Official Languages Committee on May 23rd, 2013

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

All right.

One of the questions the committee is asking as part of this study concerns capacity. We see real capacity problems in the Toronto region because demand for immersion programs is greater than supply.

What do you think determines these capacity problems in these kinds of situations? Is it a shortage of teachers, material or will on the school board's part?

[Roger Paul]

My impression is that there could be several explanations. If we are talking about supply and demand, there definitely appears to be too much demand relative to available opportunities, that is to say human resources.

I was the executive director of a school board. Consequently, I would not necessarily say there is too much demand relative to financial resources. In a school, there are x students and x dollars allocated to services. I think it is more a question of availability of human resources.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

All right, thank you.

Mr. Galipeau, you have the floor.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

I would like to ask a supplementary question on teaching choices.

With regard to anglophone students attending French-language schools rather than French immersion schools, I can understand that things can go quite well in the classroom. However, the most frustrating problem for the teachers and parents of francophone students does not arise in the classroom but rather in the school yard. Francophone children do not speak English, particularly in the official language minority communities. Then they become friends with an anglophone child. That is easy to do.

Quite naturally, if 10 francophone children and 1 anglophone child are together in the school yard, they will speak the common language, English. That frustrates students' teachers and parents. Then teachers become exasperated and punish the students. If they shout at the students to speak French, that is enough for them not to want to do it.

This issue has always bothered me. We should develop incentives to help these exasperated teachers forget punishment and use incentives. What can we do to prevent the declining use of French in the school yard? Socialization is as important in teaching as what goes on in the classroom.

[Roger Paul]

That question goes back a number of years.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

What is the answer to it?

[Roger Paul]

I am going to give it to you and it may surprise you. The answer lies in the approach. To ask the question is to answer it.

As you mentioned, punishment absolutely does not encourage students to change the way they do things. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, or CMEC, subsidizes various programs, including one that has just been introduced. It is intended for French-language schools, of course, but I believe it could also benefit immersion schools. The aim of the program is to show teachers that the fact that someone has 20 years' teaching experience does not mean that person should not change approaches.

So it all comes down to approach. For example, you have to try to empower students and to speak openly with them. You have to try not to dress down the ones who speak English but rather to reason with them and to do so in front of their peers so that you can explain matters without lecturing them. This is part of a cultural appropriation framework that has just been made public. It is a pan-Canadian document.

As we said at the outset, language learning is intimately related to culture. Language and culture therefore go together. Teachers must stop criticizing students in immersion and French as a first language for their skills and use of the language. Students must be empowered to a much greater degree. As we have seen, the reverse does not work. Use empowerment. Let them speak and talk to each other about how to do things. They can do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Galipeau.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Ms. Hughes, you have the floor.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Paul, when you appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages on November 22, 2011, you recommended to us that there be greater accountability for the transfer payments made by the federal government to the provinces and territories for education, both for French as a second language and for French as a first language.

You also mentioned that in your remarks today, in the section on funding. That is your second recommendation. Do you have any suggestions to make to us on accountability so that we can pass them on to Canadian Heritage and to the government? I would like to have a few more details on what would work best.

[Roger Paul]

Thank you for your question.

I am pleased to note that you see my ideas are consistent from one presentation to the next.

We are relying on a study conducted by the firm of Heenan Blaikie. Mr. Mark Power, Assistant Professor in the Common Law Section of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, tells us that the best way to ensure greater accountability for cash transfers, even with regard to French as a first language and French as a second language, is to go through the people in the best position to do something about it.

We told you a little earlier that, in some instances, school board representatives in several provinces are not even invited to discuss their needs with Canadian Heritage. They go through their ministry of education. What is subsequently said? Feedback is requested in some cases, but it is often not done at that level.

Mr. Power tells us that there is no legal barrier to the involvement of school boards, school commissions and school districts because they are another order of government recognized by section 23. They could do just as well, if not better, and would be more accountable.

Even though education is a provincial jurisdiction, there is nothing to prevent school boards from being involved much more directly and even negotiating directly with the school boards. There are already numerous examples of that. Canadian Heritage is already doing this with the communities and on health.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Could you send us some examples of that?

[Roger Paul]

Yes, absolutely.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

That would be good.

