Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Sylvianne Maisonneuve and I am the president of the CSNO, the Conseil scolaire du Nord‑Ouest de l'Alberta.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today. I am going to talk about the crucial issues involved in ensuring the survival of the French language and francophone culture in the northwest.
The CSNO's territory covers all of northwestern Alberta from Slave Lake to the British Columbia border and the Northwest Territories border. We currently have three kindergarten to grade 12 francophone schools with approximately 460 students.
I am first going to address the issue of ECCs, early childhood centres. ECCs are essential to help parents pass on their language and culture and properly prepare children for their academic career. The CSNO has long recognized the importance of offering these services in its schools. We operate three ECCs: a service that provides child care, pre‑kindergarten, and before and afte- school child care in Grande Prairie; a child care centre/pre‑kindergarten in Peace River; and a pre‑kindergarten in Falher where we are taking steps, at parents' request, to open a francophone child care centre in that school as well.
Parents in our communities are thrilled with the Canada-Alberta Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement for $10 a day child care, which has had a very positive effect in our region.
However, we are facing two major challenges when it comes to early childhood. First, there is a shortage of francophone certified early childhood educators in northwestern Alberta. Certification of educators in Alberta is the responsibility of the Ministry of Children's Services. Although that ministry encourages young people to pursue a career in early childhood education, very little promotion is done in French to attract the francophone population to a career in this field.
The second challenge involves adding spaces for an ECC to new school construction projects. It takes too long after a new construction project is announced by the province for the federal government to approve projects in order for matching funds for infrastructure to be provided. The result is wasted time for the architectural team and missed opportunities. There should be a more fluid process to ensure better collaboration between the two governments, to avoid delays or to avoid the risk of not having early childhood spaces in the francophone minority schools.
The CSNO benefits from the Official Languages in Education Program for minority language instruction in elementary and secondary schools. The four francophone school boards in Alberta are working with the Ministry of Education and the CSNO is very happy about this. That financial support will enable the CSNO to offer its students and teachers projects that promote their language and culture in our schools. However, we believe that the funds allocated to Alberta are not sufficient to address the remarkable rise in the number of rights holders in our province. The Official Languages in Education Program is important to us since programming and retaining high school students in our schools are still a challenge, particularly in the community of Grande Prairie, where we have to compete with single-track and special program immersion schools.
In addition, while there has been a shortage of francophone teachers in our region for several years, we have recently observed that the situation has worsened. Teacher positions remain vacant for several months or even for a full school year, and this means that our students do not have access to an education in French that is substantively equivalent to what is offered by English-language schools. A national campaign to encourage young people to enrol in education programs, along with scholarships for graduates who work in minority communities in rural areas, are avenues that could be considered.
The court challenges program is essential if school boards are to be able to ensure that the province meet its responsibilities under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the inadequate funding of that program means that school boards are not able to effectively assert rights holders' right to francophone education.
The latest data obtained from the enumeration of rights holders has been crucial for the CSNO in its efforts to create new schools and modernize existing institutions. It is essential that this practice be continued, since without data the provinces are unable to fully understand the needs and issues. With this data, we were able to show that there were many rights holders within the area covered by the CSNO who did not have access to francophone education. In Grande Prairie, for example, Nouvelle Frontière school, with an enrolment of 180 students from kindergarten to grade 12, is located in the southwest part of the city. The data from the enumeration revealed that nearly 500 children of rights holder parents were living in the northern part of Grande Prairie, but fewer than 50 children in that part of the city attend Nouvelle Frontière.
As a final point, funding for our only minority post-secondary institution continues to be a significant challenge in our province. Because they do not have adequate financial support, Campus Saint-Jean and the Centre collégial de l'Alberta are not able to offer the programs to which our students should have access. In Alberta, senior high school students have the opportunity to earn dual credits recognized at both the college and high school levels.
Unfortunately, our students who are interested in various trades have to take those courses in English, because they are not offered in French. As a result, our students who want to earn those credits do not receive their secondary education in French.
Thank you for listening. I am available to answer your questions.
