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—