[Roger Paul]

I also want to suggest that you read this article, which runs to about 85 pages. When someone refers to an article, I expect it to be 4 or 5 pages, but this one is 85 pages long. It makes for very interesting bedtime reading.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

We are starting to get used to reading documents with a lot of pages.

Since I married an anglophone, we wondered whether our children would attend French-language schools. My two children went to a French-language primary school. However, my daughter had problems and we asked for help because we were told she was nearly failing. As we could not afford to get help for her, when the time came for her to go to high school, she went to an English-language school. I thought she would do better, but that was not the case. It was really the same situation. I should have left her in French school.

The CBC broadcast a good story not that long ago. This is exactly what it showed. Young people who have learning problems are encouraged to leave the francophone system because it is thought they would do better in the English-language system. I wonder whether that is your case. Do you have that in your schools?

My son is at Laurentian University in Sudbury. He wanted to study in French, but the more specialized the courses are, the less they are offered in French. I think that may also play an important role.

[Roger Paul]

Our third recommendation concerns the continuum. If parents and students in immersion and French as a first language do not see postsecondary opportunities, they will be more reluctant.

I would even go further. Where do we lose our students who leave French-language schools and possibly immersion schools? As was just confirmed for us, we mainly lose them in the transition years. We do a good job with them in junior kindergarten, kindergarten and grade 1. However, immediately after that, the parents in both systems decide that French junior kindergarten, kindergarten or grade 1 were not serious enough when their children were younger because they spent their time playing. Now that school has become a serious matter, they will have to focus on one language.

There are all kinds of falsehoods. I said this earlier. At the risk of repeating myself, when it comes to language learning, why do we have so many problems with learning two languages, when people in other countries learn three, four or five languages? To answer your question directly, the emphasis must absolutely be on services from start to finish, which obviously includes the secondary and postsecondary levels.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

All right.

Thank you, Ms. Hughes.

Mr. Maddix and Mr. Paul, I believe you have to leave. We will continue our meeting with Mr. Nault and Mr. Corbeil for another 30 minutes.

[Roger Paul]

We wanted to apologize at the outset. As the meeting was supposed to start at 3:30 p.m., we thought we had an hour and a half, but that was unfortunately not the case.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That is not a problem. Thank you for coming and testifying before the committee.

Mr. Chisu, you have the floor.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I was listening with great attention and pleasure to the presentation on the statistical side. Before I begin, I would like to point out that Statistics Canada does not have information to measure access to these programs, their capacity, waiting lists or best practices. These are essential elements, because how you interpret the data is influenced by many other factors that affect the conclusions you draw from the statistical analysis.

I'm an engineer, and for that I'm telling you that statistics are very important. But if you don't have all the elements of the problem, you will not be able to resolve the problem. This is making me question something.

We have the students who are learning French, and from the data you presented they are dropping out at a certain age and their level of French is going down, but what about the teachers? What about the statistics on the teachers and how these correlate with the drop-out rates and the maintenance of the French language, and so on? Can you answer this?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

I might ask for the help of my colleague, François Nault, who has been director of the Centre for Education Statistics. But to answer your question, we need to know where these data come from, how they are collected, and who actually asked us to collect that information.

Maybe I can ask my colleague just to mention where these data come from. These are administrative data. In order to better understand what you're mentioning, we would need to do a survey. In this case, obviously we would need to get funding, and have partners who have an interest in collecting that type of information.

[François Nault]

I can only agree with the fact that the more data, the better the analysis. As Jean-Pierre is mentioning, we are working in partnership with the provinces and their ministries of education to get data about students, and also about teachers. It's a real challenge sometimes to get standard data that can be compared from one province to the other, but that's another debate.

The question is one of trying to work together with the province to get all of that information. I don't know. Currently, we share with you what we have. There has been lots of discussion in the past about other data that can help us understand what is going on, but at this point that's what we get from the province.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

But you are sharing these data or getting the data from the provinces. How are you interpreting these data with the objective of having a fully bilingual country? One province is doing it this way, the other province is doing it that way, but you are a statistician, you are a professional, so you need to extract the data, the real data, from the noise, like we are extracting the signal from the noise. If you are seeing only the statistics, this can give you the wrong information and put you on the wrong path. So what I'm asking from you, as a professional in this field, is to guide us and give us some recommendations on how you interpret the statistics and how we can improve, or what we can do to make this country really bilingual.