Official Languages Committee on May 23rd, 2013

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

I can use English, if you want.

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

No, no, no, I just have to hear it.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

The information that I conveyed to you in our remarks concerns only immersion programs. It does not concern minority schools, that is to say those considered to be French-language schools.

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

You are talking about minority schools?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

These are minority programs, French-language schools where everything is done in French, including management.

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

So we are really comparing apples and oranges.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

That is correct, but I do not have to address that issue since the objective was really to focus on immersion programs.

I can tell you that the 2011 statistics we currently have show that approximately 148,000 students attend French-language schools. You must understand that immersion programs are offered in English-language schools, whereas minority programs are offered in French-language schools.

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

So do the data you are presenting here concern the second language?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

These data concern immersion schools. In other words, these are English-language schools that offer French-language immersion programs.

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

So you did not take into account the programs of the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine, the DSFM.

However, your colleagues talked about French-language schools in their presentations. Consequently, students attending French-language schools are not included in your data.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

They are not counted, since this—

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

They are not counted?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Since the committee meeting was to focus essentially on immersion programs, I did not present any data on the French schools.

Every year, Statistics Canada publishes a document in which we provide and distinguish data on enrolments by province. However, data on immersion programs and French-language school programs are published separately for each of the provinces.

In response to the point you raised regarding Manitoba, I can tell you that 5,236 students in that province were enrolled in the public program at a French-language school in 2011. We are not talking about an immersion program here, but rather about a French-language school.

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

That is not your data here, but you have—

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

If you wish, we can easily send you that information. It is available on the Statistics Canada's website and provides statistics for the past five years.

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

Mr. Chair, it seems to me that that data would be very useful for our studies, because this is another—

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Ms. Bateman, I want to mention that Ms. Lecomte constantly uses the Statistics Canada website to document our study.

Mr. Dionne Labelle, you have the floor.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will address three points.

Mr. Corbeil, have the changes made to the latest census form helped your services develop a picture of the situation?

Have all the communities been taken into account in the demolinguistic picture that you put together in the last census?

Did you have all the data at your disposal? Did the form change deprive you of any essential data?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you for your question.

We have to agree on what the expression "demolinguistic picture" means. If the goal is to paint a picture at a very specific geographic level, the census provides us with that information. It gathers data on the evolution of bilingualism, enrolments, the percentages of mother tongue populations, language use and populations for which English and French are the first official language spoken.

The first results of the National Household Survey, which were published on May 8, provided various data other than linguistic data. In addition to linguistic data, on June 26, we will be publishing data on language of work, education and level of education, industry, occupation and place of work. Of course, certain geographic challenges are involved in this, and there could potentially be some problems for small geographic regions.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Let me make myself clearer.

Could data that used to be gathered but is no longer being gathered be of use to you?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Once again, that depends on the geographic level.

When we published on May 8, we mentioned that the data were considered to be of good quality for the provinces, the national level and the major metropolitan areas.

Of course, we noted that more than 1,100 small municipalities would not have that information as a result of non-response rates that were too high and related problems.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

All right, thank you.

I want to go back to what our friends from the school boards said about rights holders.

Does Statistics Canada have any data on rights holders and on those who do not exercise their rights? Do you have that in your documents?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

We managed for the first time to measure the parent rights holders phenomenon accurately in the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities in 2006.

In the past, we had essentially used estimates based on census data on mother tongue, since that is one of the three important criteria. However, in the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities, we asked questions on the three factors set out in section 23 of the charter.

We determined from those data, which date back to fall 2006, that 53% of parent rights holders outside Quebec chose to send their children to a minority school, that 15% decided to enrol their children in an immersion program and that the others chose to send their children to an English-language school. We took the survey a little further and asked those parents whether they would have sent their children to a minority school if they had had the choice. Forty percent of those parents said they would have done it had that been possible. Among the reasons given—

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Wait, I am having trouble following you.

You say that 47% of francophone parents who had the right to send their children to French-language schools sent them to English-language schools.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Exactly.