Yes. As far as early childhood is concerned, four out of five children are assimilated.
The answer lies in a number of things. For instance, one solution would be setting up day cares for children in the zero to five age group wherever there is a French-language school in the province. We believe that's very important, and it's what we, at the Fédération des parents francophones, have really been working on in recent years, in conjunction with our network.
The challenge we keep coming up against is the lack of early childhood educators, infrastructure and start-up capacity in the community. Right now, we are working with the school board to set up a day care in Nanaimo. We applied for funding to install mobile structures on the school grounds. It's very resource-intensive to install the structures, purchase the equipment and start up the service.
We don't have the capacity to carry out five of these projects a year, but five or six a year are what's needed. We want to build a small team dedicated to working on these types of projects because we really need day cares. We have 20 or so in the province, but we have about 40 communities with French-language schools, so this is extremely important.
Eighty-seven per cent of the families whose children we serve are exogamous, so parents with small children have a really hard time incorporating francophone culture into a child's environment in early childhood. Day cares, and all early childhood services really, play a huge role in serving these children well before they turn five and go to school.
Investing in services for children zero to five years of age is vital, and that includes day cares. It will also put information in the hands of parents so that, right from birth, they can use it to guide their lifestyle choices and decision-making. I'm talking about things like choosing a French-language day care and school, deciding to speak to their children in French, taking part in artistic and cultural activities and attending events put on by local francophone groups.
At the end of the day, that's the way to stop assimilation.