Thank you, Mr. Godin. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen members. It is a great pleasure for us to be here this evening. We are in a bit of a hurry, and we'll try to improvise here. That's natural for us because we do it often.
I'm sure that the speakers who preceded us presented the community and its issues, which are very important. Our organization, the Société franco-manitobaine, is one of its voices. I'm here this evening with the chair of the board of directors, Mr. Ibrahima Diallo, who was elected approximately a month ago. He's recently taken up the position, but he will definitely be able to answer your questions, if you have any.
I was to be here with Ms. Bintou Sacko, who is responsible for the community intake service. I could talk for five hours, but I only have five minutes. So I'll talk about Francophone immigration to Manitoba, which is a major success thanks to a strategy called Agrandir l'espace francophone. In 2001, we adopted that strategy, which targeted five different clienteles, in particular the immigrant community. It's designed to increase the number of Francophone immigrants to Manitoba. Last year, Manitoba took in slightly more than 300 Francophone immigrants. That's a lot, if you compare that figure to the number we took in four or five years ago, and we intend to go even further.
Our goal is a minimum of 700 immigrants a year, and I believe we're going to achieve that objective at some point. We've set ourselves the following objective: an average of 700 immigrants a year for the next 20 years. At first, it will be a bit slow, but I believe we'll be exceeding that number in a few years. The community is very well organized to take in increasing numbers of Francophone immigrants. We're also working with the province of Manitoba, which is a world leader in immigration. This year, the province aims to take in 10,000 immigrants. That figure has nearly been achieved, and, in the last Throne Speech, a new objective was set, that of taking in 20,000 persons by 2011. We want to maintain the same percentage of Francophones and ensure that there are Francophones immigrating to Manitoba. We are a welcoming land and we're proud of what we're doing.
It's not easy in a number of respects, and we need the federal government to be one of our partners in our initiative, Agrandir l'espace francophone. We need the federal government. It has to be a partner of the province so that we have the necessary resources to recruit people and ensure they stay here. We know very well that a community such as ours is well positioned to retain them because it's very welcoming. On the other hand, we know that people's first impression is very important. When people arrive here from another country, whether it be in Africa, the countries of the Maghreb, France, Belgium or any Francophone country, the first impression, the first week, the first two weeks are the ones that count the most. We don't want to lose those people because we aren't well structured. We feel we have the outline of a very good structure, but we still have a lot of work to do and we need the support of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and we obviously still need the support of the Province of Manitoba.
This is a priority issue for us. We want the federal government to understand us on this subject because it's important for us to preserve linguistic duality. We need significant figures in our provinces. For us, immigration is one of the means at our disposal, and it's obviously one of the strategies we have adopted. We wanted to focus on that this evening, but our strategy Agrandir l'espace francophone is much broader and concerns all kinds of clienteles. Francophone immigration is a priority for us, and we hope that you'll pass the message on to the Government of Canada that it must give us the necessary resources to ensure that linguistic duality contributes to vitality and development across Canada. Our community has been here for a long time and doesn't intend to go elsewhere. We'll be here for a long time.
Thank you very much.
