Thank you for that extremely pertinent question, Mr. Drouin.
The FCFA has indeed looked into the needs of communities. The needs are immense, insofar as the prosperity of our communities today is threatened by the decline of the French language. We need to re‑establish the demographic weight of our communities, and that means targeted francophone immigration to francophone communities outside Quebec.
It's also important to understand the targets. When we do this analysis today, we realize that our immigration targets are very low, and that we haven't managed to reach them to date. In fact, last year, for the first time, we managed to very slightly exceed the 4% target. However, we reiterate what we've said in the past, that it's important today to re‑establish the demographic weight of French-speaking communities outside Quebec.
On this subject, the FCFA has been very clear. As I said in my opening remarks, we didn't invent targets. We used the tools at our disposal, which are also used by the Canadian government, to establish targets that will essentially enable us to re‑establish the demographic weight of francophones outside Quebec as quickly as possible and continue to safeguard our communities, so to speak. That's where we are today. We're talking about safeguarding communities that are threatened because of their demographic weight.
There's another important element to consider, and it's been mentioned. What needs to be done? We must have the courage to take extremely ambitious measures. We have tools at our disposal today, and we need to use them wisely and effectively. For example, we need to set up an immigration program aimed exclusively at francophone communities outside Quebec, rather than taking immigrants from a pool on the same basis as all other immigrants. We really need an immigration policy for minority francophone communities. It's essential.
What's more, it will be very important for this immigration policy not only to target skilled immigrants, but also to target the populations we need. Earlier, you talked about early childhood workers; that's part of the communities' needs. We need them. We can't rely exclusively on Express Entry. We need to go much further and have a program that will enable us to go out and find workers who are essential to maintaining and safeguarding our communities.