Evidence of meeting #121 for Official Languages in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was schools.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal René Arseneault
That's a very good point. I'll leave you with that, because I took more than the time allowed to ask my questions.
Thank you, Mr. Laberge, Ms. Kropielnicki and Ms. Maisonneuve. If you have any additional information that you didn't have time to share with the committee, please don't hesitate to send it in writing to the clerk, who will forward it to all committee members.
We will now take a break to bring in our next panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal René Arseneault
I call the meeting back to order.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(f) and the motion passed by the committee on April 29, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of the minority-language education continuum.
I would like to welcome the witnesses who will be with us for this second hour. We have one of our regulars, Stéphanie Chouinard, associate professor, who is appearing by video conference as an individual. We have with us in the room Mr. Bourgeois, researcher, also appearing as an individual.
Mr. Bourgeois, I think this is your first time at the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Welcome.
You each have five minutes for your presentation. We're very strict on timekeeping because it gives us more time for questions. This means I have the difficult task of stopping anyone who goes over their time. We'll start with Mr. Bourgeois for the first five minutes.
Go ahead, Mr. Bourgeois.
Daniel Bourgeois Researcher, As an Individual
Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation.
Do we really know if the official languages policy is successful? If so, why is it successful, and how successful is it? Can we prove it?
What if we could prove that the presence of a school could guarantee that an official-language minority community could survive 80 years and that the absence of a school would lead to its disappearance in 40 years? Would we fund early childhood development and employability differently if we knew that the former contributed 10 times more than the latter to OLMC vitality? If we could prove that education is the most important tool to ensure vitality, should we not fund it adequately before spending elsewhere? If so, would parliamentarians accept modifying public spending accordingly? Would governments stand firm against vested-interest groups?
I don't know, but it behooves parliamentarians to assess the results of public policies, programs and investments in official languages. This is required to enhance effectiveness and efficiency, as well as democratic accountability.
To perform such an assessment, we must first set precise ends to achieve. Are they equality, equivalence, progression and vitality? They've all been used, and they all pose challenges.
I propose sustainability. It is more aspirational and measurable, and it is better aligned with the theory of being, which best reflects OLMC reality. Regardless of which end is chosen, we must identify all potential interventions and especially determine the relative importance of each one. Education and early childhood development are the sectors most worthy of public support. They should thus be funded accordingly. This core business presently receives most of the funds on official languages, but perhaps it should be funded even more and, if required, at the expense of other sectors.
After identifying specific ends and the best means to such ends, we must adopt a coherent national tripartite strategic plan in minority education—a plan to ensure that minority school boards achieve their double mandate; a plan that is strategic, which means that evidence-based priorities come first; a plan that is coherent, so investments are set to maximize results; a plan that integrates and synergizes federal, provincial, territorial and community actions; a plan that frames actions longer than five years; and a plan that assesses and updates the means. Many such plans already exist, so there's no need to start from scratch. However, they must be revised in light of the long-term ends and through the lens of the minority.
Since your mandate is to study the first-language education continuum in OLMCs and report your findings and your recommendations to the House, I tried to put myself in your shoes. I wrote my thoughts as findings and recommendations for your consideration.
In addition to the adoption and full implementation of a coherent national minority language education plan, I submit five additional recommendations: Education must be recognized and prioritized as the most important public service in support of the intergenerational transmission of language and culture. Minority families must be supported in their efforts to transmit the language and culture to their children, notably during early childhood and the school years. Minority early childhood centres and day cares must be supported in a manner proportional to their importance, similar to our support for minority schools. Minority school boards must be supported and assessed in their efforts to enhance students' identity construction and in their community sustainability. Finally, minority school boards must be granted the exclusive educational powers indicated by section 23 and be supported to ensure that they are fully implemented.
In short, if we don't ensure the success of the minority language education and early childhood systems—the core business—all other actions will be for naught.
Thank you for your attention. I will try my best to answer your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal René Arseneault
Thank you, Mr. Bourgeois.
Ms. Chouinard, you have the floor for five minutes.
Stéphanie Chouinard Associate Professor, As an Individual
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for welcoming me once again today to talk about the minority-language education continuum.
My remarks today can be summed up in a single sentence: As long as the education continuum is not complete and access to education of equal quality, managed by and for our communities, is unavailable, the communities' vitality will remain precarious.
This education continuum is now explicitly mentioned in the Official Languages Act, but even before that progress was made, it was already clear that, until all the pieces of the puzzle—from early childhood to post-secondary education—were in place, troubling gaps would continue to emerge in primary and secondary education, even though they are protected by the charter.
