I think there was a small but influential group of people who made strong arguments that the early French immersion program was having a negative impact on the English program. Students from higher socio-economic backgrounds, more advantaged students, were going into immersion, leaving the English program défavorisé. That argument, not proven, somehow won the day nonetheless.
The problem, of course, is that the longer you delay immersion, the greater the chances that you're going to exacerbate that problem rather than resolve it. That's why in my brief I talked about, and I noticed my Edmonton colleagues also talked about, the importance of putting supports in place so that all students, regardless of their ability levels, will be enticed to enrol, or parents will be enticed to enrol their children. Once they're there, they can have the supports so they can stay.
Unless we do that, I think we're going to be faced with these same criticisms again and again. We'll be going around this again for another five years.