Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee. I am going to talk to you about the education sector.
I want to start by talking to you about the wrongs of the past that need to be righted using section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Official Languages Act, or OLA.
You can follow me during my speech by consulting the document I have tabled. I will follow the order of the paragraphs. I'm on the first page and I'm going to summarize some of the points.
1. For a long time, it was illegal to teach in French outside Quebec. Parliamentarian Dalton McCarthy, the ideology behind the slogan “One language, one flag, one country” and the hanging of Louis Riel in 1885 were factors that contributed to erasing the French language from education.
2. The rate of assimilation and exogamy in western Canada is around 80%. In 75 years, the number of francophone villages in Saskatchewan has dropped from 80 down to 12.
3. It is difficult to obtain from Statistics Canada the number of children of rights holders before 2021. We should receive the information by November 2022.
4. The network of francophone schools is not complete. The number of community schools is insufficient. Pupils have to travel long distances to get to school. There is a lack of real equality. Many French schools are overcrowded and lack space.
5. Francophone school boards are underfunded. Funding formulas do not recognize certain minority factors such as francization needs, recruitment difficulties, distance, insufficient population density.
6. Funding for full-day preschool and full-day kindergarten is insufficient and therefore does not allow for the francization of children aged 3 to 5 before primary school.
7. Federal government funding for French-language day care centres is insufficient.
8. Provincial and territorial governments are lagging behind when it comes to enforcing section 23 of the charter.
9. There is a constant need to use the courts to enforce section 23 of the charter, and there is insufficient funding to pay for the costs of doing so.
10. Binding language clauses and obligations to comply with part VII of the OLA are insufficient in the documents used by the federal government to transfer funds and responsibilities to the provinces and territories.
11. The OLA must be modernized to reflect the needs of the minority.
I will now list my 12 recommendations, which are found on page 2 of my brief.
1. That the federal government use its spending power to immediately increase its financial support to the provinces and territories to build French-language community schools. This is necessary to complete the school system and to meet the growing enrolment. I suggest that a subsection (3) be added to section 43 of the OLA to reflect all my recommendations.
2. That the OLA be amended to require federal funding of at least 50% of the construction cost of francophone schools and educational institutions from day care to post-secondary education.
3. That the federal government develop a massive funding initiative in co‑operation with the provinces and territories to update and complete the construction of schools and educational institutions ranging from day care to post-secondary education. This is in keeping with the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in a British Columbia case heard in 2020 involving section 23. The need for additional schools is not limited to British Columbia.
4. That the OLA be amended to require the federal government to offer its properties for sale to school boards on a priority basis for school construction.
5. That the OLA be amended to make it mandatory to index funding for the Official Languages in Education Program, or OLEP, to the cost of living and to enrolment growth in French-language schools.
6. That the OLA be amended to require Statistics Canada to determine the number of student right holders annually, and to provide school boards with this information free of charge.
7. That the OLA be amended to make it mandatory to include binding language clauses and obligations to respect part VII of the OLA when the federal government transfers funds or responsibilities. This is to comply with the most recent Federal Court of Appeal decision of January 28, 2022.
8. We must adopt an independent tribunal to adjudicate OLA violations.
I invite you to read the rest yourself; articles 9, 10, 11 and 12.
This is a list of recommendations that would solve a lot of problems in western Canada and outside Quebec.