Official Languages Committee on March 1st, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3), we are conducting a study on access to early childhood services in the minority language.

Before we move to the study, I would like to take a few moments to pay our sincere respects to Senator Claudette Tardif. We are in Edmonton, her home city. Ms. Tardif is a trailblazer for the francophonie across the country, but particularly in the west. She was a senator in the Senate of Canada for about 13 years. The goal of this meeting is to pay tribute to her.

For approximately 10 years, Ms. Tardif was the president of the Canada-France Interparliamentary Association. Ms. Tardif and the French language are inextricably linked. I absolutely wanted our record to show the esteem in which we hold this great Canadian, through whom the French language shines forth from coast to coast.

Ms. Tardif, may we invite you to say a few words?

[Claudette Tardif, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, and all members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages who are here in my province, first let me thank you for your kind words. I am very proud to welcome you to Edmonton; I am also very pleased that you are here to listen to people from the Franco-Albertan community who put so much energy and determination into furthering the progress of the French fact in Alberta.

As you rightly said, the Standing Committee on Official Languages is close to my heart. I was a member of the committee since I was appointed to the Senate in 2005 and I have worked in the area for many years. Our Canadian identity and the value that we attach to bilingualism and our to country's linguistic duality are very dear to me. Let me wish you a very successful meeting.

Thank you very much for the appreciation you are showing me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Ms. Tardif, thank you very much for everything you have done and for all that you will continue to do.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Ms. Tardif, where are you with the consultations? You are still very involved with this matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

This morning, we are pleased to welcome the following witnesses: as an individual, we have Dolorèse Nolette, Assistant Dean and Director of the Centre collégial de l'Alberta, Campus Saint-Jean; Albert Nolette. from the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta; Nathalie Lachance, from the Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord; Marie Commance-Shulko, from Edmonton Public Schools; Cynthia Huard, president of the Institut Guy-Lacombe de la famille; Gillian Anderson, president of the Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta; and finally, Sarah Lessard, from the Société de la petite enfance et de la famille du Sud de l'Alberta.

Good morning, and welcome to you all.

We want to hear all your presentations, but we have to keep a little time for the questions that members may ask or the comments they may make. So you each have five minutes for your remarks, and I will be quite strict about it.

Ms. Nolette, the floor is yours.

[Dolorèse Nolette, Assistant Dean and Director, Centre collégial de l'Alberta, Campus Saint-Jean, As an Individual]

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for having us and for your concern for not only the francophonie in Alberta, but also for the specific issue of early childhood.

My name is Dolorèse Nolette, and I am one of the assistant deans of the Campus Saint-Jean. I hold the position of Director of the Centre collégial de l'Alberta, which provides technical training in parallel to the academic education at the Campus Saint-Jean. The centre is in its first years of development.

The centre has been offering courses since September 2015. We currently offer two programs: business administration and tourism management, both two years in duration.

We have planned courses that are almost ready, including two levels of early childhood training required by the Alberta government for anyone wishing to work in various early childhood services. These courses, Early Learning and Child Care, Level 2, and Early Learning and Child Care, Supervisor Level, are about to be approved by the Alberta government's Ministry of Advanced Education. We hope to be launching Level 2, a certificate program, in September 2018.

Because of the needs of the francophone community and the urgency in providing qualified staff ready to work in all early childhood services, we are working with the Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta to offer these courses on an extracurricular basis in order to meet the immediate needs. We also want to help organizations or institutions to obtain the accreditation and recognition they need.

Are you going to tell me how much time I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

You are halfway through.

[Dolorèse Nolette]

Great. I want to rise to your challenge!

We are in the process of developing an educational assistant program, with a specialization in phonological development and articulation—speech therapy assistant, that is. This kind of employee can help in early childhood. With the way in which systems are evolving in Alberta, we need employees of this kind. You can ask me about it, if it is an area that interests you.

I am now going to talk about the specific challenges we face.

You have to understand that our centre is a college-level institution, the Campus Saint-Jean, established inside the University of Alberta, a research university. We are always trying to open doors and to evolve the systems and the ways of thinking of the people from the larger institution. This is in order to provide college-level education in French and meet the needs of Alberta francophones.

As for the early childhood education program and its development, we are in the process of establishing a program for which the Alberta government tells us it has no new funds at the moment. Consequently, we are going to use the funds we will be given under the Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages to get the program up and running as we wait for better economic times in Alberta. We will then be able to apply for provincial government funding.

I believe that the Government of Alberta has a role to play. It must not simply rely on the official language communities establishing early childhood services.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much for your presentation, Ms. Nolette.

