Perfect. Thank you very much.
I would like to begin by thanking you for inviting us to give you our opinion as part of your study on Canada's roadmap for official languages 2013-2018.
My name is Jean Johnson, and I am president of the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta, the ACFA.
Founded in 1926, the ACFA is the organization that has represented Alberta's francophone community for 90 years. I want to point out that Alberta's francophone community is much older than that. French was the first European language spoken in our territory. It is estimated that the first francophones appeared in what would become Alberta in 1705. It is important to make that historical note since, even today, some people believe francophones arrived in Alberta very recently. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
Our community has a rich and interesting history because it had to overcome many obstacles to its continued existence and development. The creation of the Province of Alberta in 1905 and the erosion and disappearance of language rights vastly exacerbated the assimilation of our many founding francophone communities. That is why the establishment of our first French-language schools in 1984 and the judgement of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Mahé case in 1990 breathed new life into Alberta's francophone community. Today we are proud to say that full-time French-language education is spreading to a growing number of primary and secondary schools, including 40 francophone schools that have been managed by our community through four school boards since 1993. We also have more than 225 French immersion schools across Alberta in addition to our postsecondary education institutions.
However, some major issues still persist. We strongly support the common front of parents, communities and school boards in favour of modernizing and subdividing the Protocol for Agreements for Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction in order to enhance the vitality of the francophone and Acadian communities. Our vision of Alberta's francophone community is inclusive of anyone wishing to live in French in Alberta. We are therefore here on behalf of 238,000 Albertans who constitute our French-language community.
As we look to the next action plan for official languages, I would like to address five points. I could take a look back, but I prefer to look ahead and propose some pathways for our future, some of which are highly innovative.
First, it is becoming necessary to enhance the Canada-community agreements. I do not know whether you are aware, but the funding granted to our community under the Canada-community agreement has remained at the same level since 1991, that is for the past 25 years. Over that time, our community has undergone enormous changes and has diversified, thus creating new needs. According to Statistics Canada, the French-mother-tongue population of Alberta increased by 43% between 1991 and 2011, rising from 56,730 inhabitants to 81,085. We take in many francophones from across the country and around the world. In 2016, we can see that this population is only growing.
Over the years, we have put considerable effort into minimizing our spending. Here are a few examples: we have shared payroll services; spaces and human resources are shared where possible; we use technology, in particular for online training seminars; we hold meetings via videoconference to enhance knowledge and information-sharing, while reducing travel-related costs; we have platforms that we use to share the best resources among organizations; we work together to maximize travel; and many others. However, despite our efforts, the federal government has not taken into account our population growth or increases in the cost of living, which has put enormous pressure on our community network and has prevented us from being competitive—