Absolutely, and that is the rationale for the linguistic accommodation policy that has just been launched in Ontario.
I'd like to tell you a little story. With 55% of exogamous families in Ontario, only 14% of whom speak French at home. The rather strange burden of having to try to prevent assimilation falls to us, as educational institutions. But we have concluded that as a college, and the same applies to primary and secondary schools — we can no longer limit ourselves to the classroom when it comes to promoting francisation or defending the French language in Ontario. We have implemented what we call the provincial linguistic accommodation policy — I believe it is a Canadian innovation — which will yield results. What is it all about exactly?
Well, here is my little story. For the graduation ceremony at the college, we handed out diplomas to every student at the college along with a work by a Franco-Ontarian author. Everyone of them left with a diploma and a novel — a literary work. I told my students that the diploma would be their passport to employment, and the book, a passport to culture.
We have just signed an agreement with the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario. It will be mandatory for my students to receive training at the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario. Some of them don't like that, but they're going to have to do it. We have just signed an agreement with local daily newspapers and every single one of my students will have to subscribe to a Francophone daily. I will be using the newspaper in the classroom as a developmental tool. I could go on and on; we have 12 such measures under the linguistic accommodation policy. The fact is that education doesn't only happen at school. We need the associative movement and all our community partners. Otherwise, we will die.