Facing a divided province, a non-profit strives for 'social cohesion' in New Brunswick

At a time when New Brunswick seems divided along language lines, a non-profit group that was established almost 30 years ago to foster better understanding between anglophones and francophones is trying to reinvent itself.

Dialogue New Brunswick actually isn't even talking about language anymore.

It still wants to listen, if that's what New Brunswickers want to talk about, but it's "trying to change the conversation," said new CEO Nadine Duguay-Lemay.

The hope is that by expanding its horizons and being even more inclusive, all the barriers New Brunswickers see between each other will eventually come down.

To understand the starting point and how Dialogue is trying to change the game, Duguay-Lemay pointed to a recent community forum she facilitated in Miramichi.

It was an unseasonably cold evening in late November and about 75 people had turned out at the Carrefour Beausoleil community centre, compelled by feelings of division, unease and a common desire to find a path forward together.

Eight weeks had gone by since a contentious provincial election that saw predominantlyfrancophone northern New Brunswick vote Liberal andpredominantly anglophone southern New Brunswick vote Progressive Conservative, plus the rise of the Greens and People's Alliance a party that wants to change some of the ways official bilingualism is implemented.

"There were people who had some serious comments about how they feel threatened and where they stand. But it was good to hear from both sides," said Guy Richard, a bilingual member of the francophone community in Miramichi who was invited to the event through the Chamber of Commerce.

Richard recalled one woman who spoke out about having fought for her rights as a francophone for a long time, and being frightened by the prospect of a lower level of service.

Then, he said, an English speaker stood up and sympathized with the woman, explaining that in recent years he had found it increasingly difficult to find a job as a person without French language skills. He said he couldn't imagine what it would be like to endure such a situation for 30 or 40 years, as she had, Richard recounted.

"It was nice for that gentleman to acknowledge that, 'We do have concerns, but we're acknowledging your concerns as well.' The whole conversation after that changed."

'Safe space' needed

Duguay-Lemay said that type of acknowledgement goes a long way to make a person feel heard and like they can trust the other person.

"As anywhere right now in the world, people crave having honest and open discussions," said Duguay-Lemay in an interview in late November.

"We're trying to create that safe space where people will feel that Dialogue NB is that voice that will be there, that's neutral, that listens to them."

It's a bit of a "pivot," to borrow her term, from the group's original mandate.

Born out of linguistic division

Dialogue NB was established in 1990 by leaders in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including Acadian author Antonine Maillet.

At the time, support was growing for the Confederation of Regions party, which was promising to repeal the Official Languages Act "which, ironically, is very reflective as to what we're seeing again today," said Duguay-Lemay.

The Higgs government recently announced that bilingual requirements for paramedics, for example, will be relaxed in several mostly Anglophone communities, a move which was promoted by the People's Alliance party during the election campaign. Members of that party also question the need to have separate school buses for francophone students.

Against this political backdrop, Dialogue NB is trying to be more relevant to New Brunswickers and to make this "a province where every person feels valued, heard and where they belong."

"That's the vision," said Duguay-Lemay.

Some may say they have a long way to go.

Dugay-Lemay agreed there is much work to be done, but she also said it's not as bad as you might think.

Consultations reveal image problems

When she took over as CEO last February, Duguay-Lemay said her first order of business was to try to get a sense of what people knew about Dialogue NB, if anything.

She did 200 individual consultations with New Brunswickers "from all walks of life."

While many people may remember seeing commercials for Dialogue NB, generally depicting scenes of francophones and anglophones trying to communicate with each other, 95 per cent of the people she interviewed could not identify a single program or initiative that the group offered.

"That speaks a lot about the branding of an organization that's 29 years old," she said.

Two-thirds of the people she talked to thought its mandate was to promote bilingualism.

While Dialogue NB does accept the existing legal framework of official bilingualism and minority language rights, Duguay-Lemay said its original mission was simply to bring the English and French linguistic communities closer together.

Unfortunately, that binary framework may have actually had an opposite effect.

"What I have found is as soon as you talk about two, what am I inviting people to do? Is compare."

The original mandate was also problematic because it left a lot of people out of the conversation.

"First Nations, for instance, were saying, 'We feel excluded. What about us?'" she said.

"We can no longer have a discourse in New Brunswick, in the world, in Canada, in the era of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and not be inclusive. Nor can we ignore our newcomers," said Duguay-Lemay.

"New Brunswick is more than just its francophone and anglophone communities. There are ... 15 First Nation communities representative of 30,000 Indigenous people. Newcomers now represent four per cent of our demographics and that's going to keep going upward."

Targeting disenfranchised groups

At their annual general meeting in June, Dialogue NB's board of directors agreed to a much broader focus that includes all cultural groups, all ages, all abilities, all sexual orientations.

And the goal they now pursue is social cohesion a concept measured by things like how connected people feel to society, how much they trust each other, their willingness to collaborate, and having common goals.

