaction among them has not been conducive to collective learning. The State has not played its role as a catalyst.
3.3 Evaluation of the agreements
The Canada-community agreements provide for evaluation mechanisms. In 1997 the Department of Canadian Heritage conducted its own evaluations while most of the official language minorities were doing the same. The different evaluations yielded similar results. The agreements also provide for ongoing evaluations, but these do not seem to have been carried out as the agreements were being implemented.
In the first series of agreements (1994-1999), a provision on evaluation of the agreements stated that both parties agreed on the importance of periodic and ongoing evaluations to verify whether the objectives of the agreement had been achieved. This provision was included in the new series of agreements (2000-2005), but this time it was explicitly stated that, in some cases, the Agreement Management Committee would be responsible for evaluating the activities carried out and the mechanisms put in place under the agreement.
The French-speaking communities of Newfoundland and Ontario seem to have gone the furthest in specifying evaluation mechanisms. Newfoundland provides for annual evaluations carried out by the management committee and a final evaluation in consultation with the community organizations. In Ontario, the agreement provides that the management committee, supported by experts, will be responsible for developing and carrying out the joint evaluation (department and community). The committee agrees to report the results of the evaluation annually to the Department of Canadian Heritage.
In the case of both Newfoundland and Ontario, Canadian Heritage agrees to pay half the cost of conducting evaluations (experts, meetings). In all other cases, the costs must be paid out of the agreement funds.
To date, the evaluations of the Canada-community agreements have not been explicitly concerned with issues of governance. Many questions refer to the problems associated with governance, such as those on coordination among the government and non-government players. However, many other questions regarding the effectiveness of governance and its impact on the organization of the networks of players within the official language communities were not asked.
3.4 The Canada-community agreements and the effectiveness of horizontal governance
The Canada-community agreements should promote coordination of action based on consultation and the participation of the various federal departments and agencies in the development of the minority communities and the long-term development of the minorities. Accordingly, effective action should result in greater synergy among the various partners and greater acceptance of responsibility for themselves by the communities. But is this really the case?
The conditions conducive to effective coordination of action are present when: i) accountability mechanisms are clearly established; ii) civil society accepts certain responsibilities, without being left to itself; iii) interaction among the groups is possible and the rules are known and accepted by all; iv) the State acts as a catalyst. It should be borne in mind, however, that the coordination of action may be limited by the organizational and ideological context in which it takes place and by tensions and conflicts within the networks of players.
3.4.1 The issue of accountability
Greater acceptance of responsibility for the financial management of official language minority activities by the communities themselves raises the unavoidable question of the compatibility of a model of governance based on participation of the communities in coordinating action with the principle of departmental responsibility.
According to many, the problems with respect to the negotiation of the agreements and their administration arise from tensions between the vertical model of operation characteristic of the Canadian government system and horizontal governance (and the challenges of co-operation among the players that it poses). Among other things, the government representatives involved in the negotiation and administration of the Canada-community agreements (i.e., the employees of the Department of Canadian Heritage) seem to have been unable to operate in a truly horizontal manner or to work with the minority communities on a real transfer of power. It is impossible to deviate from the vertical structure of responsibility within which government players operate because the ultimate accountability lies with the supplier of funding, the federal government. This gives public servants responsibility for control, making the bureaucratization of the process of negotiating and administering the agreements unavoidable.
The situation also led to tensions among public servants. Some of them mentioned the problem of relations between employees of the Official Languages Branch and those responsible for looking after the negotiation and implementation of the agreements. The problems arising from this situation may have an adverse impact on greater acceptance of responsibility by the minorities to the extent that they increase the confusion of roles.
The tensions between vertical and horizontal governance were also felt within the official language minority communities. They may have affected the ability of the minority players to mobilize. In the view of many, the negotiation process and the structure of the Canada-community agreements served only to strengthen a hierarchical governance that was in crisis within the official language minority communities. It led to a fierce battle of interests among the groups, to a weakening of the community power of the official language minorities, and to a loss of creativity at the grassroots.
