Since I live in a province and in a minority community, I want to say that English is a necessary evil. People are required to take English courses. Depending on the system, when immigrants arrive in Manitoba and are eligible for services, they are taken in, as it were, by a francophone organization for settlement purposes, but they have to go through two organizations.
There is the entry program, which gives orientation sessions over four weeks in intensive English. Then they are eligible for the language assessment test in order to meet the standard, or benchmark, so they can learn English based on their level and the direction they subsequently want to take.
That is not the case for French. It is optional and not important since the Université de Saint-Boniface receives funding to offer French courses to newcomers up to a certain level. However, the number of spaces is very limited. The number of newcomers who may benefit from the program is limited.
If immigrants are allophones, which is the case of the Syrian refugees, they are offered French literacy programs so they can learn English or pursue any direction they want in life. Unfortunately, they are told to take English so they can get a job, have a career, and so on. In essence, French is neglected.
That effort even goes so far as to influence parents' decision whether to register their children at a French-language school. They come here with the preconceived notion that, if their children go to a francophone school, they will never learn English. The francophone settlement services and the people in the field constantly explain to them that children have an ability to learn and adapt and that, at some point, they will "catch" English. They also explain to them that giving their children or any person a chance to be bilingual will set them up for success in all fields.