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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
The best of the season to you all
From QCGN President Eva Ludvig
This past year has certainly had its share of trials and tribulations, and 2025 is shaping up to be, um, challenging, to say the least. But in between the two comes this wonderful respite from news and politics and the daily grind. No matter how you celebrate at this time of year, I wish you a joyful, peaceful, healthy and safe holiday, not overburdened with stress and strain and shared with those who are closest to you. Let's relax. The next year will come soon enough, and with it, some exciting news as the QCGN celebrates its 30th birthday! Stay tuned.
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A smashing holiday party!
We had another terrific holiday brunch on December 10, with dozens of dignitaries, special guests and QCGN friends squeezing into QCGN offices for a spectacular array of food and refreshment, raffles and silent auctions to raise $740.00 for the Fondation Notre Home Foundation, and much discussion about various political issues. I'm told no one predicted the events of earlier this week!
As you can tell from the pictures, a good time was had by all!
Data begins to flow from Minority Language Study
The QCGN was pleased to have represented the ESCQ on the Statistics Canada's Advisory Committee on the Survey on the Official Language Minority Population (SOLMP). Initiated in 2021 and over the next three years, committee participants were consulted on relevant data questions on education, access to services, justice, and language use among official-language minority communities: roll-out and dissemination; and other potential highlights. QCGN's ongoing preoccupation during the three-year exercise was that Stats Can had heard our community's voice, and that this survey was a more robust reflection of our data needs than the previous 2006 survey. The result is that this survey provides a better understanding of the current situation of these communities. We were recently interviewed about the importance of these findings.
The data will be instrumental in shaping our advocacy and in addressing the needs of English-speaking Quebecers. We are excited to see the powerful insights revealed in this report and we encourage all community members and partners to review the findings and leverage them in their work. We will continue to be at the forefront of the work on this initiative. And we will continue to ask questions as more data is released.
Below are two just elements of the findings that Stats Can has put into graphics that we felt were interesting to highlight.
English speakers and employment equity in Quebec
Almost as if they'd planned it in conjunction with StatsCan, last Thursday, QUESCREN hosted an insightful Lunch & Learn session focusing on the exclusion of English-speaking Quebecers from the Programme d'accès d'égalité en employ (PAÉE) employment equity program. Richard Bourhis, Emeritus Professor at UQAM, discussed his upcoming working paper on the PAÉE program, and focused on the historical exclusion of Quebec anglophones from the PAÉE, despite their significant presence in the province. Although English-speaking Quebecers represent 10 per cent of Quebec's population (based on mother tongue) and 13.7 per cent (based on first official language spoken), they make up just 1 per cent of the Quebec public service.
Bourhis explored whether this disparity, coupled with the lower socio-economic status of many English speakers, warrants their inclusion as a sixth designated group in the PAÉE.
The discussion, timely, given the StatsCan report mentioned above, delved into issues of discrimination, socio-economic status, and language policies in Quebec.
Including English-speaking individuals as a designated group in a Workplace Equity Program is a bold idea - a solution to longstanding imbalance in provincial public sector. The QCGN looks forward to contributing to that conversation. Thank you, Richard!
Thank you for reading our regular newsletter. For up-to-date news about the Quebec Community Groups Network you can visit our website at www.qcgn.ca or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram.
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