Let me start at the beginning, which is early childhood.
In the first direct attack on the vitality of our communities in education, for every available space in a francophone day care centre outside Quebec, four other children remain without a space and will likely end up in an English-language day care centre. Unless their families—many of whom are exogamous, admittedly—make Herculean efforts, those four children will not start kindergarten with the same language and cultural skills as the children enrolled in francophone day care centres. So the additional burden of teaching young francophones French is being placed on the shoulders of our elementary schools, which already have a dual mandate to meet the objectives of the provincial curriculum and act as cultural carriers in a minority situation. This is an unfairly onerous task, and it is all the more difficult given that our schools are experiencing a profound shortage of qualified personnel, which will take me to the other end of the continuum in a moment.
Even though we worked hard to have the new Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act include a protection for funding dedicated to official language minority communities, it doesn't go far enough. Language clauses are absolutely necessary to ensure that the provinces invest a fair share of federal funding to serve our communities. Consultations with the communities must also be part of the negotiations of these agreements, to ensure that their priorities are taken into account. The history of funding for official language education programs has long shown us that the provinces cannot be trusted to spend the money transferred to them where it should be spent and in a way that meets the needs of the community. It would be naive, to use a euphemism, to expect them to act differently in early childhood.
Let's now move on to the fact that the education continuum is not complete in post-secondary education. This situation is obviously contributing to the staff shortage in our schools, jeopardizing the quality of education provided there. But it gets worse. Students who don't have an option to continue their post-secondary education in French near them—within a radius of about 80 kilometres, according to studies—desert French-language schools starting in seventh grade, and that phenomenon accelerates until the last years of high school in favour of majority-language schools. A 2016 study by the now-defunct Office of the French Language Services Commissioner of Ontario shows that, in some regions with a very small minority, such as southern Ontario, nearly two thirds of students enrolled in minority-language schools will have left the francophone system in favour of anglophone schools before they graduate from high school.
Why the exodus? Students—and their parents—want to make sure they have a high enough level of English to be able to attend college or university in that language. To put it more clearly, the lack of post-secondary education options in French is draining our high schools. This phenomenon is all the more alarming since we know that an individual's identity is solidified during adolescence and young adulthood. This means that we are losing these young people to English-language schools at the very time when all the identity-building work that has been done since early childhood is starting to pay off.
I recently spoke to you about the challenges specific to francophone minority post-secondary institutions and to research, so I won't dwell on that subject today, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me, of course.
In conclusion, the only hope for francophones in minority situations to survive is the completion of the education continuum. Concrete action toward that goal is long overdue. I hope my remarks have helped inform the scope of the work to be done.
Thank you, and I look forward to further discussion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal René Arseneault
Thank you, Ms. Chouinard. That was very clear.
We will begin the first round of questions with six minutes for each of the political parties. We'll start with the Conservatives.
Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for six minutes.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here. Their comments are very interesting.
Ms. Chouinard and Mr. Bourgeois, I get the impression that we are currently experiencing a paradox in Canada. Immersion schools are overwhelmed by demand. Parents have to line up for 24 hours to enrol their children in immersion schools, particularly in western Canada. We have seen that. My sister actually taught in an immersion school. The situation is the opposite of that in francophone school boards, which are almost systemically underfunded and unable to meet needs.
In addition, as you mentioned, Ms. Chouinard, if children are educated in French starting in kindergarten, perhaps one day they will want to teach in French, and the wheel will continue to turn. Do you see a paradox there?
My other question, related to the first one, is about funding. Obviously, it's not just a matter of money. It's also a matter of identity. However, we've heard a number of times in the past that the federal government was sending funds to the provinces under agreements, but that accountability wasn't there. So sometimes the funds sent by the federal government to the provinces to support the education continuum aren't being allocated by the provinces in accordance with the terms of the agreement, or the federal government isn't able to verify that they really are.
Mr. Bourgeois, do you see accountability as a real problem in these agreements?
Researcher, As an Individual
I'm not sure I understood your question about the paradox between immersion schools and francophone schools. If you ask it again, I may be able to answer it with more wisdom.
