Mr. Chair, members of the committee, my name is Lisa Marie Perkins, and I am the president of Canadian Parents for French.
I'm accompanied today by my executive director, Robert Rothon, and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to present to you today.
The road map for Canada's linguistic duality has provided Canadian Parents for French, or CPF, with an opportunity to promote FSL education in Canada. In this manner, CPF has also helped Canadians appreciate the road map's breadth and its depth. We've taken part in the mid-term consultations on the road map, and are pleased to be here today to follow up by speaking to its successes, and by helping conceptualize a possible successor.
One of the objectives of the road map is to allow all Canadians to enjoy the benefits that English and French have to offer. From our perspective, parents' increasing interest in choosing an FSL program—French immersion in particular—for their children is the most significant grassroots expression of support for linguistic duality in English Canada. In other words, anglophone and allophone parents are demonstrating their support for linguistic duality by opting to give their children the chance to be bilingual in both French and English.
With our French immersion numbers growing in the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia—to name four—the road map's impact on FSL education can be deemed a true success.
CPF is a not-for-profit parent organization now celebrating our 35th year. We value linguistic duality, and we work to create, support, and promote opportunities for non-francophone youth to learn and to use French. Our three-tiered structure allows over 25,000 members across Canada to engage actively with the school system from top to bottom, and with the francophone minority official languages communities outside of Quebec.
In the latter case, CPF is more often than not a preferred point of contact between the broader English-speaking community and the francophones, especially in the west. CPF is seen to represent the point of view of francophiles—which is currently a popular designation for anyone who speaks French as a second or other language—as minority francophone communities increasingly warm to the idea of integrating French second-language speakers into their core communities.
Preliminary data from Ontario suggests that there may be a correlation between the higher enrolment in FSL programs and the presence of strong francophone communities, so the relationship is clearly mutually beneficial.
On one level, the greatest significance of the road map is a strong public statement of intent on the part of the government to support and enhance Canada's linguistic duality. When you consider that in 2006 over three-quarters of Canadians stated their support for bilingualism in Canada, a successor to the road map with an FSL focus is not only politically desirable, but also provides an opportunity for government to define its legacy in nation building through the enhancement of our linguistic duality.
At CPF our research, advocacy, support, guidance, and youth programs have paved the way for parents to complement and protect their children's linguistic education at every level of our three-tiered structure. Nationally, CPF helps inform policy-making through its biennial “State of French-Second-Language Education in Canada” reports, its FSL database, and targeted youth initiatives. The policies that support language education don't just enable parents to make the right choices for their children; they also help educators better access supports and teaching aids that benefit students; improve and define relationships between an educator, student, and parent; and help ensure that the overall teaching environment is one that is adaptable to all student needs.
CPF National also voices a unified national perspective on FSL education, first by providing leadership to the entire CPF network, and subsequently through dialogue with our other national organizations like the FSL Partner Network, which includes SEVEC, ACPI, CASLT, French for the Future, and Canadian Youth for French.
Provincially and territorially, CPF branches support and encourage ministries of education to enhance or increase their support of FSL. They also undertake socio-cultural initiatives such as Bilingualism Rocks, which was a specially commissioned piece highlighting the shared historical experiences of official language communities in B.C., Alberta, and the Yukon. This program alone gave 69 school performances in B.C., Alberta, and the Yukon. In fact, we still have a waiting list of schools looking for this presentation.
At the school district level and even within individual school communities, CPF chapters are parents right on the ground actively supporting FSL through programming activities. For example, our Camrose, Alberta, chapter reported that, last year alone, its activities for students reached approximately 954 children.
One of the most unexpected results of this growing fervour in anglophone Canada for linguistic duality through French as a second language school programs is the intergenerational transmission of French as a second language. The first generation that went through immersion is now putting their children through the same school program and we're seeing that, in some families, this is even the third generation of learners going through immersion.
I am proud to say that I am one of them, and as one of the first immersion graduates, I have, myself, chosen to put my child in French immersion.
In our opinion, this phenomenon raises learning French from personal choice and individual accomplishment and puts it in a broader socio-cultural trend, meaning the emergence of an institutionalized culture of learning a second official language by an increasingly large part of the Canadian population. There is a parallel phenomenon here with respect to teachers, where individuals who went through the immersion program are themselves becoming immersion teachers.
Moreover, this intergenerational transfer of French as a second language shows the commitment of anglophone Canada toward this language, its cultures and its households in minority situations, which could lead to positive reflection about how we, in Canada, define the linguistic identity of each citizen.
Younger Canadians who became literate in both official languages see their ability to communicate and participate in both languages as normal.
CPF sees the need to develop legislation, policy, and practices that started and should continue with the road map as an opportunity to bring us closer to this reality for all Canadian youth, and to the expectation that these opportunities should be available to all students.
It is through this passion and dedication of the CPF parents that a number of school boards across Canada continue to offer, if not broaden, the offering of French as a second language programs, at a time when boards are facing serious financial pressures that elsewhere have led to the consolidation of schools or the straight out elimination of programs.
In many cases, the actions of CPF, which are to help school superintendents better understand the use of the funding guide for bilateral agreements and information sharing to facilitate dialogue between the school system stakeholders, have lead to solutions that keep teaching programs in our Canadian schools.
Along those same lines, and in relation to the roadmap, CPF acts as a volunteer custodian of federal interests when it comes to using funding for bilateral agreements stemming from the Official Languages in Education Protocol.
For us, what would a successor to the road map look like and what should be its goals? The Commissioner of Official Languages has written that official languages rests on the notion that a majority of all Canadians will remain unilingual. That may have been true 40 years ago; however, we are coming to realize that it may be time to rethink this assumption.
Parents increasingly seek to ensure that their children have the opportunity to learn both official languages by demanding or choosing that learning opportunity. Through a process of grassroots appropriation, many Canadians now interpret official languages, and the underlying notion of linguistic duality, as meaning individual official languages bilingualism. That is, to be truly Canadian is to be bilingual in both French and English, and that access to programs like French immersion should be seen as a right.
However challenging from a legislative and a policy perspective, this last notion provides an unparalleled opportunity for government to display leadership and to continue to display this leadership on a number of fronts and to advance an ambitious agenda.
There are some pragmatic arguments to be made, as well, for a successor to the road map, such as the recruiting of bilingual candidates to the public service renewal, building support for official languages among new Canadians, extending our success with FSL into the post-secondary area, securing an adequate supply of qualified FSL teachers, and using official language bilingualism as a springboard to individual plurilingualism, in order to position our youth in a multilingual, global economy.
In sum, the road map for Canada's linguistic duality has helped contribute to public recognition of the importance of official bilingualism. Support for Canada's official languages is on the rise, with more youth engaging with linguistic duality across the country. This support is starting to be manifest as support for individual official bilingualism.
We recommend that the federal government plan a successor to the road map; that a successor to the road map build on the latter's successes in FSL education; that future OLEP agreements focus on increasing the proportion of official language bilingualism; and that the overarching goal of a successor be the gift to all Canadian children of the right to learn both official languages through the most effective programs.
CPF is proud to be a supporter of the road map, and indeed the embodiment of what the road map is trying to achieve. We encourage you to build upon the road map's success by ensuring that every young Canadian has the opportunity to fully engage in the Canadian experience of our linguistic duality.
Thank you.