The floor now goes to Albert Nolette.

First, Mr. Nolette, the committee members and I would like to thank you sincerely for your active participation in organizing the day.

Please go ahead.

[Albert Nolette, Vice-President, Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I must thank you for your visit to the west, and particularly to Alberta, so that you can meet with our communities. I also must thank you for inviting us to testify as part of your study on access to early childhood services in the minority language.

My name is Albert Nolette. I am Xavier's dad. He is 22 months old, and he will shortly be joined by another child. So I have very personal reasons for becoming involved with the area of early childhood. I am the vice-president of the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta, the ACFA.

Let me give you an overview of the ACFA. Our mission is to defend the interests of the francophone community in Alberta, to further their rights and to enhance their vitality. We represent the 268,640 Albertans who speak French, and we are their voice on issues that have an impact on the francophonie in Alberta.

In our initiatives and our actions, we are supported by several dozen institutions and organizations that work in close cooperation with us to ensure the vitality of the French language in Edmonton, Calgary, Fort McMurray, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Jasper, Canmore, St-Isidore, Bonnyville, Camrose, Grande Prairie, as well as other communities. In Alberta, we are privileged to watch a francophonie that is dynamic, diverse, flourishing, and rooted in a rich history.

According to Statistics Canada, the population of those with French as their mother tongue has grown by 28.9% in the last 10 years and by 55.5% in the last 25 years. Today, the number of those with French as their mother tongue stands at 88,220. Many francophones from all around the country, and from all around the world, come to settle here.

However, the rapid growth of our community, the fact that 26% of them are immigrants, and the increase in the number of interlinguistic families, bring with them major demographic changes, which give rise to a significant need to adapt services.

More than ever, early childhood is considered a priority for our community; we have actually made it a strategic objective in our community development framework for 2015-2020.

In a minority setting, you will agree that official language communities cannot rely only on the government to develop programs and services tailored to the linguistic and cultural realities in its area. Mostly, they have to create them themselves. However, many services provided directly to the public, early childhood services being a good example, are provided at provincial level by governments that do not always have any obligations to the minority, as is the case in Alberta. Our communities, therefore, are not always consulted or considered when programs are being developed. So the programs designed to meet the needs of the population in general are not always the most appropriate, the most effective, or the most efficient for our communities.

When we talk about early childhood services in minority communities, the objective is to complement interlinguistic francophone homes in order to make sure that the French language and the identity-building of our youngest are transferred. This additional, absolutely necessary mandate is often overlooked by our government. So it requires an additional, essential effort on the part of our community leaders working in the sector.

In that sense, it is imperative for the federal government to play a key role in funding and for it to finally define a mechanism that allows the language clauses to be reflected in federal-provincial transfers. It must make sure that funding allocated to minority language communities is invested in services that our communities design specifically for themselves. Those services have to adequately meet our needs, to follow a logical path that increases the capacity of the community and to actually be accessible to those who speak French.

Another option would be to interact directly with our communities on these issues, as is done in other areas of development, such as health, for example.

It is with great respect that we deliver these findings to you, and we hope that they will lead to important and beneficial changes that could preserve the vitality of Alberta's French-language community.

Thank you for your attention, and I am available to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nolette.

We will now continue with Ms. Lachance.

Ms. Lachance, we're listening.

[Nathalie Lachance, President, Conseil Scolaire Centre-Nord]

Good morning.

I would like to thank the Committee for meeting with us today to take stock of one of the most important issues in the development of Alberta's French-language communities: early childhood. My name is Nathalie Lachance, and I am president of the Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord.

I would also like to recognize that we are in Treaty No. 6 territory, as well in Métis Nation of Alberta territory.

We are one of the province's four French-language school boards; close to 3,400 students attend our 19 schools. The development of French-language schools is the logical result of the development of structures and programs for early childhood. This period in a child's life is not only critical to their development, it also represents a key interval for them to learn and retain the French language. Moreover, this period plays an essential role in building the child's identity and their sense of community belonging. This is why school boards have adopted policies that aim to support programs such as preschool education in their schools.

We want to inform you of three challenges which seem to be recurrent in the delivery of early childhood services to communities served by our school board.

First, there is no guaranteed funding to ensure the stability and the harmonization of service delivery models for early childhood. In our province, the existence of a lot of French-language early childhood services is a near miracle. These services are the result of the commitment and goodwill of volunteer parents, the sponsorship of projects by associations that often have insufficient resources, and support from schools.

