Official Languages committee  Thank you for the question, Mrs. Goodridge. At the moment, the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones is working closely with its English-language counterpart, the Canadian School Boards Association, to better understand this shortage of teachers, both in the F

Official Languages committee  Ms. Ashton, if I may, I'd like to add something. When we talk about a shortage of school staff, even in early childhood centres, you're absolutely right: We're truly experiencing that to a great extent right now. We need to speed up the process for recognizing teacher and early

Official Languages committee  I would add that we need to ensure that Canadian embassies, high commissions and consular services abroad are aware of the French-language school network, both for staff recruitment and student enrolment. People come to Canada thinking there's only one system, and yet we have 29

Official Languages committee  Yes, absolutely. We were just talking about promotion. Our website is another national and international window and it shows what we have to offer in terms of education in French in Canada.

Official Languages committee  Yes. I'll give you an example on the ground that I think speaks for itself: Our smallest school board is in Nunavut, and it consists of a single school. If you look at the student profile, there's an extremely large black population. Why is that? The first immigrant family from a

Official Languages committee  It's an ongoing challenge. We talked about the 73 new schools built and opened since 2016. Building new infrastructure is our school system's main priority. I must admit that our system is relatively new, since we were only able to start building our network across Canada in the

Official Languages committee  I would qualify the answer by saying that both elements are valid. Yes, the programs need to be better targeted. As Ms. Forest mentioned, there is no substantive equality at all stages of welcoming and supporting immigrants. So there has to be a will to better target the program

Official Languages committee  Actually, it will be our 2nd vice-president, Mrs. Saumure, who will give the opening remarks.

Official Languages committee  I would like to provide an answer to your first question as to whether there is evidence that parents are choosing French immersion rather than French as a first language. We don't have hard data, but we know it does happen for a number of reasons. If there's not a nearby school,

Official Languages committee  Or if it's too crowded.

Official Languages committee  At the moment, we are very concerned. When the new cabinet was sworn in, a mandate letter was given to Minister Joly, who is responsible for the francophonie and official languages. It was clearly indicated that she had to change the census. People had hope when they saw that it

Official Languages committee  Two-thirds of our school boards are in Ontario, because Ontario is the great bastion of francophones outside Quebec. So the increases are quite significant in Ontario. They are also significant in Nova Scotia because of the growing up in French program, which has made it possible

Official Languages committee  If I may complement the information, the Syrian refugees are a good example. When they landed in Canada, they had the opportunity to choose which system to send their kids through. In New Brunswick, unfortunately, which is the only officially bilingual province of this country,

Official Languages committee  There isn't.

Official Languages committee  In some provinces, it is on a case-by-case basis. In Nova Scotia, for example, there is a grandfather clause that allows the lost generations to register their children. In the case of a couple whose children apparently attended English school because they were not able to send