I'd like to thank the committee members for the opportunity to be here today.
My opening statement will focus more on me, personally. I won't be speaking to the major issues that others have addressed so well.
I'm from an English-only-speaking family in southwestern Ontario. We ran a small dairy farm near Sarnia, which had not a single francophone. From grades 3 to 8, I took 20 minutes of core French a day and, then, in high school as well, from grades 9 to 11. This learning was fundamentally important in my life, changing it forever. These French as a second language classes inspired me, instilling in me a love of the French language. I can remember the teacher showing us pictures of young children enjoying the winter carnival in Quebec City and skating on the Rideau Canal. She told us that the children in the pictures spoke French, which seemed odd to us, since we didn't know anyone who spoke French. Even our teacher was an anglophone.
After grade 11, I spent a year in Casablanca, Morocco, as an exchange student. I attended a French lycée there. After that amazing year, I completed grade 13 back home, in southwestern Ontario.
I then did my university studies in French. I earned a bachelor's degree in science at the University of Ottawa, some 700 kilometres from home. I chose the University of Ottawa because of its bilingual program, which allowed me to study science in French. You could call it a very late French immersion program.
After completing my bachelor's degree at the University of Ottawa, I did a master in science. I then obtained a bachelor of education from Laurentian University, in Sudbury, which is also a long way from my home in Sarnia. The schools in my area did not offer any French-language programs at the time.
After all that, I moved to Manitoba, where I began my career. I have been involved in the province's immersion programming for 22 years now and have been with the Louis Riel School Division for 18 years.
When I was a teacher, I taught physics, natural science, and mathematics at the high school and junior high school levels. As a curriculum consultant at the Bureau de l'éducation française, I helped design natural science curriculum for K-12 students. I have been a principal for 13 years, all of that time spent at immersion-only schools.
In addition, I have a master's degree in school administration from Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface.
Despite growing up in an English-only-speaking family, I earned three of my four university degrees in French.
I care deeply about French-language education, not just on a professional level, but also on a personal one. I have four sons between the ages of 12 and 18. We raise them in both languages, and they have all attended or currently attend DSFM schools.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.