denise gareau - enabling fund for official language minority communities

NOW AND TOMORROW EXCELLENCE IN EVERYTHING WE DO 1 NOW AND TOMORROW EXCELLENCE IN EVERYTHING WE DO

Enabling Fund for Official Language

Minority Communities Local Level Information Strategy

NOW AND TOMORROW EXCELLENCE IN EVERYTHING WE DO 2

Canada’s linguistic dualityTwo official languages

• French the official language minority

7.7 million, of which 1 million live outside Quebec in geographically dispersed communities

• English the minority language in Quebec

1 million


Strong Government of Canada commitment to Official Language Minorities (OLMs)The Enabling Fund (EF) for Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs) supports communities in addressing their labour market needs • Objective: Enhance vitality through economic and workforce development and

work towards common goals

• Supports: 14 organizations providing local leadership, promoting partnerships, implementing projects, filling gaps in services, and leveraging networks – One per province/territory plus national umbrella organization

• Moving forward: Increase emphasis on providing locally relevant information, strengthening self-assessment capacity and diversifying funding sources


…including community developmentCanada’s two official languages are part of our history and our national identity - they help define who we are as Canadians

• Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages 2013-2018 outlines Government's major policy directions

– Three key areas: Education, Immigration, Communities– Comprehensive initiative reaffirms commitment to linguistic duality– Invests in 30 measures delivered by 15 federal departments and agencies

– Builds on progress

• Complements other actions


Challenges to vitality for OLMCs


Local level analysis key to understand OLM needs

• National / regional picture fails to capture needs – local lens required

• Difficult to get local level data on small populations


What we did to get the information• A five year the EF collaboration with Statistics Canada:

– Innovative ways to embed within existing datasets, link data

– New methodologies based on research from the OECD LEED amongst

others

– Development of tools employing the latest in mapping and data visualization

• Our Objective: Better understand the local labour market conditions in

OLMCs, to support local organizations in identifying needs and

opportunities for economic and workforce development


What we did – Key steps• Define Labour Market Areas - a new geography based on commuting patterns

• Display data - visualization techniques

• Assess the balance between skills supply and demand – Skills Equilibrium

• Add measure to assess economic health of labour market areas - Economic

Performance Index – a compound measure to assess the economic health of

labour market areas

• Disseminate in a self-serve format - online mapping applications


Define Local Labour Market Areas (LMAs)


Display local-level labour market area LMIThrough mapping interface charts and graphs can be generated to examine

indicators of interest for specific LMAs


• Skills demand measured by combining average employment income and

percentage of people employed in medium-to high-skilled jobs

• Skills supply measured by the percentage of the population having a post-

secondary education (university certificate, diploma or degree)

The Skills Equilibrium Model

Skills Deficit- demand for high-skills is met by a supply of low-skills

Low Skills Trap –demand of low-skillsIs met with supply of low-skills

High SkillsEquilibrium–demand for high-skillsis met with an equal supply of high-skills

Skills Surplus–Demand for low-skillsis met with supply of high-skills


Apply the Skills Equilibrium• OECD LEED Skills for Competitiveness Study (Giguère & Froy, 2009) developed

methodology to assess the degree of match or equilibrium between supply and

demand for skills – High Skills Equilibrium optimal

• Investment in skills upgrading must be accompanied by stimulation of local

demand for these skills, encouraging local enterprises to increase their

productivity and raise competitiveness

• Skills analysis was undertaken for all of Canada’s LMAs…


Add an Economic Performance Index• Objective: Develop a means to measure and compare the economic health of

LMAs across Canada to support identification of disadvantaged areas for targeting

program resources

• Factors in development of the Index:

– Consult and work with experts to determine indicators

– Base Indicators on vetted index measures or concepts

– Ensure relevance by use of data sources which can be updated yearly

– Improve data quality through new approaches such as small-area estimation


Disseminate local level information

• Spatial aspect of information meant that dissemination needed strong

visualization components to allow users to zoom into and interact with areas

of interest, and query data layers

• Two options pursued: Community Information Database (an existing

government website) and Open Source web mapping application


• Developed to provide communities, researchers and governments with

socio-economic and demographic data on Canadian communities

• We updated with three Census years of historically comparable

information with variables broken down by linguistic minority and majority

groups


In-house, low-cost solution• Developed an in-house solution based on open source software

• Advantages:– No costs to developers or users– More sustainable in the long term– Greater flexibility to meet future identified needs – Department can add internal administrative datasets not be possible for

applications housed on an external server


Case study - New Brunswick

• 17th century settlers from France

• Displaced after British victory in

Seven Years War

• Later returned, descendants

across Louisiana, Franca,

Atlantic provinces

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiSvPSuyYzMAhVGyYMKHZF9AOgQjRwIBw&url=http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/amnord/necosse.htm&psig=AFQjCNGbAzgX2ABUzGH7oT-QmQWmBis5qw&ust=1460669687549311


New Brunswick OLMC culture vitalBut there are challenges:

• More than 70% of NB’s Francophone population lives rural areas with economy largely based on resource industries - mining, forestry, peat and fisheries

– Like many resource-oriented regions, dealing with structural changes and serious

economic difficulties

• Weak labour market forcing graduates and skilled workers to leave

– Consequently, businesses facing shortage of skilled workers


RDEE New Brunswick2014-2015 Activitiesoverlayed with OLM population percentage


RDEE New Brunswick2014-2015 Youth Activitiesoverlayed with 15-30 unemployment rates


RDEE New Brunswick2014-2015 Youth Activity in Tracadie-Sheila

Project was to continue the development of cooperative entrepreneurship initiatives among young people, educational and summerbusiness workshops that offerpractical experience of the cooperative model.


Next steps• Support Statistics Canada working to make these local labour market areas

a standard geography

• Continue work on the development of dissemination tools

• Begin to use data and tools to direct and inform our programs

denise gareau - enabling fund for official language minority communities

Economy & Finance