Third, the CSF calls on the committee to recommend amendments to the act expressly requiring Statistics Canada to enumerate all rights-holders under section 23 of the charter.Furthermore, that should be done by means of the short-form census questionnaire, which is sent out to 100% of the population.
The problem is unfortunately very simple. The CSF—as well as the province, which has written a letter in support of our request—cannot adequately plan capital investments because it doesn't have access to reliable and relevant data on the number of potential students for its schools. It is not enough to know how many eligible students reside in each municipality; we also need to know where children live in each catchment area. That would give us the total number of our students and the where our schools should be located.
In our court action against the Government of British Columbia, the CSF suffered the consequences of Statistics Canada's inability to enumerate all the children eligible to attend the board's schools. The judge was unable to decide between the two expert witnesses regarding statistics. She therefore decided to use the results of the 2011 census to determine the potential demand for a French-language school. However, that census had enumerated only children who had one parent whose first language learned and still understood was French. Those figures were obviously far lower than the actual number of francophone students.
This deficiency in the census is particularly problematic in British Columbia due to the trend toward exogamy, as a result of which the language spoken in the home is generally the language spoken by everyone, English.
I am an example of this. I believe my French is quite good, as is that of my colleague. Our spouses, on the other hand, are anglophone, and we therefore speak English at home unless the children don't want their fathers to understand. Consequently, in view of the lack of action on this issue to date, it is important, indeed essential, that Statistics Canada be asked to amend the census form in order to represent all our rights-holders.