What do Shelly Glover, Niki Ashton, Justin Trudeau and James Moore have in common? All these members of Parliament have French immersion in common, either as a teacher or a student. We could also include in that list the young Canadian athletes who managed to charm viewers in both languages during the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics.
My name is Philippe LeDorze, and I work in the Pembina Trails school district in Winnipeg as a language coordinator. I am speaking to you this morning as president of the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers, the CAIT. Our board of directors is made up of people from across Canada, all united by their love of education and the French language. Some are francophones whose mother tongue is French and others are francophones whose mother tongue is English. Our association has been around for about 40 years, since the birth of your predecessor, which was borne out of the official language support programs, now Canadian Heritage. We are pleased to take part in your consideration of the roadmap, and we want to contribute through our expertise, that is to say French immersion, which is an exemplary model of learning French as a second language in Canadian schools throughout the country.
And what progress we've made in 40 years! Approximately 350,000 young anglophone Canadians are registered in French immersion. Never before have there been so many Canadians able to express themselves in English and French as today. Almost 18% of Canadians can speak English and French, compared with 13% in 1971. The rate of bilingualism in young people 15 to 24 years of age has gone from 18% in 1971 to 23% in 2006.
Learning a second language even contributes to health. The most recent studies have shown that bilingual individuals are less affected by cognitive illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease. French as a second language programs are growing in Canada, and it's thanks to a 10% increase in French immersion programs in recent years. Immersion is increasing almost everywhere in the country. In some provinces, immersion programs are unfortunately like a lottery: only the lucky will have access to them. We deplore that. Parents who choose French immersion for their children should have the right to it, regardless of where they live.
Immersion is and will remain the most effective program for learning French as a second language. Students attain high skill levels in French as an added value, meaning it doesn't affect their mother tongue or their knowledge in other subjects. So it is desirable to maintain and broaden access to these programs, because demand is growing in many regions.
We want to highlight the importance of the roadmap throughout the country and point out a number of examples of success that can be traced back to the roadmap. The roadmap lays out the values of the Canadian government with respect to languages. It states quite clearly how important English and French are to the country and, at the same time, concretely shows its support for linguistic duality. The education of young Canadians in French immersion guarantees a bilingual future for our country, a future where the added value of French and English also values the other languages spoken in Canada.
All kinds of projects have been made possible by the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality. In no particular order, here is a very small sample that speaks to the presence of French as an official language in the west. One example is the creation of a French-language resource centre in Grande Prairie, Alberta, whereby several school districts cooperate to better meet the needs of the French-language learners, both first-language learners and second-language learners. As well, there is the participation of young Canadians in the creation of cultural content through Immersion Clip, a video contest run by ACP and the University of Ottawa. The themes developed by these young bilingual Canadians over the past few years were Canadian citizenship, perseverance, the meeting of cultures, and, this year, essential democracy.
Another project involves a collective creation by six schools in my school board, namely, an original song titled Notre école. This project was directed by Damien Lussier, a local songwriter from Manitoba.
There is also the Boréal film festival in northern Manitoba. It involves a partnership between the Flin Flon school district and Freeze Frame, which shows video and animation to young people learning the language of Leclerc, Tremblay and Lavoie.
The importance of creating in French strengthens the seriousness about learning French in young people. The roadmap makes this possible.
Through roadmap funding, the CAIT publishes a journal and electronic newsletter for immersion educators. More than 6,000 people receive these publications.
The CAIT organizes training days for teachers in the region and days for new teachers. We met with more than 500 people in 2011.
The CAIT organizes a national convention. In recent years, between 500 and 1,000 immersion teachers from across Canada have attended.
The CAIT organizes competitions for students. Over 150 students submitted a clip or a poem in 2011 as part of our poetry and Immersion Clip competitions. Thanks to partnerships, we are offering scholarships to the winners.
The CAIT provides support to teachers on our website and our blog. Over 1.5 million people visit our website annually.
The CAIT is the advocate for the Diplôme d'études en langue française au Canada. To carry out this role, we have developed information kits, information sessions, DELF symposiums and done research.
The CAIT published an oral competencies framework, which has been downloaded over 150,000 times. We have also produced a book entitled 70 activités motivantes de communication orale, published by Chenelière. This project has been very successful. The CAIT is currently working on a framework for written competencies.
Lastly, not too long ago, we published some research entitled "Pourquoi les nouveaux enseignants d'immersion ou de français langue seconde quittent-ils la profession? Résultats d'une enquête pancanadienne".
Let's talk about challenges and avenues for action. The CAIT believes that the roadmap is really important for education in French. Continuing the roadmap reaffirms the Canadian government's commitment to linguistic duality. The roadmap is a compass that guides us and also helps us to measure the road taken, to know the status of bilingualism in Canadian society.
I would like to use this forum to propose a few courses of action to you. We need to continue to invest in French as a second language education and build on the success of immersion by allowing a larger number of Canadians to become bilingual. It is extremely important to facilitate access to immersion programs for Canadians in urban and rural areas, to allophones and children with learning difficulties. Immersion is for everyone.
We need to enrich what's offered in the French immersion program at the secondary school level to motivate young people to stick with it. Moreover, this would involve investing in the education continuum by equipping post-secondary institutions with programs that promote bilingualism and linguistic duality. The universities have a big role to play in training young bilingual people to help the public service in recruiting the some 5,000 bilingual employees it will need each year in the future.
We need to encourage research and its dissemination, and provide tailor-made training opportunities for French immersion and French as a second language teachers. We need to encourage the provinces and territories to gradually align the curriculum of second language programs with the competency scales of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the CEFR.
We also need to take steps to create a national tool for assessing French language skills, calibrated against the common framework of reference, that covers the various sectors, including the school, university and even professional sectors. The CAIT would be happy to manage this national project with the participation of one or two ministries of education and partners such as the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers. The Canadian expertise is there; we just need to bring it together and coordinate it to create this new Canadian tool.
Lastly, this also involves promoting the creation of bridges between francophiles and francophones.
To conclude, allow me to reiterate the importance of the roadmap. Let's celebrate its many successes and, very soon we hope, we will be able to delight in future successes that we will all be proud of. The Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers remains at your full disposal if you need information on education in French in Canada. Happy trails to the Standing Committee on Official Languages in creating the next step.