Good morning, everyone.
My name is Karen Pozniak, and I'm the Executive Director of the Saskatchewan branch of Canadian Parents for French.
In 2017, Canadian Parents for French celebrated 40 years as a non-profit organization. We have branches in all the provinces and territories across Canada, and we very much value the relationship we have with the francophone community. We partner a lot across the country, and certainly that is the case here in Saskatchewan, so that's a very important part.
In any programming we do, there is always the cultural component; we feel it's very important that language learning and the cultural component be experienced together.
In 2016, we received the Award of Excellence from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages for the promotion of linguistic duality. Graham Fraser was the commissioner at that time, so it was a lovely end to his 10-year tenure as the commissioner.
We are grateful to Canadian Heritage for its recognition of the need to more fully support French second language organizations for the promotion and support of activities and learning opportunities. The core funding that we've received as an organization will allow us to continue to provide quality programs to parents, students and schools and to be able to meet the increase in demand, because there is an increase in enrolment year after year in Saskatchewan. For more than 10 years now, we've had a steady increase of French immersion students, and in intensive core and enriched core students as well, and late immersion has been added. That's great. We're able to do that with the increase in funding.
Many parents are continuing to put their children in the programs, and they appreciate and value the fact that Canada is officially bilingual. They want to give their children this opportunity, not just to be bilingual but multilingual, because of course we are a home to new Canadians from all over the world, so it is very important to recognize the multilingual aspect of Canada within a bilingual Canada.
Our challenge comes from that growth. It is about having qualified French language teachers to be able to meet that demand. It's really great to see in the action plan on page 44 that more than $31 million will be provided to recruit more immersion and French second language teachers, as it is at a crisis level in many parts of Canada. Some of the programs are starting to suffer because there aren't enough teachers.
I think we're at a tipping point in Saskatchewan as well, where there aren't enough qualified teachers. For example, if someone goes on maternity leave, the school may be bringing in retired teachers to be able to cover off the absence, or replacements are not available for teachers to leave for professional development or to participate more fully in organizations such as Canadian Parents for French by going to a conference where they'll be able to gain more capacity and more knowledge and bring home those organizational skills to do more programming as a president, let's say, of the organization. It's a challenge for them to have replacements. In many areas, it is becoming challenging.
I'm willing to answer any question that you have, but I would like to know where we're at and what strategies we're putting in place so that we'll have enough teachers. School boards will have to make tough decisions, and because we're all slaves to budgets, they will perhaps decrease the amount of available programming in some of the schools.
We have this wonderful opportunity for so many young people to learn the language and to be functionally bilingual, which is what we want, but I think that if we're not careful, that's going to deteriorate.
There's an enthusiasm for it, and I think newcomers to Canada know we are officially bilingual. More and more of them, even though they might not know English, are putting their children in French immersion because they understand how language learning works. Before, they were often counselled out of French and told to just put their children in English, but now they're counselled into taking French and keeping their mother tongue language at home. They will also learn English in the school system, and also in society.
That's the situation we are faced with. Since it takes several years to create a qualified teacher, it's a priority.
Thank you so much.