Evidence of meeting #82 for Official Languages in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Pierre Dionne Labelle NDP Rivière-du-Nord, QC
And that, of that 47%, 43% would have preferred to send them to French school if they had been offered that opportunity.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
In fact, they cited all kinds of reasons—
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
—in particular supply, availability, distance and program quality.
NDP
Pierre Dionne Labelle NDP Rivière-du-Nord, QC
All right.
Let us do a little prospective work.
We are seeing each other again in 15 years. In the meantime, things have remained the same, current trends have remained constant. What would you tell us about bilingualism in Canada?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. Dionne Labelle.
Mr. Corbeil, you have the floor.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
That is a good question.
Of course, we can see some very strong trends. As I have mentioned several times, some challenges are associated with the changes in population composition. The larger proportion of immigrants moving toward English outside Quebec is a factor in this regard.
However, Statistics Canada has microsimulation models, and it would be possible to use them, based on all the parameters that have an impact on the evolution of the situation, to determine what the situation would be in 20 or 30 years. That exercise has been done in the case of visible minorities, immigrant populations and workforces.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
It is usually departments.
Conservative
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses for their presentations.
I know you said at the outset that you did not have access to data to measure access issues, waiting lists, and some of the things we have heard about. I'm struck by the apparent correlation between the 27% increase in immersion and the 24% decrease in regular French. I know you don't have any empirical data to directly correlate the two.
Does this lead you to suspect that they're directly related and that a rise in immersion in a lot of the provinces has led to this? Is there any input from what Ms. Bateman suggested regarding the rise in pure French schools for children of francophone parents? I'd like to hear your comments.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
That's a very good question.
It's not easy. Obviously, we have to investigate. We don't really have the data to support this, but I think we've heard many times that there are a lot of parents who consider learning French as a real asset, as a great tool. They consider going through these immersion programs as really beneficial. On the other hand, attending a program of regular French as a second language might pose some challenges, or there might be some issues with retention.
I don't know if some parents who could have thought of sending their children to the regular program chose instead to send them to the immersion program. We do know that people who attended these programs, and who were enrolled in these immersion programs, as parents developed the attitude that it was very important for their children and the children in their communities to attend these programs.
We see it really clearly. We know that more females attend or are enrolled in immersion programs than males. When we look at some of the surveys, we see that women are far more likely than men to say that it is very important for their children to attend these programs. In fact, we don't really have all the information regarding the correlation between the two, but we do know that overall, those who went through the immersion programs are more likely to send their own children to the immersion programs.
Conservative