Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
I would first like to thank the Standing Committee on Official Languages for inviting French for the Future to take part in the study on linguistic duality during the 150th anniversary celebrations of Canadian Confederation in 2017. This is the first time our organization has been asked to take part in such a process. Therefore, I would like to begin by introducing French for the Future so as to provide a context for the recommendations we will offer the committee.
French for the Future was founded in 1997. It was born out of an idea by John Ralston Saul that Canada's official languages are a richness that should unite us rather than divide us, and that all Canadian youth should have a chance to understand the positive impact that being bilingual can have on their lives. Based on this notion, a two-day forum for 250 high school students was organized in Toronto, focusing on the advantages of speaking French as a second language.
Since then, French for the Future has grown considerably. Our goal is best illustrated by our official mission statement: to promote Canada's official bilingualism and the immediate and lifelong benefits of learning and communicating in French to students from grades 7 to 12 across Canada. We do so by offering four main programs every year, to both French-first-language students of minority linguistic environments and French-second-language students.
First of all, we have a national essay contest which offers winners more than $200,000 in scholarships to francophone and bilingual colleges and universities.
We also have Francoconnexion Sessions, our newest program, which consists of a ready-mate event toolkit and planning guide for the promotion of French within a classroom environment.
There are also Local Forums, which are held in over a dozen cities across the country every year, and allow for students to connect with successful bilingual role models — such as Olympian Kara Grant, and Juno Award winner Andrea Lindsay, to name a few — all the while attending educational and fun activities on the advantages of bilingualism.
Finally, we have a National Ambassador Youth Forum, which is in its ninth year, where 30 young leaders from across Canada gather in one city for five days. This a forum where, for example, a French immersion student from Lethbridge, Alberta, learns about minority language life from a student from Bathurst, New Brunswick and vice versa. They get a real, first-hand look at the current reality of Canadian bilingualism and its issues, and work together to create a conversation and find solutions that resonate with them. At the end of the National Ambassador Youth Forum, the students return to their respective communities as “ambassadors“, who will promote the French language and bilingualism amongst their peers and in their communities.
The goal of both the Local Forums and the National Ambassador Youth Forum is to bring students together. In doing so, we hope to give students the opportunity to experience French-Canadian language and culture outside of the classroom, so that they may develop their own understanding and appreciation of our country's linguistic duality.
Last year alone, our programs reached 25,000 high school students. Our next strategic goal is to reach 50,000 students. As we speak, French for the Future is an ever-growing leader in the promotion of official bilingualism in Canada, and that is because we have adapted our programs to the ever-changing reality of Canadian youth. Yet we have done so without ever losing sight of the organization's purpose: to contribute to the vision of a Canada in which all young people value our French heritage, appreciate francophone cultures and endeavour to excel in the French language.
It is clear from previous testimony in this study that French for the Future is not alone in recognizing the value of bilingualism. As numerous other witnesses have made abundantly clear before this committee, bilingualism is a defining characteristic of our country's history and identity and should not only be included in Confederation's 150th anniversary celebrations, but should be intrinsic to all elements of its preparation.
The same spirit that allowed two languages to survive and flourish side-by-side since the beginning of Confederation has continued to draw in the citizens of the world as we become an increasingly multinational and heterogeneous people. We believe bilingualism is a practical manifestation of this spirit of inclusion and openness, offering other avenues through which future generations are able to forge social and emotional bonds in our country.
At its core, our work strives to promote the message of acceptance and collective pride. The celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada should go beyond simply integrating both of our official languages. It should use our linguistic duality to reach out to our youth, to help ignite a sense of national pride, and to revive students' desire to learn and continue speaking both French and English in Canada. We can often see the moment when the eyes light up among students participating in our programs when they themselves realize the value of their emerging bilingualism. We can see they will carry on this lifelong passion for languages and culture. It's absolutely magical. A similar connection is made among our francophone students too, who perhaps had taken their own language and culture for granted.
We fully understand that the 150th anniversary of Confederation is not the anniversary of the Official Languages Act; however, we firmly believe that the celebrations should be used as a platform to reinforce the status of bilingualism as one of our nation's defining characteristics. French for the Future believes this can be done by promoting and investing in organizations that already work in this vein, but most importantly, it must be done through our youth.
I will now provide you with our recommendations.
One, we firmly believe that face-to-face exchange and personal interactions are most conducive to forging the idea of a collective we. In large part, our program is dedicated to offering an opportunity for students to further both their own experiences with bilingualism and their personal relationship with la francophonie. They are opportunities to celebrate regional differences and recognize common challenges. Perhaps most importantly, we strive to promote interaction in French beyond the classroom by underscoring the notion that learning French is not limited to grammar lessons and verb conjugations. It really isn't. We strongly support an initiative that would increase opportunities for cultural and linguistic exchanges leading up to and during the 150th anniversary of Confederation, as outlined in the 2011-12 annual report of the Commissioner of Official Languages. We believe that youth thrive when given the opportunity to experience the other official language beyond their curricula.
Two, while opportunities for French language instruction are increasing at the secondary level, students wishing to pursue post-secondary education in French continue to face many obstacles. One of these is basic availability, but in our experience a larger issue is that students simply aren't well acquainted with the options that do exist. Part of our programming seeks to make clear to students that they can continue to build on the momentum they have gained in their language education. We hope to convince them that their efforts can, and indeed should, lead to something beyond a designation adorning their high school diploma. We encourage developing more post-secondary French language opportunities so that young Canadians can realize linguistic duality is a lifelong gift and something they can carry with them into adulthood. Too often this isn't the case. This push should be tied in with the 150th anniversary of Confederation to cement the historical import of our bilingual heritage. However, it would continue to impact students well beyond 2017.
Three, French for the Future relies on the great diversity of the official language minority communities that exist throughout Canada to enrich our programming. We create local committees for our various events in cities to ensure various constituents with a vested interest in and passion for the success of French language education are properly represented. This allows our events to be infused with a local flavour, all the while showing students that their participation is part of something greater.
We believe the preparations for the 150th anniversary of Confederation should be conducted in a similar way. However, our experience is that youth are the key vehicle in spreading a message that endures beyond an event's celebrations. We support the formation and active involvement of a youth council consisting of representatives from different provinces and territories in the planning and execution of the anniversary commemoration in 2017. The council's work could be complemented by that of a high-profile bilingual youth spokesperson, whose role would be twofold. First, they would use their visibility to give voice to youth interests and concerns on a wider stage. Second, they would work to ensure that parts of the celebrations are oriented toward engaging our youth.
We hope that our testimony will help the Standing Committee on Official Languages in ensuring the presence of our official languages in the 2017 celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Confederation.
Thank you.