Thank you.
We feel that you have to give parents and school systems the information they need to make the choice.
I have many parents who come and ask me exactly that question of why French, why not Spanish, or why not Mandarin or something else. I think that has a lot to do with misinformation, or perhaps a lack of information, on our part, as to the benefits of French.
First of all, as I tell them, French is the only other language, besides English, spoken on every continent. It is truly another international language.
They always ask if French is harder to learn than Spanish or Japanese.
My answer is always, no, a second language is always a second language.
The benefit of learning French is that we have the opportunity to be immersed.
We have resources like Radio-Canada, TERMIUM and the activities that
that Justin Morrow and Canadian Youth for French offer students. They're getting the benefits of an enhanced program that we, only in Canada, can offer.
Three, from a purely nationalistic perspective, French is our other language, and it gives us the opportunity to participate fully in the experience of being Canadian.
As Robert said earlier, we see it as the springboard to being plurilingual. By learning both languages, we are open to learning more. By being diverse in both, we are able to be diverse in the world.
I think it's our bilingualism, in reality, when immigrants are choosing Canada. They know that we work hard—sometimes maybe not as successfully as we would like—at embracing both sides of ourselves. They know that we can accommodate others in a very comforting and nice way. We have a lot of practice at it.
I think that's a big part of our economic advantage to the world.