In other words, greater participation by the official language minorities in administering their development has definitely resulted in a change of culture within the communities. Used to receiving their funding from the federal government without having to consult with one another, the groups have been forced to do more to justify themselves. The fact that the government selected certain groups as spokespersons for the official language minorities in preference to others has caused even greater upset in certain communities, particularly in Ontario and Quebec.
Thus, groups wishing to innovate with respect to representation have not been able, during the negotiation and administration of the agreements, to make their concerns heard as regards more transparent and horizontal governance within their community (this concern is shared by many groups, both Anglophone and Francophone). Many believe that the negotiation and administration of the agreements has imposed operating methods that run counter to horizontal governance.
There are more and more models of participation and accountability in the English and French linguistic minority communities, ranging from the Assemblée communautaire de la Saskatchewan,5 to the Table féministe francophone de concertation provinciale in Ontario, to certain Anglophone associations in Quebec. These different models of civic engagement are a new phenomenon. Groups are seeking to develop for themselves new structures of collective participation and accountability, particularly in order to respond better to the more diverse needs of their members, to more fully respect the principles of equity (particularly between the sexes), to mobilize young people, and to promote new forms of coordination among groups. For many, greater openness on the part of the federal government to these types of concerns could facilitate co-operation among the groups when agreements are being negotiated and implemented. Many hope that these issues will be taken into account to a greater extent in relations between the official language minorities and the government and among themselves as well, specifically, when the next agreements are negotiated.
It must be stated, however, that accountability is one of the crucial issues raised by the exercise of the new governance. According to Peters, "the new governance model of the public sector appears to make the process even more opaque and even more subject to buck-passing than conventional bureaucratic processes" (Peters, 2001: 49). In his view, we may well discover "that there were numerous virtues in old-fashioned administrative accountability that may need to be revived" (Peters, 2001: 49). The challenge posed by the Canada-community agreements is that of putting in place new methods of accountability that will be acceptable to all.
3.4.2 The division of responsibilities
To be meaningful, the greater integration of the official language minorities into the process of effecting their development requires a new division of tasks among the various government and non-government players. For one thing, these players cannot be content to participate passively in the governance of the official language minorities. For another, it is not the wish of the official language minorities to be given full responsibility for government programs. They wish instead to be treated as partners of the federal government in the pursuit of their common objective of development.
Analysis of the Canada-community agreements reveals the parameters of the new division of tasks between the federal government and the official language minorities. Figure 4 illustrates this well (see also appendix 8). In the opinion of many, the division of responsibilities was not clearly set out in the agreements. The way the administration and evaluation of the agreements and the allocation of funding to the various groups had to be carried out did not indicate a good understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each party. For many, what was laid out on paper was not easily put into practice, mainly because of a lack of leadership and because the government did not treat the minorities as partners.
The situation gave rise to significant ambiguities in the administration of the first agreements. In the view of many, the various government players no longer knew what task to attend to or how to justify their role in implementing the agreements. Some of them feared losing their jobs; others found themselves in conflict. Some sought to make the process more transparent and others to resist change, to say nothing of elected officials, who played an ambiguous role in the process of negotiating and evaluating the agreements.
Many people believe that, at every stage, from the negotiation of the agreements to their administration and evaluation, the government and non-government players were often obliged to improvise. Relations between them therefore became difficult. In some cases, strategic planning exercises were conducted needlessly. In most cases, the government did not take into account the development plans that the communities had adopted. The continual duplication of the negotiation process gave rise to a great deal of paperwork, but not to a better division of responsibilities.
Since the data show that the government's new procedures were primarily a way of having the decrease in public funding managed by others, specifically by the official language minorities, it is easier to understand the problems associated with the issue of the division of tasks. The Canada-community agreements served to rationalize government activities with respect to the official languages, and consideration was not always given to the long-term impact on the development of the minorities and on relations between the government and non-government players. The signing of the first agreements took place hurriedly and under difficult conditions. The various government and non-government players were not prepared for the government's new procedures or for a division of responsibilities.
The new governance was put in place in a climate of widespread disinterest among the official language minorities, and this may explain why the issue of the division of responsibilities was not regarded as an important one in the context of the Canada-community agreements. For all practical purposes, the new governance left the minorities to themselves when it should have initiated a change of culture.
