Today, CPF President, Lisa Marie Perkins and National Executive Director Robert Rothon presented a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages. The hearing was regarding Linguistic Duality in During the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation.
CPF presented a brief which stressed the importance of linguistic duality by providing recommendations which could be incorporated in the planning of the celebration. Based on the success of various CPF events, Miss Perkin’s brief was able to draw on the organisation’s past best practices in order to present concrete recommendations.
These recommendations were based on three key areas, planning, legacies, and participation. Our recommendations touched on the importance of maintaining Canada’s linguistic duality throughout the events planned during the 150th celebration of Canadian Confederation, the importance of youth participation, and using social media and new technologies to let Canadians connect with each other.
CPF’s recommendations and subsequent questions were well received by the committee.
Mr. Dionne Lebel noted that it was a shame that CPF was not part of the Canadian Heritage hearings on Canada’s 150th Anniversary in 2017. As he believes youth are moved through organisations such as CPF and it is important that the voice of organizations like CPF be heard to provide best practices on how to integrate youth in their programming. Ms. Bateman, a CPF member, was very encouraged to hear CPF in the works of developing a contest centred on Twitter.
We hope that the Committee take note of our recommendations and include them as part of their report at the end of these hearings.