French-language schools are often gathering places for francophone families. These centres relay both language and culture to our youth, and organize activities around building their identity. It then seems normal to expect these minority schools to be a lever for the delivery of early childhood services. In some of our communities, there is pressure to include preschool programs—the fate of which is often uncertain—in the French-language education systems. The end result is a fragmented service delivery model. For example, in some cases, committees made up of parents use our schools' classrooms to set up preschools, whereas, in other cases, it is up to the school boards to manage the delivery of the preschool program. The fragility of the services is putting children at risk before they begin their schooling.

Second, we deplore the lack of appropriate spaces. We regularly meet with provincial government officials to bring attention to our enormous infrastructure deficit. You can imagine that adding preschools and daycares to our schools is challenging in terms of space. Unlike all the province's English-speaking families, French-speaking families only have access to a few services. Francophone parents work and their increasing needs for early childhood services—in French—represent a challenge with regard to accessibility and proximity. In some rural communities, spaces are available, but there is a lack of personnel, whereas, in urban communities, there are not enough spaces to meet the demand. Families frequently see their identity and culture fade away when they cannot easily access affordable—something of concern to young families—and quality services offered in French.

French-language schools often face demand for spaces. Since spaces reserved for early childhood education in schools are generally more affordable, it becomes pragmatic, from an organizational point of view, and beneficial to include early childhood spaces in French-language schools. The benefit for parents transcends the aspects of identity building and consolidating French-language services. However, this solution promises equally uncertain results, because the spaces dedicated to early childhood education programs are rare, and cannot be guaranteed long term.

The increase in enrolment in many of our schools adds a level of fragility to the use of spaces for early childhood education. We face challenges related to the spaces needed for our pupils' schooling, and this leads to the troubling solution of having to ask daycare services to leave our schools—and this breaks our hearts. You can understand what repercussions this will have later on.

We measure the scope of the challenge related to the spaces and access to early childhood services every year, and preschoolers are only a segment of the children who are signed up for kindergarten in our schools. If we had more spaces reserved for early childhood programs, we could prepare our French-language schools to welcome larger cohorts of children.

The third challenge is the shortage of qualified personnel to meet our needs. The school boards are able to partly support the programs thanks to funding allocated in two specific areas: francization and support for special needs. However, these support programs only affect a portion of preschoolers. Consequently, the money available to support the school boards' early childhood education programs does not necessarily provide complete funding for the programs.

Recruiting qualified teachers to deliver the programs is as much of a challenge as retaining them. Furthermore, we are are also faced with a shortage of qualified personnel in fields such as speech therapy and occupational therapy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Ms. Lachance.

We are going to continue with Ms. Commance-Shulko.

Ms. Commance-Shulko, please go ahead.

[Marie Commance-Shulko, French Immersion Consultant, Edmonton Public School Board]

Good morning.

My name is Marie Commance-Shulko and I will give my presentation in English. Is that all right with you?

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

That's no problem.

[Marie Commance-Shulko]

It's an honour and a privilege to be here today. Edmonton Public Schools has a long history of supporting second language programs for our students, our parents, and our teachers.

With Edmonton Public Schools, I work at the Institute for Innovation in Second Language Education, more affectionately called IISLE. I left some brochures with Christine and she's going to let you know what can happen with them. The brochures tell you about the services we provide for all the students in Edmonton Public Schools who are in the French immersion program.

Our language education history of French immersion began in 1974. Just to give you a little context, we currently have 17 French immersion schools in Edmonton Public Schools, which go from kindergarten through to grade 12, and we have 4,027 students in our program. At the kindergarten level, we have 458 students enrolled this year; and in grade 1, we have 455 students. We have policies and regulations about teaching and learning French immersion in a French immersion program.

For kindergarten and grade 1, 100% of the program is in French, until January of grade 2, when English language arts are introduced. Other than that, all subjects are taught in French by our teachers. The students who come to Edmonton Public Schools in kindergarten and grade 1, because that's when they can start, have had virtually no previous experience with the language. They come from homes where just English is spoken; they come from homes where French may be spoken a bit of the time; and more and more, many of our students are coming from allophone homes where neither French nor English is spoken.

I've also shared with Christine a quality second language programming tool that we have created for our teachers and our schools. It was written for administrators, parents, and teachers, to be a reflective tool on how they can examine and discuss different aspects of French immersion programming.

