Hello, aanii, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
My name is Paul Henry, major (retired) and director of education and secretary-treasurer of the Conseil scolaire catholique du Nouvel‑Ontario, also known as the CSC Nouvelon, which is located on the traditional territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and Wahnapitae nations, which is designated in the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850. More specifically, it lies in the corridor that is the route of Highway 17, the Trans-Canada, which goes through Sudbury East, Greater Sudbury, Algoma, Michipicoten, Wawa and Chapleau. It is a French Catholic school district extending from Markstay-Warren to Hornepayne and consisting of over 20,000 square kilometres,
This is my 33rd year in Franco-Ontarian education, in the course of which I have spent the last five years at the helm of the CSC Nouvelon, and I will be bowing out in spring 2025. I want to offer my very sincere thanks for this invitation and this important and unique opportunity to present my perspective as an experienced educator and administrator in the field of the official languages of Canada. My brief presentation will touch on various issues that I consider to be crucial in order to secure and intensify the “by and for” approach for francophones in minority communities, while respecting our linguistic duality under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982. At bottom, governance of my Catholic school board, whose first language is French, is the determining factor and must be intensified.
Moving on, I will now present several crucial concerns in the form of pillars, to lay the groundwork for the discussion that will follow.
I will start with funding for French first language education. The funding allocated by the federal government to the provinces, and in particular to Ontario, is not always divided equitably among the 12 French-language school boards and the Consortium Centre Jules‑Léger. Increasingly, we feel that the idea of uniform solutions is being applied in Ontario without our knowledge. This kind of approach is discriminatory, inequitable and unfair to us as compared to the approach adopted for our anglophone counterparts. It seems that we are always having to demand our rights and the gains we have made. Otherwise, it is our students, our learners, our parents and guardians, our elected representatives, and our staff members who end up the losers—