You can start in any number of places. I'll give the example of Nunavut, where many Inuit speak Inuktitut at home and will always identify Inuktitut as their first language. They go to school from K to 3 or K to 4 in their language, but then transition in grades 4 or 5 to English. There is no real structure of language instruction in their own language beyond language arts at that time.
We need to be able to create a system across Inuit Nunangat, across our 53 communities, where our language is respected in the same way that French and English are respected in southern Canada as languages of instruction, to reach the same outcome and the same goal.
We have an immense amount of other challenges, such as small communities with limited capacity for specific biology, chemistry, or math when they get to grades 10, 11, and 12. We hope we can overcome those through distance education and access to online or satellite-based learning.
We can overcome these challenges, but there are some fundamental problems with our education system that don't allow our children at the end of grade 12 to have the same level of credentials.
I don't think we can say that the way we've provided education is fair. We expect our children to learn through curriculum that wasn't designed for them. We expect them to learn in a southern-based environment without having that balance between learning about a new culture and a new way of learning, and having the foundation of their own language, their own culture, and their own community in the classroom with them from K to 12.
There are a number of things that I think we can improve to ensure that our children have a fair chance of getting a high-quality education that is transferrable anywhere in Canada.