Edmonton Public Schools is very committed to inclusion, and by “inclusion” I mean that, for those 458 students who are beginning in kindergarten this year, we want to see all the students there 13 years from now when they graduate from grade 12. There has been a history in the past, and it's not personally one of our Edmonton Public Schools, of counselling students out of the program when they encounter difficulty. All our students are diverse learners, and we need to find the best practices and resources to support them in their learning.

We are working very hard at providing effective educational practices for kindergarten and grade 1 students, and we are going about adapting a lot of the resources that we use to a French immersion context. Some of those include practices such as guided reading and guided math, offering that in French, and literacy and math interventions.

Among the challenge we face in early childhood is the persistent myth that French is only for certain students. We, too, lack a number of paraprofessionals who speak French and who can support students at the early age. There's also a lack of age- and language-appropriate resources. We also find that there's a high cost and long travel times for French immersion students on the school bus as they get to the different schools in our board. As well, there is a lack of preschool places in French. A lot of our schools would like to offer French preschool, but they can't.

In terms of access in early childhood, one of the things we would like to see is access to bilingual reading specialists, psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists so that they may work in French with our young students. We would also like to have some access to educational assistants who speak French. It currently is rare to find an educational assistant in a school who can speak French. Librarians would be very important for us to see in French, and access to quality resources that are age-appropriate for French immersion students. By that I mean resources that are language-appropriate but also not considered too babyish for them.

We would like access to low-cost, timely, reliable transportation to our French immersion schools. As I said, it would be great to have more preschools where our students can begin to learn the language at an even younger age.

In support for us, we would like to see more research on best practices for teaching our early learners in French immersion; funding and opportunities for educators, in addition to teachers, and paraprofessionals to learn French; more advocating at the provincial level for adequate funding for French immersion programs, including transportation; and certainly the continuation of the official languages in education program.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you very much, Marie.

We will continue with Ms. Huard.

Ms. Huard, the floor is yours.

[Cynthia Huard, President, Institut Guy-Lacombe de la famille]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the members of the committee for being here today.

My name is Cynthia Huard and I am the president of the Institut Guy-Lacombe de la famille. I am also the mother of three girls, who are one, three and five years old.

To lighten my presentation, I will use the acronym IGLF to designate the Institute. That's what we use in the community. Our mission is to help families in Alberta make the most of their knowledge, skills and abilities in French in order to achieve wellness. On a daily basis, we are referred to as a parental support centre, and we work directly with children aged zero to five, as well as with their parents. We are also working with school-aged children, but for today, I will focus on the early childhood services we provide.

Our mandate is to provide families with support that targets their growth, be it personal, social, cultural, identity-related or linguistic. We also provide training in parenting skills. We have a resource centre and a wonderful francophone library. We are working to integrate and reintegrate French in the home in terms of identity and culture. We are also doing some significant work on developing the sense of belonging, and promoting mental and physical health. We work in all these areas on a daily basis.

Since we are now dealing with the mandate issue, let me take this opportunity to highlight some facts. Unlike our anglophone counterparts at the Parent Link Centres, which have more than 50 centres across the province, we only have two parent support centres to work with francophone families. Our organization has a dual mandate. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Like all the Parent Link Centres, we need to provide support and resources to families with children who are five and under. So we are talking about a wide range of programs, activities, parenting skills workshops, child development questionnaires, and so on. We work in many areas.

However, our linguistic situation as a minority group also makes us work hard to transmit the culture and language, and to develop a sense of belonging to the francophone culture. We therefore have a dual mandate. However, the second part of the mandate—the transmission of language and culture—is not officially recognized by the provincial government. We receive no additional funding for this second mandate. In addition, the grant we receive from the Ministry of Children's Services at the provincial level is pretty much the same as for all other English-language parent support centres.

Furthermore, since our organization was recognized as a parental support centre by the provincial government, the government has put in place a moratorium on the creation of such centres. For 10 years, the province has created no new parental support centres. It goes without saying that this moratorium hinders the expansion of our services. As you know—Mr. Nolette talked about it—the francophone population is growing in Alberta. In 10 years, many things have changed and the needs are not what they used to be.

For your information, last year, the IGLF provided services to approximately 2,500 individual participants. This year, we hope to see this figure exceed the 3,000 mark. While we are very proud of those numbers, we know that, unfortunately, we are reaching only a minority of francophone children in Edmonton and the neighbouring communities. We do not want to leave out other families, but unfortunately, for lack of resources, both financial and human, we cannot provide them with the high-quality services they deserve.

