Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your invitation.
My name is Josée Nadeau and I am the Director of the Association francophone des parents du Nouveau-Brunswick. I am speaking to you on behalf of my President, Ms. Denyse LeBouthillier.
The Association francophone des parents du Nouveau-Brunswick, which has existed for 19 years now, has always lent its support to parents in education. Our mission is to encourage and strengthen the commitment and solidarity of francophone parents and the community in order to promote a school-community-family environment that is conducive to the development of children and their families.
Today, I will speak to you more specifically about early childhood, but we work in four areas: education, early childhood, culture and health.
We are also members of the Commission nationale des parents francophones and advocate the national vision of early childhood, so that francophone families in minority communities can have universal and affordable access to high-quality education services, in order to promote the overall development of early childhood within francophone institutional and community structures.
In order to achieve this vision, the AFPNB initially established the Réseau de la petite enfance francophone in 2004, and we now coordinate and manage this network. The network held its first symposium in March 2006 and, working together with the 180 or so people who attended the symposium, formulated several recommendations that were submitted to the government at the time. These recommendations included the establishment of early childhood centres that include integrated francophone services in every francophone region of the province. These services would be available in French to families from the moment a child is conceived.
As a francophone community, we need to make an effort to welcome families in order to prepare them and make them aware of their child's development, if we are to maximize our children's potential.
Research has shown that the most important interventions occur during early childhood. When we speak of early childhood here, we mean the period prior to birth until six years of age. For a long time, birth was considered the beginning. However, research into brain development has shown that before birth, the brain is already in full development. We now know that the brains of three-month old babies are already well enough organized to handle language.
We also recognize that coaching and enhancing the role of parents as the initial educators are essential to the optimization of child development.
Most people are aware of the importance of development when children are young. However, the issue is often to make it a priority and to start from the base. When the time comes to really make an investment in early childhood, there are often other priorities that bump it down the list of priorities. Intervention at the early childhood stage is all too often set aside. The most recent UNESCO report, moreover, noted that early childhood was the poor relative in education.
The challenge for the AFPNB is to work to ensure that communities can develop a package of coordinated services which are currently scattered, and which families in the greatest need often are unable to avail themselves of. We therefore need child care centres, family resource centres and schools, not only to accommodate our children, but especially to accommodate parents.
The elimination of the Court Challenges Program will affect all parent federations in Canada. The program made it possible for us, through Supreme Court decisions, to control the management of our schools and to open several French schools. We hope that the government will reverse its decision, on behalf of all children who are entitled to an education in French. Investing in early childhood is investing in our families, our schools and our communities.
To conclude, I would like to thank you for your invitation. We are prepared to meet you individually for further discussion.
Thank you.