When it comes to accountability, the Constitution says that education is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. However, the federal government does intervene. It is difficult to imagine the French-language education system in a minority setting without a contribution from the federal government. The provinces are certainly pushing back, as they see education as their jurisdiction, and rightly so. However, as I indicated at the end of my little four-page brief, if we have fundamental values, such as the protection of minorities, and if we have section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which the provinces have signed, we must have the courage of our convictions and invest accordingly. In my oral presentation, I tried to say that, without the success of the education system and the early childhood system being ensured, all the other efforts would be pointless or, at the very least, would be less effective.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Ms. Chouinard, I would also like to hear your opinion.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
Under the federal-provincial bilateral agreements for minority-language education, with which you are very familiar, there are always three funding streams. The first concerns what we call basic French, and that funding, according to the agreements with the provinces, must be added to the core funding that the provinces are already supposed to provide for their curriculum. Then there is the funding stream for immersion and, lastly, the funding for minority language schools. However, in many provinces, we can see on the ground that the proportion of funding allocated by the provinces to minority language schools is not even close to being equal to the proportion of students in those schools. So these students are at a systematic disadvantage.
If I'm not mistaken, in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, a case is making its way through the courts because the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador got angry about this issue.
The rest of the federal funding, once it gets into the provincial school system, gets lost in the wilderness. We see that funding ending up being used as core funding rather than additional funding, when the provinces are supposed to add it to the funding they already provide to their provincial school systems. So, if the provinces were honest about how they use funding from the federal government, perhaps we would have less of a problem when it comes to things like waiting lists for immersion programs, which you mentioned and which are overflowing everywhere.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Mr. Bourgeois, my question about immersion was related to the fact that there is an overflow, in the sense that the demand is high. Anglophones clearly do want to send their children to immersion schools.
However, is there a link to be made to the fact that, once again, federal money going to the provinces ends up disappearing? When it comes to accountability, we are often told, and have been for a number of years, that money is literally disappearing, and Ms. Chouinard has just repeated that.
Should there be an obligation within the framework of the agreements to report on where the money is going?
Researcher, As an Individual
I think the answer is yes. There's a problem, an issue, a difficulty. Most provinces don't even report their spending to minority school boards, let alone to the federal government.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal René Arseneault
Thank you, Mr. Bourgeois.
We will continue with the second round of questions, starting with the Liberals.
Mr. Iacono, you have the floor for six minutes.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for joining us this morning.
Mr. Bourgeois, the labour shortage in education is often a major concern for our committee. What is your institution doing to address that shortage? Do you provide any incentives to encourage enrolment in your programs?
Researcher, As an Individual
I don't represent a school. I'm an independent researcher.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
I apologize.
Ms. Chouinard, you are a staunch defender of official language minority communities. You've written extensively on the subject and you live your francophonie openly. We often ask you for your professional opinion on various subjects that affect the francophonie.
Today, I would like you to tell us about your journey as the mother of a young girl.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Okay. I'm sorry.
You live in an anglophone city, and your son will soon reach preschool age and start going to a child care centre. Could you tell us about your journey to find a French-language child care centre?
Associate Professor, As an Individual
Okay. I'll give you some dates for context.
On December 24, 2021, my husband and I, who live in Toronto, learned that we were expecting a child. On December 26, we put our future child on the waiting list of the two francophone child care centres in our neighbourhood. I couldn't have been any faster. Our son was born in September 2022, and I returned to work on July 1, 2023. However, my son only got a space in a francophone day care on July 1, 2024. So he was on the waiting list for that day care for over a year from the end of my maternity leave. During that year, to my great dismay, our family was among those where four out of five children did not have a space in a francophone day care. I thought I had done everything in my power to avoid such a situation. I was very desperate.
As part of your study, you heard a little earlier from other witnesses that, in Prince Edward Island, 150 francophone children are waiting for a space in the province's child care centres. In our neighbourhood, at least 150 children are in the same situation. I'm not trying to make it into a competition, but I just want to give you an idea of the scope of the demand that could be met if there were more spaces.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Let me ask you a question before you continue telling us your story.
You are talking about those 150 children, but is the problem related to the location? Has this problem been around for the past two or three years, or has it been around for more than 10 years? Could you confirm for us that this problem has existed for over 10 years and that no provincial or federal government has ever paid attention to it?
It's impossible that this problem has suddenly started to escalate since the Liberals came to power in 2015.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
In 2015, I was still working on my doctorate and was not quite ready to have children. So I can't answer you.
Associate Professor, As an Individual
I don't know the extent of the problem at the time, but I would be prepared to tell you that the issue did indeed exist at the time. The problem has worsened recently, especially because of the popularity of child care services. In recent months and years, the cost of child care spaces has been much lower, as a result of investments and agreements between the federal government and the provinces. In some families, one parent would stay at home because the cost of child care spaces was too high. That parent is now considering the possibility of returning to the labour market because, economically speaking, it makes sense for them to do so.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
You're telling me that a positive change made by our government has a negative side.