Madam Speaker, I stand today to ask for a response to a question that I asked earlier in the sitting.
The mandate of the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages outlines the government's commitment to Canada's official languages in minority settings and calls for investment in infrastructure to support minority communities, including schools. I rise today to address this mandate as it relates to the protection of French in Alberta.
If we include the Université de l'Ontario français, which has yet to welcome its first cohort of students, there are only seven language colleges or universities in Canada outside of Quebec, and one of those is in my riding of Edmonton Strathcona. It is Campus Saint-Jean.
Campus Saint-Jean is the only French-language university west of Winnipeg. It serves 800 francophone and bilingual students from Alberta and across Canada, with a wide range of undergraduate, after-degree and graduate programs. Campus Saint-Jean is critical to the vitality of the French language in Alberta and in the west of Canada. Its education program trains future teachers for Alberta's and other provinces' primary and secondary French and French immersion classrooms. Without Campus Saint-Jean, Alberta would not have the qualified teachers it needs to serve its francophone students or those who, like my daughter Keltie, are enrolled in the bilingual programs in Alberta.
Today, we are at risk of losing Campus Saint-Jean. In violation of the contract signed in 1976 between the faculty of Saint-Jean, the University of Alberta and the Government of Alberta, which promised adequate funding to operate, maintain, expand and enhance the school, Jason Kenney's cuts to post-secondary education are threatening the very existence of Campus Saint-Jean. Unlike in Ontario, where the Ford government refused to fund the Université de l'Ontario français, Alberta's government is failing to live up to its obligations. This has profound implications for the future of French language instruction and vitality in Alberta and, as such, must be addressed by the federal government.
Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that Alberta's francophone parents have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in French. The recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique affirmed this right and more. It found that minority language communities must receive equivalent support to the majority language, not proportional support, as British Columbia has argued.
The implications for Alberta are very clear. Unless Campus Saint-Jean is supported, Alberta's school boards will not be able to meet the equivalency standard. In the case of Ontario, the federal government stepped up with a commitment of more than $60 million over eight years to support its French-language post-secondary institution and to ensure that francophones in Ontario would have their minority rights protected.
Will the current government do the same for francophones in Alberta?