Photo: Curtis Geroux/CKRW
The Canadian government is investing in the north once again, this time into francophone recruitment
YUKON – The federal government is looking to help job recruitment across the territories with the latest investment.
On August 1, 2023, the Government of Canada announced that $240,000 dollars will be funded to support bilingual recruitment across the territories.
Yukon MP Brendan Hanley, and the Minister of Northern Affairs, PrairiesCan, and CanNor Dan Vandal provided the update of the financial support for this pan-territorial campaign to target bilingual workers to fill the job vacancies.
This three-year project, led by the Association franco-yukonnaise (AFY), will work with local businesses, municipal and territorial governments, and francophone associations in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories to identify sectors in need of bilingual employees, while increasing online outreach campaigns and in-person presentations to Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick post-secondary institutions and career fairs.
The AFY will also seek to increase the provision of bilingual services and goods in the Yukon, as well as to help small and medium-sized enterprises in the territory strengthen their French capability.
The Economic Development Program (EDI) is funding this program, which supports initiatives supporting economic diversification in official language minority areas and meets objectives specified in the Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023.
MP Hanley says initiatives like this rely on their partnerships and innovative thinking.
“We are a country with two official languages that is committed to the promotion and development of minority language rights. But in our context, that’s the rights of francophone minority populations as we have a very robust and vibrant Francophone minority population in the Yukon, not just in Whitehorse, that needs ongoing support and part of that support is assistance with recruitment.”
The Government of Canada released its Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-2023: Investing in Our Future in 2018. The Plan had a budget of $2.7 billion over five years, which was divided among 15 government ministries and organizations.