In addition, most of the government and non-government players with whom we met are not optimistic despite the signing of the second series of agreements. According to many of them, the issue of the division of responsibilities between the government and the minorities remains unresolved.
3.4.3 Interaction and the rules of the game
The Canada-community agreements have resemblances to a type of interorganizational negotiation designed to achieve common objectives of development and autonomy of the official language minorities. The interaction between the government and non-government players requires close co-operation, effective communication, ongoing coordination, and joint commitment. It creates conditions conducive to the establishment of collective accountability mechanisms.
According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, coordination has taken different forms, depending on the community. In some cases, it has gone no further than an exchange of information. In others, it has served to revise priorities within organizations. In the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.), for example, coordination has been very active and has given rise to greater acceptance of responsibility by organizations themselves. According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, in the N.W.T., "the approach to co-operation thus entails both decision-making and operational components. This practice has served to improve relationships between groups, rationalize decision making and, finally, make the community more responisble for taking charge of its development (accountability)" (PCH, 1997: 16). The experiment in the N.W.T. was a pilot project that was not repeated in other communities, however. We learned at the conclusion of this study that the N.W.T. experiment has been discontinued because of a new TBS policy on transfer payments and new directives on due diligence.
The Department of Canadian Heritage acknowledges that coordination has led to tensions between the community players and thus to more bureaucracy. It believes that the approach "takes up a great deal of time and ... considerable resources, often entails uncertainties or ambiguities, calls for a lot of paperwork and, when all is said and done, yields results that do not appear to be commensurate with the energies devoted to it" (PCH, 1997: 51). The FCFA makes the same observation.
However, the FCFA believes that it will be important to ensure better communication among the various players on the representative bodies of the community and among the components of the minority community in all its diversity (FCFA, 2000: 4-5). To date, there have been significant problems of interaction among the various government and non-government players.
The FCFA hopes that funding providers will be inspired by a comprehensive vision of community development. During the negotiation of the second series of Canada-community agreements, it emphasized the need to make this vision the basis on which funding of the agreements would be negotiated (FCFA, 2001: 4-5). The accountability of the strategic funding procedures must be ensured, however, because these procedures have already led to exclusions within the minority communities.
The agreements also have similarities to a type of systemic coordination. Organizations must come to agreement and rally around a common vision with a view to creating an independent network or the acceptance by the communities of responsibility for themselves. They do not merely follow the rules set out by the government at the outset. The community players also try to play with the rules of the game. If these rules, as well as everyone's roles and responsibilities, are not clearly established and can continually be changed because of political or other imperatives, the entire process of implementing the agreements becomes more precarious. Among other things, the development of close links between certain community players and public servants or federal politicians, seeking to deal with a limited number of people, can also adversely affect the possibility of better communication among the various government and non-government players.
Further, no funding criteria had been clearly established in advance, nor had performance or results criteria been set. Government officials fell back upon historical criteria, or else everyone did their best or imposed their own criteria. Some used their discretionary power, asked for more information, and exerted more control and still further bureaucratized the process, making life still more difficult for the groups. For many, this was the only way to intervene in a badly begun process. In other words, without clearly established rules of the game, it became possible to make up one's own rules along the way.
In addition, the Canada-community agreements are not very specific with respect to the resolution of differences of opinion between the government and the community or among the community players. They make no provision for specific mechanisms for hearing individual grievances in the event of conflicts of interest
3.4.4 Role of the State
According to Peters, governance consists in setting goals or determining priorities. Very often, this tends to drive decisions upward to central agencies, in spite of continuing pressures to deconcentrate and decentralize. The State continues to exercise consistent direction of policies (Peters, 2001: 38-39). This is also the wish of the official language minorities. While they aspire to form an independent network, they do not want to take the place of the government. They do not wish the latter to withdraw from their development.
The official language minorities do not always have the resources required to undertake their development alone. While they have agreed to diversify the funding of their activities, they do not advocate the complete self-funding or self-management of their community. When they look to the acceptance of responsibility for their own communities, they propose to ensure full management of their activities, but this does not mean that the federal government, their fiduciary, should leave them on their own.
