When we came to office in 2006, the provinces outside of Quebec were massively underfunded in terms of settlement services, including language training. One of the first things we did in the 2006 budget was to effectively triple federal funding for settlement services to help ensure successful integration of newcomers. We did this through the Canada-Ontario immigration agreement, specifically for contribution agreements with settlement agencies in Ontario, and through transfers to the provinces of B.C. and Manitoba, with which we have devolution agreements. They deliver the services on our behalf. We did it through direct federal services being provided in the four Atlantic provinces, plus Saskatchewan and Alberta. Quebec of course has its own system.
There has been a huge increase in services. You and I visited Progressive Intercultural Community Services, PICS, which provides an important range of settlement services, including language training in the lower mainland. They are doing so much more than they were a few years ago because of this.
We are ambitious for newcomers to succeed, and all the available empirical data indicates that the single most important factor in the economic success of immigrants is language proficiency. That is not to say that people with limited English or French abilities cannot succeed in Canada; we all know of great success stories where that has been the case. But increasingly we have a knowledge-based economy, where people's success will be tied in part to their language abilities. This is why we have invested so much in helping people improve their language abilities.
What concerns me is that only about 25% of eligible permanent residents enrol in the free English- and French-language classes we are providing through the settlement agencies or the provinces. That's not good enough. We are ambitious for newcomers to succeed, and we want to encourage them to make every effort.
I know it is difficult. If you are working two survival jobs and your spouse is at home taking care of kids, it's not easy to spend two hours in a language class. I understand that. That's why we're trying to find more innovative programs, like the HIPPY program, which provides at-home integration counselling and language support to at-home parents. With the pilot program we've recently launched, we will send vouchers that are worth up to 500 hours of free language classes to randomly selected newcomers in Ontario, Alberta, and Nova Scotia. That will increase their knowledge of the availability of free language training and hopefully create a positive competition for better hours, locations, and service within the settlement sector, which is the objective of the pilot program.