I think that there is a kind of consensus in official language minority communities now that immigration really is the key to their future. In those communities across the country, the diversity is amazing. Members of a community may come from the Maghreb, from Africa or from France. I feel that it is very important to have support programs available to help people like that to integrate into the community. The services are often available when it comes to helping people to integrate into an anglophone majority, but there are fewer of them for francophone immigrants. There are some, though.
I was very impressed by an organization in Winnipeg called Accueil francophone. It is a branch of the Société franco-manitobaine. They meet immigrants and refugees at the airport, they take them to temporary accommodation and they help them register their children in French-language schools. New arrivals are looked after for three years.
Some hosting organizations are not sensitive to the reality that there is a minority. They tend, quite naturally, to direct immigrants, especially those whose first language is neither English nor French, to anglophone hosting organizations. But people like that often have French as their second language. People from Senegal, for example, whose first language is Wolof, speak French rather than English. But if the hosting organization is not sensitive to the reality of the minority community, they will all be directed to anglophone institutions.
In clinics and community institutions in Hamilton, people told me about coming across immigrants who had discovered the existence of institutions dealing with health and education after a year or a year and a half. They said that, if they had known about them beforehand, they would have enrolled their children in francophone schools and taken them to francophone clinics. But they were not going to do so now because they already have a doctor and because their children are already in their second year at an English-language school.
So it is very important for hosting organizations to be aware of the importance of directing francophone immigrants, with French as their primary working language, even though it may not be their first language, to minority institutions.