In a report entitled Building on Strength: Improving Governance and Accountability in Canada's Voluntary Sector, Ed Broadbent outlines the problems and disappointments experienced by voluntary sector agencies in Canada when faced with "uncertain and diminishing funding, increasing demands for service, and bureaucratic burdens which are intended to make their organizations more accountable but which sometimes inadvertently make them less effective" (Broadbent, 1999: 6).
The issue of funding poses many problems, however. How to ensure an equitable allocation of funding and meet the specific needs of each official language minority community? These issues are widely debated within the official language minorities, and reactions differ from one community to another. As well, what are the objectives to be met and the real performance outcomes that the government and non-government players should expect to be held to when the agreements expire? There are no very specific answers to these questions. Without a clear vision of what is meant by the vitality and development of the official language minorities and specific ways of measuring them, it is difficult to speak in terms of outcomes. The Canada-community agreements have caused considerable turmoil within the official language minorities. Have they not merely served to reinforce a statist culture with respect to the official languages? What is the objective situation of the official language minorities, and what is their capacity to mobilize themselves in order to bring about real change within their communities?
In this regard, the State should give more thought to the linkages but also to the divergences between its policy requirements and the development needs of the official language minorities. It could, for example, assist the minorities in focusing their activities and define with them the indicators of effective coordination of action. It should work with them to develop a mechanism for ongoing evaluation of the agreements and for collective learning. Indeed, how can it be ensured that groups used to working in isolation within their communities will co-operate more among themselves and develop collective accountability mechanisms? How can it be ensured that the governance of the official language minorities does not lead to the institutionalization of their networks of players to the point of distancing them still further from their roots?
In the opinion of many, if the State is to promote the development of the minorities, it should adopt a more effective mechanism for interdepartmental coordination. The data reveal that the various departments have not, to date, shown much interest in the issue of the development of the official language minorities. According to the Department of Canadian Heritage and the FCFA, more federal agencies will have to take part in negotiating the Canada-community agreements.
In the view of many, it will also be necessary for the provinces and territories to be involved in the process to ensure, among other things, that they are not completely alienated from the situation of the minorities. In this area, the federal government has major work to do in drawing closer to the provincial, territorial and municipal governments. It will have to give further thought to how the new governance of the minorities can lead to interventions in the area of official languages that are complementary rather than conflicting.
3.4.5 The Canada-community agreements and the development of the minority communities
According to many, the Canada-community agreements should prove beneficial to the official language minority communities if they strengthen their development approaches and enable them to clarify their expectations of the government and vice versa.
To be sure, it is difficult, after less than ten years' experience, to measure the impact of the agreements on the development of the official language minorities. Nevertheless, some observations or lessons can be drawn from this decade of experience.
The Canada-community agreements are a way of acknowledging that the development of the official language minorities is an essential component of government action with respect to the official languages. Our study shows, however, that for budgetary and institutional reasons the agreements have not always resulted in effective coordination of action. They have made possible the start of coordination among groups and a renewal of relations between the minority communities and the federal government. In the opinion of many, however, the effectiveness of the agreements has resulted from a combination of circumstances rather than from a clear vision of what horizontal governance implies.
The government should benefit from the experience of the last two series of Canada-community agreements to reflect further on how horizontal governance with respect to vitality and development has led to real changes within the minority communities and to a new mobilization of the various networks of players with the aim of their greater acceptance of responsibility. Coordination among the various players active in promoting the vitality and development of the official language minorities, initiated by the highest state authorities, would be desirable.
More than ever, the federal government and the official language minorities are daily faced with the full extent of the challenges posed by governance in the area of vitality and development. We believe that it is necessary to explore this issue more thoroughly.
Notes
5. Saskatchewan was the first province, in 1999, to put in place a community assembly to foster the vitality and development of the province's Francophones by promoting dialogue, coordination and co-operation (http://www.fransaskois.sk.ca/acffiles/acfstatuts.htm)
(in French only). The mandate of this assembly is to formulate community development policies and strategies, to approve the budget and to ensure accountability to governments. Fifteen members from 12 electoral districts are chosen by universal suffrage for two years. The president of the assembly is elected by the whole community. Anyone who understands French, is at least 16 years of age, has lived in Saskatchewan for at least six months, and is interested in promoting French has the right to vote.