"My simple definition is just the willingness of you and I to collaborate together to move this province forward," said Duguay-Lemay.

"Nobody argues with that. Nobody."

In these terms, she said, New Brunswick actually looks pretty good.

Across language groups, genders, and ages, New Brunswick is "fairly socially cohesive," compared to other places around the world.

The population segments that do need some attention, however, are those with special needs, the LGBTQ community, people with low incomes and Indigenous communities, she said.

"We know what we need to do. If we have an actual strategy and we can create a space, common spaces, virtual or physical for people to understand one another much better and enlarge it that it's not just our two linguistic communities ... we will move those data points very significantly," she said.

Duguay-Lemay hopes to eventually put out an annual report card, the way the New Brunswick Health Council does, so people can see any progress in the "data points."

"Rather than 10,000 of everything that goes wrong, we can say, 'Well, you know what New Brunswick? This is where we're at and, hence, this is where we should focus,'" she said.

"We're not ignorant and we're not being naive about the statistics, but we won't achieve it by ... pulling each other apart.

"And we won't achieve it by arguing on Facebook platforms."

She could say that with some certainty because she had regularly made a point of reading the often nasty comments under articles that have to do with language and minorities.

Peace by crafting?

One of the ways Dialogue NB is trying to raise the level of civil discourse is through a new youth program. It invited young people with ideas for social cohesion projects to submit them last August.

Valrie Foulem, 26, saw an ad on Facebook and was pleasantly surprised to find out Dialogue NB existed.

She was one of seven people chosen to participate out of more than 30 applicants.

Foulem's idea is to create an arts and cultural centre in the Bathurst area. It would include a studio space and room for artisans to display and sell what they make.

"There's a lot of beautiful arts and music and culture here, that we don't have as much of a space to explore," Foulem said.

"We have slices of the community can meet in places, but nowhere for everybody to gather."

Foulem said she is on the autism spectrum and works as a social worker and counsellor, and she hopes make it a little easier for "creatives," such as herself, to find their way in the Chaleur region.

"If you're a crafty, nerdy, creative kid, you tend to have a little bit more trouble feeling like you belong," she said. "You kind of feel like you're a little left out because sometimes we think a little bit differently than other people not in a bad way just in, like, a fun, eccentric way."

Foulem said she thinks an arts and cultural centre could foster social cohesion on other levels as well.

"There's a really wonderful article I read a long time ago about 'shouldering,'" she said.

"If you work on something next to someone and it can be as simple as two people doing the dishes together that keeps the conversation flowing because you're doing something with your hands. You have something to kind of fill the silence, like, 'I'm just going to really concentrate on this.'"

Foulem envisions people from various linguistic and cultural groups and all strata of society getting to know each other a little better as they work on projects in such a maker space.

Left 'cushy' job to pursue passion

It might seem far-fetched or overly simplistic to think that New Brunswick could bridge its linguistic divide by doing arts and crafts, but Duguay-Lemay thinks many small efforts along these lines can ultimately make a significant difference.

"Some people call me naive because I'm optimistic. I go through ups and downs every day. But I choose to have hope for this province," she said.

Her passion for the work could explain why she left a "very cushy" and "very comfortable" job in the banking industry to lead a non-profit that's "on very shaky ground," given the province's economic and political situation.

"When this came about, everybody in my network discouraged me from applying except for my husband. I wanted the challenge of let's take a different approach, let's change the conversation," she said.

"I care about the future of my province."

Duguay-Lemay describes herself as a "citizen of the world" and a "self-made person." She grew up in Tracadie, where her dad was a carpenter and her mom ran her own hairdressing business.

"She showed me determination."

Duguay-Lemay has lived away and come home again. She speaks three languages fluently French, English and Spanish and worked in the non-profit sector for several years before entering the corporate world.

And she has taken some strong corporate principles back with her into the non-profit realm.

She's trying to distance Dialogue NB from government, for example. Moving its office from Fredericton to Moncton was part of that.

She wants to find new sources of revenue 90 per cent of its budget currently comes from the province but hasn't quite figured out how to do that yet.

"I'm good, but I'm not that good."

She also has a healthy obsession with data and evidence-based decision making.

To justify her optimism, for example, she points to the 50,000 views of Dialogue NB's "Manifesto For Togetherness" video, the doubling of their social media followers (about 2,700 now on Facebook), and the 50 communities that have pledged to work on social cohesion projects.

Dialogue NB has received some international affirmation as well. It was recently accepted into an accelerator program through +Acumen, an educational organization that works for social change. It will work with other non-profits from around the world during a six-week program starting in January, trying to commercialize and develop the export potential of its communities program.

"People think we're on to something," she said.

"This is bold of us, but we have the vision that New Brunswick can become a champion, a worldwide champion with respect to social cohesion.

"We need vision. We haven't been visionary enough in my opinion in the last decade."

"I'll give it my best. Hopefully, we're being relevant to New Brunswickers."