The fact that students continue to attend the francophone minority system is largely due to the quality of the educational experience that francophone students have in elementary school. In many provinces, French language minority elementary schools are still far from offering conditions equivalent to those in the anglophone schools. This is not a recent problem. As long ago as 1996, a study by the Commission nationale des parents francophones showed that of the $5 billion paid by Ottawa under its official languages in education program from 1970 to 1988, 62% went to anglophones in Quebec and immersion schools in English Canada, and Francophones outside Quebec had to make do with a measly 28.5%.
I would like to illustrate the current situation with a concrete example: Rose-des-vents francophone elementary school in Vancouver, which shares a quadrangle with Jules-Verne secondary school. For many years, parents of Rose-des-vents students had been fed up with a school composed of mobile homes joined end to end and poorly soundproofed classrooms that were much smaller than the ones in the anglophone schools. Two of them did not even have windows, nor did the school have a gym or green space, and it had too few lockers.
In 2010, the Association des parents de l'école Rose‑des‑vents hauled the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie‑Britannique into court, citing section 23 of the Charter. The Conseil scolaire francophone and the Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie‑Britannique also brought a parallel action against the British Columbia government, on the same basis, in that case involving 20 areas with deficient educational services in French, more or less all across the province.
In 2015, the Association des parents de l'école Rose‑des‑vents won its case in the Supreme Court. In 2020, after ten years in the courts, the Conseil scolaire francophone also won its case in the Supreme Court to have some ten new French schools built.
However, nine years after the victory won by the Association des parents de l'école Rose‑des‑vents, they are still waiting for the new school. There are projects planned for 2028 and 2030, one of which is to be on a lot just beside the quadrangle occupied by Rose-des-Vents school and Jules Verne secondary school, but those projects are going nowhere, since the expansion of the secondary school depends on the old Rose-des-vents school, which is currently occupied, being demolished, and that project is scheduled for 2030. Until the school has been demolished, the secondary school can't be expanded. This gives you an idea of the level of dissatisfaction among students in that area.
The 2020 victory won by the Conseil scolaire francophone in the Supreme Court also provided for construction of some ten French schools, but that project has also stagnated, to the point that the Conseil scolaire francophone has now gone before the British Columbia Supreme Court to force the province to carry out the judgment.
Every five years, protocols are established for the payment of federal funds by Ottawa for official languages education, and every time, French immersion for anglophones is given priority over education of francophones in minority communities. If we take as an indicator of good treatment of francophone minorities the proportion of that money that is allocated to francophone schools, we see that New Brunswick and Ontario are leading the pack, with their francophone schools receiving 75% and 70% of the funds, respectively. The proportion then plummets to below 50%, and even below 40% for the last four provinces: Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador. This is the case even though those provinces are where the rate of francophone assimilation is highest and the largest share of federal funds should be allocated to French schools—the complete opposite of the present situation.
Since we are talking about immersion instruction, I would point out that several years ago, the former minister of official languages, Mélanie Joly, agreed that the rate of bilingualism among anglophones outside Quebec had stagnated at 9% for 30 years. The reason is that the retention rate for this learning is not making the grade, because after going through an immersion program, most of the children go back to live in an environment where there is virtually no French.