Official Languages Committee on April 23rd, 2013

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

My third recommendation is that we must go forward with the process with the help of a study. I understand what my colleague was saying when questioning the usefulness of doing one study after another. However, I think it would be a positive thing to open up a national dialogue with the participants from all provinces to discuss what we want the programs to accomplish.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Your third recommendation then consists of carrying out a study on the programs and identifying which ones work well and which ones work less well.

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

Exactly; a national dialogue.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

We intend to do such a study, and we will keep you informed. We will see what the results of that are.

Ms. Ellwand, look us in the eye and tell us your recommendations.

[Calina Ellwand]

My first recommendation consists of improving access to education in immersion programs. To be specific, this would mean reducing the distance that families and students have to travel to get to the nearest immersion school.

For example, in my case I used to live in Toronto and the immersion school was located fairly far away from my home.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Then this would mean having more immersion schools in order to reduce these distances.

[Calina Ellwand]

Exactly.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Or, more buses would be needed.

[Calina Ellwand]

Indeed, this would mean having more subsidized transportation to allow people to access schools with immersion programs.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

All right.

What is your second recommendation?

[Calina Ellwand]

Secondly, the level of French proficiency among teachers needs to be more consistent throughout Canada.

Thirdly, there needs to be more support offered to students who wish to continue improving their French after they leave high school. Therefore, there must be more programs such as cultural exchanges, promoting bilingual universities, grants to encourage students to go to bilingual universities, things like that.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Morrow, do you have any recommendations to add to those?

[Justin Morrow]

In fact, I would like to add a slight clarification to the first recommendation. We need to ensure access to immersion programs and to francophone events on all levels.

Secondly, we have to ensure that the teaching is of high quality.

Third, we recommend that you study post-secondary environments in French, not just universities but also colleges, employment, forums, and exchanges in communities across the country, to really find out what the roadblocks are, where students are going, where they want to go, why they don't do things, what their—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Then we have to look outside of the teaching circles and look into the labour market.

[Justin Morrow]

We have to look at the labour market and the rest of it. I do not think that a single study has been done on that to date.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Yes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

In that case, we shall revisit all of this.

Ms. Adams, do you feel that we are missing something here? Do you have any other recommendations?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

The quality of the teaching is a job for the boards of education, the school boards and the provinces. Access to programs is also the responsibility of the school boards, the boards of education and the provinces. It would be very difficult for the federal government to intervene in these areas.

However, you give funding to the provinces and this allows the school boards to study and evaluate the programs, just as we have done here. This also allows the implementation of programs in places where that has never been done before.

Ensuring linguistically competent professors costs money. It is very expensive. Skills development programs are very costly because they develop teachers' skills in the education field in addition to improving their language skills.

Transportation is also the responsibility of the school board.

To do all of this, funds are needed. If the federal government does not provide funding through the provinces, these things will not improve.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Ms. Bateman, you have the floor.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all of our witnesses. I am sincerely impressed by your bilingualism.

Ms. Adams, Mr. Galipeau started to ask you some questions on this topic. You managed to learn this country's second official language without going through immersion. How did you do that?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

I will talk a little bit about myself, but first of all, I will talk about what we do with regard to program evaluation.

As Justin already mentioned, the vast majority of the country's students are enrolled in core French programs. We are entirely capable of producing competent students, and in this regard, I would point to myself as an example. However, a very good education is required, teachers whose language skills are up to par are needed, and one must motivate students to continue studying until the end of the 12th grade.

Thanks to the changes made to our programs, we have finally started to see more students continue on until the 11th grade. Up until two or three years ago, it was lower. Many students stop immediately after grade 9 or 10.

We have therefore created situations. We have created classroom education that maintains children's interest. They are interested in communicating in that language. They do not want to conjugate the verbs “to be” and “to have”. That is useless, they are not interested in doing it.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I agree with you.

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

Now I'll talk a little bit more about myself.

I have to admit that languages interested me, and so I continued to study them in high school. Afterwards, I went to Carleton University, and then I did a one-year exchange at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières. Mr. Dion, part of the program offered the opportunity to request a bursary to go and study in Trois-Rivières, and I took advantage of it.

Finally, I have to admit that I am now married to a Frenchman, so that helps.