Summative Evaluation of the Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality 2008-2013 along with a Summative Evaluation of the Official Languages Support Programs

The Roadmap for Linguistic Duality 2008-2013: Acting for the Future (Roadmap) is a strategic and major horizontal initiative of the Government of Canada that engages fifteen federal institutions with a budget totaling more than a billion dollars over five years. The Official Languages Support Programs (OLSP) has, for forty years, had the mission of supporting Canada’s official languages policy. The OLSP represents an investment of 1.7 billion dollars over 6 years, 600 million of which are attributed to the Roadmap, and are implemented by the Director General of the OLSP, in collaboration with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, all provinces and territories, a few municipalities, national, provincial and local organizations. The two evaluations are programmed jointly given the nested nature of the two initiatives. More than half the funds of the Roadmap are invested in OLSP.

Universalia, in collaboration with the firm PRA Inc., was commissioned by the Canadian Ministry of Heritage to perform the horizontal summative evaluation of the Roadmap and summative evaluation of OLSP. Both evaluations target relevance, harmonization and economy of the initiative, as well as the achievement of planned results. The evaluation of the Roadmap also highlights operations, accountability, governance and service delivery modalities. The summative evaluation of OLSP though limited to the achievements reached in implementing the recommendations of the last summative evaluation, must nonetheless study the implementation of OLSP, its two programs, 4 sections and 15 sub-sections, as well as research and coordinate the federal commitment under Part VII of the Act.