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.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our four witnesses for being here.
Mr. Nault and Mr. Corbeil, you are going to release a study on May 28. Can you give us a scoop? What else is there in that study that is not already in what we have here?
4:35 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
When we published the census data on October 24, there was very little information on the evolution of bilingualism. Many people are increasingly interested in the factors influencing the evolution of bilingualism over the years. I think that is somewhat the purpose of this study, the aim of which is to identify those main factors.
I can say one interesting thing. You will recall that, 50 years ago, we started to ask serious questions about how to promote bilingualism in Canada. Few people know how strongly bilingualism grew over the first 20 years following the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission. I can simply tell you that the purpose of this brief article is to quantify the evolution of this phenomenon and to put the finger on some of the key factors that have influenced the evolution of bilingualism over the years.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
I cannot wait to read your report, which will be published on May 28, but we can see in this one today that there has been a recovery among immersion schools. There has not really been a decline, but perhaps slowing growth. Now there is a recovery. I am pleased about that because, when I became Minister responsible for Official Languages in 2000, we saw that Parents for French was increasingly becoming Grandparents for French. We were afraid there would be no succession. We really made an effort in all that to relaunch immersion. Now we can say that a new generation of parents has gone through it and is relaunching it.
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
I agree with you. In recent years, people reacted when we noted the decline in bilingualism among young people in Canada. Some people may have been inclined to think that immersion programs were not working. The statistics we presented today show quite clearly how interest is increasing is these programs. They also show that people who have gone through immersion programs maintain their bilingualism for a much longer time.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
I do not know whether it is justified, but there is nevertheless a fear that there will be less of a push for regular schools to promote French since the most highly motivated students attend immersion schools.
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
Yes, that is not impossible.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
It would be a mistake for this committee to focus solely on immersion schools because this may conceal a decline. In fact, it does conceal a decline. Your statistics show that quite clearly.
Before putting my last question to Mr. Maddix and Mr. Paul, I would like to note that retention is much better in immersion schools than in schools where regular core French courses are given. There is nevertheless some loss, and we are surprised to see what happens to students who may have spent six years of their lives supposedly taking all their courses in French. People in the upper spheres know that is not entirely the case. The fact that there is a loss of 25% or even a third, according to some of your figures, is somewhat troubling. How can you spend all of high school in immersion school and not be bilingual in the end?
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
That is why I said earlier that this shows how important it is to study the matter in greater depth. We have figures showing that we should investigate further to explain what distinguishes those who maintain their skills from those who do not. Of course, the environment and workplace issue very definitely plays a role.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
It is not just that; some students also complete their immersion programs without being bilingual. Our fear is that the bilingualism of some schools is a superficial bilingualism. These are immersion schools. They attract people and impart a certain prestige, but it has to be determined whether the teachers are really qualified, if French is indeed spoken in mathematics classes and so on. I wonder whether the immersion concept is not diluted in some cases.
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
I think that confirms the need to study the matter in greater—
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
But you do not have any figures on which to verify that.
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Director , Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada
No. It is more difficult. However, it would not be impossible to add a module to an existing survey so that we can ask relevant questions on the subject. I am thinking, for example, of the General Social Survey, which represents a sample of 25,000 people. We could put questions to people who have taken an immersion program and ask them whether they have maintained their skills. The option is there.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
All right, thank you very much.
Mr. Maddix and Mr. Paul, in your report, you stated a quite disturbing fact, which we nevertheless suspect is true: that the provinces transfer funds and that the communities' schools do not always get the benefit in that case.
Could you tell us more about that?
4:40 p.m.
President, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
I will respond first and then Roger will be able to continue.
It varies from province to province. The community and school boards are not involved in the process of saying exactly why they need funding. Is it to train and retain teachers? We are not involved in submitting funding applications and we are not asked why we need funding. In some provinces and territories, once the funding is transferred, those people have no input into the allocation of funding among immersion, French-language instruction and so on.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
These are ultimately two different funding streams. There is funding for immersion and there is funding for community schools. Your paragraph suggests that—
4:45 p.m.
President, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
That is correct. We have no indication. We are not involved in that. Consequently, we cannot know what funding goes to immersion and what goes to French-language instruction.
At home in Prince Edward Island, funding is allocated to program development, but if funding is taken away from the French-language section, it is to develop core French programs, immersion programs and French as a first language programs.
The allocation of funding is really confused. We would like to be more involved in the process.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
The federal-provincial agreements do not clarify that?
4:45 p.m.
President, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
The systems vary with the provinces.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
As Mr. Maddix just mentioned, it differs from one province to the next. The information is obviously hard to get.
Here is the most flagrant example, and it is public. In Yukon, the deputy minister admitted that a sum of slightly more than $1 that was to be allocated to French as a first language was allocated to French as a second language. That is just one example, but if there is one, there may be others. How do we know that? No one knows. As for accountability, once the funding is granted to the department, it can wash its hands of the matter.
It goes even further than that. In several of our provinces, the school board—in many cases, there is only one French-language school board for the province—is not even invited to the table when talks take place between the federal government and the provinces. And yet we are talking about funding that will be used for our programs.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. Paul. Thank you, Mr. Dion.
Mr. Trottier, you have the floor.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here today.
Mr. Maddix and Mr. Paul, you have provided some clear details on the various ways to teach French in a minority setting. Education is quite fragmented in the sense that there are core French programs, immersion programs, French as a first language programs and, in provinces such as Ontario, a Catholic school system and a public school system.
Students in my city, Toronto, have a lot of choice. Sometimes there is no real concept of what a rights holder is , in that French is often taught as a first language in an immersion school for non-francophones. They are legally entitled to that. These young students may attend French-language schools even if they are not francophone. It is a legal issue that concerns the route that students take to go to school in the morning, for example.
Do you think it undermines students' education to attend a French-language school when they should be going to an immersion school? That is often more or less the case in the same community or region. We have a mix of students. Does that detract from the experience of one group or the other? I do not know whether you have had that experience.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
Yes.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
This is a real problem in Toronto and there are a lot of disputes among parents. Some parents do not want non-rights holders to attend those schools and lower the quality of French-language education.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones
That is an excellent question.
I am getting ready to go and testify at a trial in British Columbia where I will be asked the question you just asked me, whether we should accept students who do not master French or speak it at all at our French-language schools. A parallel can also be drawn with immersion schools.
Do the linguistic strengths or weaknesses of certain students influence other students who are trying to learn French and to master the language and culture?
Based on our experience, the answer is no. I will explain why. I am mainly talking about language learning for the youngest students, who come to us in junior kindergarten or kindergarten. That is usually when the parents choose a school for their children. We rarely see parents choose a school when their children are in grades 7 or 8. They choose the school based on language and do so when their children are very young. At that age, children are sponges who soak up information. I am not saying that those children will become perfectly bilingual, but I am saying that a young child who enters a French-language school in September can speak French in December.
There are definitely support programs and we try to group students together based on their language levels. However, there is no evidence that accepting students who do not master the language will have a negative impact on the other students.