Good morning. My name is Rodrigue Landry, and I am the director of the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities.
The Institute is funded by the federal government and is concerned with official language minorities. As researchers, we conduct studies on Anglophones in Quebec and Francophones outside Quebec.
We would have had a lot of things to say about the action plan, but we chose to emphasize four points. We've submitted a written brief to you that we didn't have the time to have translated, but it will soon be submitted to you in both languages.
During the three minutes I have, I can't give as many details as I would like about the four points that I want to emphasize. They're explained much more clearly in our brief.
The first point concerns early childhood. In our opinion, this is the biggest challenge for the Francophone and Acadian communities. Currently, at least 40% of child rights holders under section 23 are not attending French-language schools.
One of the decisive factors is exogamy, which is increasing. Approximately two-thirds of these children come from exogamous couples; they have a Francophone parent and an Anglophone parent. In most cases, unfortunately, those families choose English as the language spoken at home. French is the spoken language for one in five children.
Our research shows that exogamy isn't a direct cause of assimilation. The choice made by parents is the direct cause. Some parents make an informed choice. For example, all parents transmit their knowledge of their language to their children, who go to French-language school because that's the school where the minority studies. That enables children to be bilingual. Our research also shows that the children of exogamous families who attend French-language schools are the best bilinguals in the country.
The exogamous family is a microcosm of Canadian society. The relationship between the two official languages exists within a family. These parents must be encouraged to make an informed choice in order to respect both cultures. Very often, it's not a matter of bad will. I can't say any more on that here, but parents aren't always aware of the conditions.
By way of a solution, we refer you to an excellent study that was conducted by the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages, which tabled its preliminary report in June 2005. In that report, the committee recommended that education be monitored from early childhood until the postsecondary level. We think it contains excellent suggestions and we refer you to that report because we can't immediately give you more details on our recommendations.
The second point we would like to emphasize concerns economic development. Economic development was initially not part of the action plan. We gave it a certain amount of attention after the mid-term report. We think that projects aren't yet being funded directly enough. Feasibility studies and business plans are mainly being done, and there's not really any money to pursue projects.
We therefore ask those who'll be preparing the plan to see whether they couldn't elaborate more on this entire approach.
The third point, and I think this is very important, concerns the action plan's overall approach. I've been conducting studies on linguistic minorities for approximately 30 years, and I'm convinced that the action plan, as interesting as it may be, will never be able to reverse the situation, if I may say, in order to help the official language communities revitalize, particularly the Francophone communities.
A lot of attempts have been made in the world. Canada could become an example of minority language revitalization in the world because it already has a well-structured approach. We think the plan should have a much more comprehensive approach and also include the actions of the provinces and communities. That may be a lot, but we're really serious about this. If we want the plan to have real impact, the federal government has to establish a comprehensive partnership with, for example, the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie and the communities. I think we could even include Quebec.
The last point I want to raise concerns research.
Research is obviously of interest to us. We think that, in the first plan, it wasn't pushed enough in terms of linguistic planning. A linguistic plan should address the needs of the communities. If you want to meet needs, you have to know what they are, and research can help a great deal in that respect. Praiseworthy attempts have been made. For example, the Humanities Research Council of Canada is conducting a three-year project that will end this year. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the CIHR, is starting to take an interest in the subject. It has an advisory committee on official languages, and that committee is considering introducing programs. In our view, however, there will still have to be a much more stable program.
Linguistic duality is at the core of the Canadian identity. It seems to me there could be a permanent fund providing research grants on this question.
