Members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for inviting us to this meeting.
Before I start this presentation, I would like to thank all our partners, especially the representatives from the Conseil des écoles fransaskoises, the CEF, who are here today and who helped us to put together our presentation. I would also like to thank the committee members for giving us their attention.
We would like to talk to you about a part of the reality experienced by the early childhood sector in our Franco-Saskatchewanian community. Multiple challenges affect early childhood services in Saskatchewan. We need only think of the needs of newcomers and exogamous families, who make up a growing proportion of the Franco-Saskatchewanian community; the considerable distances separating our Franco-Saskatchewanian communities; and disparities in services offered in urban centres and rural areas. I could go on.
Established service providers, including early childhood centres, ECCs, family and child support centres, or FCSCs, pre-kindergarten and home child care, are required to explore innovative approaches to address these challenges. As you know, Part VII of the Official Languages Act states that the government is committed to taking positive measures for official language minority communities. This implies that all partners in this community must be involved, in accordance with their mandate, to support the community's development.
Can you imagine just how important it is to support early childhood in our minority communities?
It's important to remember that a waiting list in early childhood services is equivalent to a loss of clientele, not only for ECCs, but also for our schools in Saskatchewan. Finally, it is the community as a whole that loses vitality.
The statistics clearly show that the risks of assimilation are still very real. Language proficiency is the most effective way to counteract assimilation. In October 2016, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages published a report stating that the later children start learning a language, the less likely they are to master it. This confirms what many studies have reported, namely that the critical period for language acquisition is early childhood, from zero to four years of age.
In that same report, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages made clear some dark realities that contribute to this assimilation. It says that, in francophone minority communities, early childhood development is hampered by a lack of resources, a shortage of staff in early childhood centres and a fragmentation of services.
In Saskatchewan, services for young children are funded by the provincial Ministry of Education. For us francophones in a minority situation, such a universal approach that does not take into account our particularities, our actual situation and our specific challenges can in no way adequately meet our needs.
Early childhood services must therefore be part of a continuum, from birth to the end of a child's studies. In order to respond adequately to the needs of children and their parents, many partners need to work together, with an approach that favours the exchange of services and information, all in a climate of trust and true partnership.
As you can imagine, it isn't always easy to establish constructive partnerships in a context of financial scarcity. It's clear—