So we have genuine, productive partnerships with a range of government and community partners. Those partnerships help provide the youth perspective to those working in their interest.
Our federation represents the interests of young francophones across Canada and tries to enable them to achieve their full potential. To do so, it coordinates innovative activities and initiatives in cooperation with its member associations in nine provinces and two territories to enable youth to enjoy experiences in French outside the classroom.
Year after year, an average of 20,000 young people benefit directly from the initiatives of our pan-Canadian network. For a number of years now, our organization has emphasized the need to make youth a priority in Canada's efforts to promote the development of the official language minority communities. And that message has been conveyed to the federal government on a number of occasions and was reiterated in the context of the consultations were organized before the Roadmap was developed.
The FJCF is extremely enthusiastic about seeing that one of the five areas for action under the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality is building the future by investing in youth. For the FJCF, linguistic duality is of major importance for the vitality of the minority francophone communities because it is by making all Canadians aware of the fact that our country's two official languages are an asset that the French language will be more appreciated and valued by everyone.
This valuing of linguistic duality is one of the ways of stopping the assimilation and decline in the French-speaking population. So it's encouraging to see that the government understands the importance of linguistic duality, knowing that the objective is not to achieve a bilingual Canadian population, but rather to ensure respect for both official language cultures in Canada.
The youth network in Canada is pleased to see that many plans for the country's youth have been implemented with Roadmap funding. Significant amounts of money have been allocated at various levels for youth, including internship awards, employment internships for translation students, summer language bursaries and, in particular, the Youth Initiatives Fund.
However, the amounts allocated for youth initiatives have definitely not been invested in optimal fashion: first, because half of the budget set aside for the initiatives was invested in infrastructure; and second, because the youth initiatives amounts were to be spent in a single fiscal year.
It is obviously much too soon to evaluate and determine the considerable impact of these initiatives on the vitality of the minority language communities and on linguistic duality, since this type of effect is obviously not immediate. However, we know that premature initiatives that must be taken quickly and produce immediate results are not initiatives that will have permanent, strategic impact in our society.
That is why longer-term investments would have been preferable to ad hoc investment, over a single year, and why youth initiatives with demonstrated strategic impact should have been preferred.
We are nevertheless pleased to see a number of actual results that have come out of certain initiatives that we are very familiar with. Those initiatives have distinct objectives, but all have one thing in common, to which we referred earlier: each one has afforded young Canadians an experience of living in French. Those experiences are extremely important for young francophones as this is one of the main ways of forging a feeling of belonging to one's community and one's country.
Young Canadians today are living in a modern society, in a world of globalization, in which the main sources of entertainment, education and information are in English. What then is the purpose of these experiences of living in French if young people subsequently go back to their everyday lives in English? These experiences are crucially important. Among other things, they help build the identity of young francophones and reinforce their ability to achieve a praiseworthy objective through full participation as citizens.
Imagine the effect of a Roadmap if all collective efforts were concerted efforts directed toward the ultimate goal of offering young Canadians French-language living environments. That would mean that all young Canadians would have access to enriching ad hoc initiatives and to a living environment that would enable them to learn, work, be entertained and grow in their language.
Now imagine the effect of a Roadmap that builds the future with youth, by investing in youth.
We hope that the purpose of the effort you are currently making will be to improve the next Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality by considering the comments of the community sector, which is constantly striving to ensure the continued existence of minority francophones across the country. One of our main recommendations concerning this Roadmap is that the government clarify its vision for young francophones.
With youth, the government must more clearly establish the role of this important segment of the population with a view to promoting the development of the official language minority communities and linguistic duality.
The FJCF recommends that the government invest in current community stakeholders to enable them to do a better job of working with youth.
We would also like a mechanism to be developed to introduce a form of funding management for and by youth, in partnership with the government. That would ensure that funding is allocated in accordance with young people's priorities for linguistic duality.
Lastly, the government must show greater recognition of young people's contributions to Canadian society by developing and implementing strategic programs to promote their engagement. We also ask that initiatives for young francophones outside the schools be developed further considering the enormous impact they have.
Lastly, it is necessary to invest in postsecondary education in French, in terms of both accessibility and quality.
Thank you.