Thank you, Justin.
As Justin said, I am a member of the board of directors of Canadian Youth for French.
I'm also a product of Ontario's French immersion program, so I can and will be speaking from personal experience as someone who started my French immersion studies in kindergarten, continued through to high school, then on to university at the University of Ottawa. Thanks to a scholarship from Canadian Parents for French,I was able to study political science in French at U of O. I now continue to use my French on a daily basis through my work for a national non-profit that operates bilingually.
I joined the board of Canadian Youth For French in 2012 because I strongly believe in the organization's mandate to ensure that students have access to opportunities to enrich their French-language skills beyond high school. I would like to share my experience in the French immersion system because I feel very strongly about it, but I do feel there are three areas in particular where there could be improvement.
First, in terms of access, in my own experience living in Canada's largest city, growing up in Toronto, the closest French immersion school was never the most convenient option. This required considerable time spent on buses, on public transit, and of course there was the financial hardship that put on my family in order to pay for public transit to travel 45 minutes across the city.
I'm talking from my experience in Toronto. I know that across Canada it could be an even longer distance and higher costs incurred to get to the closest French immersion school. As a result, we see that most students in French immersion come from better-off families that can afford this additional cost.
Second, there are inconsistencies across Canada in terms of the quality of the teaching and the educational experience. I did some informal polling of my French immersion peers., and overall, we've all had very dedicated and supportive French immersion teachers who have contributed to our success. However, teachers' French-language skills are inconsistent across the system and in order to maintain the high calibre of French immersion programming, we need to ensure that we're training and hiring educators with strong French-language skills in order maintain high quality in the French immersion program.
Finally, in terms of students who want to work on their French beyond high school, there's a considerable loss of French. Again, from the small focus group of 11 French immersion students who are young adults who have now gone on to other things, 80% of them said their French had either become worse or stayed the same since leaving school, and only 20% said they had actually seen their French improve.
In order to not lose the energy and the resources that we're putting into French immersion, we need to put resources toward helping students who want to maintain their French beyond high school. I think that's where Canadian Youth For French can play an important role.
I will now pass it back to Justin to contribute to this commentary.