Good morning, members of Parliament and members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Welcome to Winnipeg.
I would first like to thank you for the invitation and for giving me the opportunity to appear on behalf of the Fédération des parents du Manitoba, or FPM, and to provide recommendations to the federal government on early childhood in minority contexts.
The FPM is an organization with a mandate to promote education in French by offering programs, workshops, services, resources and educational materials to children from zero to 12 years of age, to preschool and school groups, to early childhood educators, in-home and in-centre French-language educational child care services, boards of directors of French-language educational child care services, school committees and other parent groups.
We promote the importance of the parent's role as a primary educator in the educational journey and development of their children, regardless of whether they choose to stay at home or use an educational child care service in a centre or at home.
Given the reality of today's families and the large number of exogamous couples, our approaches are inclusive so that all parents, including English-speaking parents, are aware that they have a positive influence on the choice of language for their children.
As a parent organization, our challenges are many. We lack human resources to accomplish everything we would like to; we can't pay our staff adequately, which makes it difficult to recruit and retain qualified staff; we face high rental and operating costs; and on and on.
The FPM's vision is quite simply “For the love of our children and our language”. It's really the passion for our cause that spurs us on every day.
We benefit tremendously from networking and sharing projects with other minority parent organizations across the country, under the auspices and leadership of the Commission nationale des parents francophones, the CNPF. For our organizations, sharing projects and good moves is essential. The more we can develop pan-Canadian projects in early childhood, the better our communities will be served.
I recommend that the federal government increase core funding for early childhood organizations, including parents organizations, so that they can hire and retain qualified staff; enhance the quality of programming and services offered to parents and children; continue the important work of raising awareness of the importance of French-language education from early childhood; develop effective communication mechanisms to attract and retain families entitled to our services and those offered by the community; support exogamous families; contribute to the vitality of the community; and close the funding gap with the inflation rate.
I recommend that the federal government give priority to the intermediary approach by and for communities offered by organizations such as the CNPF. This approach allows us to maximize federal investments to develop pan-Canadian projects based on best practices and successes in other provinces, to share our knowledge, expertise and challenges facing our minority communities and to make the voices of parents heard at the provincial and national levels.
We can't talk about the challenges of early childhood without mentioning the desperate need for spaces in French-language educational child care: about 800 children are on waiting lists for a place in French-language educational child care in our province. The bilateral agreement has just been signed, and we are pleased that the provincial government plans to fund 250 francophone spaces over the next three years, but this funding alone does not meet all our needs.
Given the importance of the early childhood period for the vitality of all communities and, at the individual level, the importance of early childhood for learning the French language, building identity and developing the feeling of community membership, I recommend that the Canadian government invest more in high quality, equitable, accessible and affordable educational child care; that early childhood, given its importance, be taken into account in the next Action Plan for Official Languages; that the importance of preschool education in the educational process be considered in the application of section 23 and that it may enjoy constitutional guarantees.
Thank you very much.