Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne represents Canada's 22 institutions offering post-secondary education in a francophone minority context. Our vision is to increase access to post-secondary education in French to establish a true French-language education continuum, from early childhood to post-secondary education.
In the new version of the Official Languages Act, the government commits to advancing opportunities for francophone minorities to pursue quality learning in their own language throughout their lives, including post-secondary education.
This commitment is particularly important, as our member institutions are addressing a pressing issue: labour shortages in sectors that are essential for the development of francophone minority communities and of Canadian society. These include sectors such as child care, health care, construction, primary and secondary education, as well as small and medium-sized businesses and civil society organizations that are actively seeking francophone or bilingual workers.
However, the precarious state of the French-language post-secondary sector is a concern for francophone minority communities, who must count on strong, agile institutions. As for post-secondary institutions, they are seeking to increase the range of programs and services offered to their local and international clientele.
The additional investment in support of post-secondary education in the minority language, announced in the 2021 federal budget, was used to meet specific and pressing needs. Now, post-secondary institutions need permanent support to develop over the long term as strong educational institutions that serve francophone minority communities.
The funding announced in the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023‑2028 in support of the post-secondary sector is welcome and will help address “the underfunding of minority-language post-secondary institutions”, as the federal government states in the action plan. However, these sums fall short of what was expected, and, as the federal government also states in the action plan, “efforts to further support the sector over the long term” are required.
In this context, our first recommendation is as follows. We recommend that the federal government, in its 2024 budget, permanently increase funding to support post-secondary institutions in official language minority communities to $80 million per year.
This funding was promised by the Liberal Party of Canada during the 2021 election campaign, but has yet to materialize. Canada's major political parties also pledged support for the post-secondary sector during the election campaign.
A permanent program with this level of funding would send a clear signal that the federal government intends to play its part in sustaining post-secondary institutions, while respecting provincial jurisdictions. This program would enable post-secondary institutions to intensify their contribution to the achievement of objectives set by the federal government.
For example, our member institutions contribute to increasing the rate of individual French-English bilingualism by offering a unique learning environment and fostering the acquisition of lasting bilingualism. They are key players in the coming collective effort to restore the demographic weight of francophones, as set out in the Official Languages Act. They also contribute to achieving federal targets for francophone immigration to Canada by welcoming hundreds of foreign students every year and by equipping them to apply for permanent residency in Canada, should the need arise.
Our institutions must also be able to recruit and retain French-speaking students. Financial incentives are an effective tool in this regard. In recent years, thousands of students across the country have benefited from bursaries for post-secondary studies in French as a second language. We are delighted that this initiative, announced in the previous action plan, has been renewed. However, there is still no such program for students whose first language is French. This contributes to widening the gap in access to post-secondary training in French. This is a significant inequity in the context of the federal government's stated commitment to achieving substantive equality in the post-secondary sector.
We therefore make a second recommendation. We recommend that the federal government create a post-secondary bursary program for students whose first language is French, with an envelope of at least $15 million over five years, equivalent to the existing program for students whose second language is French.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to present our recommendations.