First of all, there is a difficult issue which is that education is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. That is not necessarily a problem, but it is a reality.
However, certain technologies are available. For instance, I made a suggestion in a paper I wrote quite recently. With the help of Skype, we can twin schools, that is to say an English-language school with a French-language school, in order to allow young people to communicate directly amongst themselves. For instance, anglophones in an immersion class absolutely need opportunities to practise French if they are to improve.
However, that is not sufficient, and the figures show it. Jean-Pierre, who is here with us, is the pre-eminent expert in Canada on this subject.
I don't say that lightly, by the way. I mean that.
Take this region, the Gatineau and Ottawa area. In Gatineau you are going to see the francophones learn English at a later stage, according to the census, in their educational cycle. Very often it's not until they hit the workplace that they acquire the English language, but they acquire it en masse once they hit the workplace.
Often the anglophones who get the exposure to French in the schools, once they get out into the workplace, don't have the opportunity to use it in a sufficient way, and hence you're seeing a drop in the extent to which they retain the language, despite the important investment in their acquisition of the language at the school level. What they need is more opportunities for contact, both at the early stage of their education....
First, they need to add communication to their learning. Currently, they do not necessarily have the opportunity to do so, even if the new technologies would allow this at a reasonable cost. We know that we are in a difficult financial period. However, I think the new technologies can provide opportunities to offer this type of communication or encourage it, in creative ways.
There are also other programs. Mr. Godin mentioned Katimavik. I don't want to comment on Katimavik, but allow me to point out that whatever the program that is in place, the principle remains important. The principle being that opportunities to create this type of contact are becoming increasingly numerous. It is true that opportunities come up in the workplace. We could say that this happens naturally, but certain regions in Canada are located outside of those areas where direct contacts can occur naturally. I think that with technologies and programs that utilize new technologies to advantage, we can set up or support such contacts. There are other programs where the principle of promoting such contacts could be furthered. This is all the more important in the context of our 150th anniversary, if we want to do more than just talk about having a bilingual country. In fact, the majority of Canadians think that Canada is bilingual. In all of the surveys I conducted, francophones outside Quebec also think that Canada is a bilingual country.
I do not entirely share the opinion that we are a bilingual country. I look at reality. I think that we are bilingual from the legislative point of view. However, from the practical point of view, if you look at the rate of bilingualism, that is to say peoples' real capacity to speak both languages, the situation of Canadian anglophones is very close to that of Americans who do not speak Spanish. Bilingualism here is not on a par with bilingualism in Europe.