Official Languages committee  All right, Mr. Dion. As for the dangers of early education, the studies are irrefutable. Children as young as two, three, four years old can learn many languages. My school board runs an international language centre that has a preschool for three- and four-year-olds. They do Eng

Official Languages committee  No, they really do not. As Madame Dénommée said earlier, the studies have proven that these children do better in any or all languages as they get older. Their brains are processing the information at a more rapid pace, and they are learning, and succeeding, at higher rates.

Official Languages committee  We don't believe that.

Official Languages committee  I can't tell you how lovely it is to listen to them speaking, flipping back and forth between languages as easily as anything.

Official Languages committee  The first and most important thing is that Bill 14 would get rid of the exemption for the military, for the French military families in Quebec to send their children to English schools. These families can be uprooted at any point in time. I'm very well aware of that. I have two c

Official Languages committee  I'd like to add that our schools, as I've mentioned many times, are part of our communities. As our numbers decrease, we've been forced over the past 15 years to close schools, and this is damaging to the community. Closing a school is always a last choice, but I know that betwee

Official Languages committee  I was part of the French immersion experimental program in Montreal in seventh grade in 1969. I can personally attest to what David just said. We left verb conjugation and “Je m'appelle Suanne. Où est la gare?”, and we moved into a cross-curricular focus in which we were just ta

Official Languages committee  I would like to add to that the other supportive organizations that aren't directly controlled by us but that work very closely with us. You fund the Quebec Federation of Home & School Associations. They are fighting for the rights of the English student in virtually every wa

Official Languages committee  Yes, absolutely. It is very difficult for us to attract competent teachers in both languages. To bring in those francophones, we are now doing most of our recruiting from French language universities around Quebec. In our school board, it is absolutely required for all of my adm

Official Languages committee  A lot of them are in isolated rural regions.

Official Languages committee  It is an issue. It's a growing issue, both for budgetary purposes and also for general staffing purposes. It's not only a language issue. We have trouble staffing competent math teachers and science teachers. We are fortunate in that we started immersion programs in Quebec in 19

Official Languages committee  But when parents can support their children to reach those objectives, the children will succeed much better. As David mentioned earlier, in very many of our neighbourhoods the parents are unable to help their children, especially in French. They never had the French immersion o

Official Languages committee  Very much so.

Official Languages committee  Obviously in Quebec things are a little bit different. On the moneys we receive, our schools are seen as much more of a community centre than one might think. We bring our communities in to support families, especially in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We have our community lear

Official Languages committee  Our non-completion rate, averaged over the English boards, is about 20%. It's about 16% for the two largest Montreal school boards. That is not our dropout rate. It's the number of students who are not completing their education in English public schools. Our community that may b