Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon Mr. Chong, Mr. Godin, Mr. Dion, and members of the committee.
I would like to say hello to my former colleagues, Mr. Le Dorze and Ms. Bourbonnais, from the CAIT.
The QCGN, the Quebec Community Groups Network, is represented today by Stephen Thompson, our director of policy, research and public affairs, and me. My name is Jim Shea. I'm a member of the Quebec Community Groups Network board of directors. I am a proud resident of Aylmer in the City of Gatineau.
I also served as the executive director of Canadian Parents for French from 2002 to 2011. I served as a teacher and principal in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. I was one of the pioneer educators—I didn't label myself that, but other people did—of Ottawa's bilingual programs and retired as a superintendent of education in Ottawa to pursue my passion for linguistic duality in Canada with Canadian Parents for French. I'm pleased to continue my advocacy as a member of the board of directors of the Quebec Community Groups Network.
We understand that the committee will be hearing from the Quebec English School Boards Association and other experts within our community's education sector who will be able to answer specific questions on access, capacity, waiting lists, best practices, and efficiencies. The QCGN is here today to explain the importance of second official language programs to Canada's English linguistic minority communities, that is, the English-speaking community of Quebec.
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages noted the popularity of immersion programs among English-speaking families and the years of efforts that our parents have put into campaigning for improvements in the teaching of French in English language schools. Our school boards “place considerable weight on ensuring that their students are fluent in French”, and immersion programs are a vital component of these efforts.
English-speaking Quebec is rightfully proud of French immersion, a product—a genesis, if you want—of parents in Saint-Lambert, Quebec finding a better way to provide their children with the language skills they would need to live and succeed in Quebec and, of course, in Canada. We quote the Lester B. Pearson School Board in the Senate committee's report:
Quebec English schools have always been at the forefront of second language teaching and learning, and were responsible for the development of internationally recognized French language immersion programs. We have perfected the teaching of French through immersion to the extent that people come from the world over to learn our methods for acquiring a second language.
We want this committee to understand that becoming bilingual is not an altruistic pursuit for English-speaking youth in Quebec. Bilingualism is not a matter of simply expanding opportunities or acquiring a desirable asset for potential employers. For that story, we urge the committee to hear from French-speaking parents in Quebec about their efforts to ensure that their children learn both official languages.
Bilingualism for English-speaking Quebec is a matter of getting a job. It is an economic necessity.
For example, data contained in a research report recently published by Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities demonstrated that the baseline salaries of unilingual English speakers are 18% less than those of unilingual French-speaking Quebeckers. The salaries of bilingual English speakers and unilingual French speakers are at par, with bilingual French speakers earning 12.6% more than both of these cohorts.
Bilingualism is not a silver bullet for finding a job. Despite overall higher levels of education and high rates of bilingualism within our population, the 2006 census data shows an overall unemployment rate within the English-speaking community of Quebec that is 2.2% higher than that of the French-speaking majority.
Speaking, reading, and writing French are clearly critical skills in finding a job in Quebec. For example, in the lower north shore, where learning French is difficult, the bilingualism rate among the English-speaking population is 22%, compared with 65% across the entire community. When the fishery collapsed, residents were forced to leave not only their home villages but their home provinces to find seasonal work because of a lack of French language skills.
Along la Côte-Nord, English-speaking unemployment was 28.7%, as compared with 10.9% for the majority. The promise of good jobs in the future mining industry of northeastern Quebec is not accessible for members of this isolated English-speaking community, in large measure because the population does not have the French skills to acquire the required technical and trades training and provincial certification.
You as a committee will learn from the experts who appear before you during this study that French immersion is not a matter of simply teaching subjects in French. Immersion teaching is a specialized skill that requires long-term investments on the part of schools, school boards, and teachers. Intensive French instruction for our community is a tangible necessity, because being fluent in the language of the majority is absolutely necessary for an individual's economic future in Quebec.
Economic prosperity is one of six strategic priorities identified in our community's “2012-2017 Community Priorities and Enabling Strategies” document. To us English-speaking Quebeckers, economic prosperity means greater access to employment and educational opportunities and higher levels of bilingualism.
Bilingualism is the key to the economic prosperity of English-speaking Quebeckers and the resilience of our communities. For our children and grandchildren, French immersion is how we get there.
Thank you very much. Merci.