Anglophone families all have a parental support centre nearby. There are in fact Parent Link Centres in almost every ward in Edmonton. In contrast, francophone families only have access to two centres in the entire province, one in Edmonton and the other in Calgary. The IGLF hopes to expand in the capital itself to reach out to those francophone families, across the city of Edmonton. Unfortunately, many of them are penalized because our services are centralized in one single centre.

I would also like to add that the IGLF is really at the heart of the community, as we work hand in hand with schools and daycares. We want to become the reference of choice for parents who do not know where to turn. Through our parenting workshops, parents feel supported and listened to, and we find that those workshops have a direct impact on children.

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Your time is up.

[Cynthia Huard]

I provided the committee with my brief. I had other points to make, but I imagine the message—

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

You may be able to do that by answering questions from members of the committee.

[Cynthia Huard]

Yes, certainly. I am willing to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

We'll continue with Ms. Anderson.

[Gillian Anderson, President, Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta]

I will try to proceed quickly because my speech is quite long.

Good morning, my name is Gillian Anderson, and I am the president of the Fédération des parents francophones de l’Alberta, FPFA. I have been on the board of directors for seven years and was elected president last November.

On behalf of our federation, thank you for travelling to Alberta. This helps us present our reality and have an open dialogue with you. We are very grateful for the time you have given us to personally discuss this critical issue for the parents we represent.

My four-part presentation is meant to be simple and clear.

First, I will talk about the state of French-language transmission in Alberta. Second, I will describe the needs for child care services to counter linguistic assimilation. Third, I will talk about the federal government's role in early childhood and the province's approach to reducing child care costs for some families and targeted child care centres, but not all. Finally, I will explain why our federation does not believe that this Alberta model serves the francophone community well. Thanks to our motivation to develop an entrepreneurial model, we added 93 francophone daycare spaces in the last year.

So let's start with the acquisition and transmission of French. Many studies show that the critical age for language acquisition in children is between zero and four years old. In October 2016, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages published a report entitled “Early Childhood: Fostering the Vitality of Francophone Minority Communities”. This report concluded that the longer a child waits to learn a language, the less likely they are to master it. In order for French-speaking children to learn and master French, they must first have access to high-quality early childhood services, and the sooner the better.

Access to parental support centres—there are two in French in Alberta—French-language junior kindergarten programs and child care services can help counter the influence of a predominantly anglophone environment by providing a more balanced English-French environment.

In Alberta, the rate of transmission of the French language from parents to their children is a concern. In fact, the rate of the transmission of French language is lower here than the national average. More specifically, when the mother tongue of both parents is French, only 74% of their children will speak French, compared to the national average of 90%. When only the mother speaks French, the transmission rate is 28%, compared to 40% nationally. Finally, when only the father speaks French, the transmission rate of French drops to 13%, compared to 29% at the national level.

I will now talk about the need for French-language child care. The 2011 census indicates that in Alberta, 2,950 students aged zero to four had at least one francophone parent. A 2014 study by Statistics Canada found that in Alberta, 40% of parents wanted to enrol their child in child care. This means that the real need would be 1,180 spaces in francophone daycare in the province.

In 2016, we conducted our own study on child care services. The study estimated the number of francophone child care spaces at 513. There are therefore 660 places missing. In addition, we found that the lack of child care spaces was closely linked to the lack of expertise to encourage the opening of new daycare centres, as well as a lack of human resources to effectively manage existing services. For example, French-language daycare services are mostly run by parent volunteer organizations that do not always have the time, energy or expertise to properly operate those services and ensure their sustainability.

In addition, our study prompted us to develop a centralized support model, based on the following 10 essential services to facilitate the creation of child care spaces: registration management; human resources; proper accounting; regulations; accreditation; governance; programming; communications; subsidies; and development.

One of those 10 services, in particular, is very innovative. We have created a bank of replacements available to beneficiaries of FPFA services. In other words, daycares and parents’ associations that pay the costs of those services have access to our bank of replacements. The child care workforce is problematic across the country and has a high turnover rate. Our bank of replacements ensures continuity in the provision of services, both on big sites and smaller ones. Now, when an employee is absent or sick or resigns, the federation has its bank of employees ready and able to work.

I will now move to the Alberta model of child care support. First, we are grateful for the federal government’s commitment and for its significant financial contribution to the provinces in support of early childhood. We recognize that each province has a responsibility to adopt its own approach in this rapidly changing issue. Our provincial Ministry of Children's Services advocates a daycare model at $25 a day, while the average is $55 a day for child care.

When Alberta launched its model in early 2017, it received seven applications for French-language projects, but none were selected. In the second call for tenders, in January 2018—

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Your time is up, Ms. Anderson.