Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice-Chairman, and members of the committee, I am Marcus Tabachnick—not that easy to say, but that's what it is—executive director of the Quebec English School Boards Association. First and foremost, on behalf of our president, who unfortunately got bogged down

Official Languages committee  It was from the seventies.

Official Languages committee  There are all kinds of reasons behind it. In the 1970s, when there weren't the same restrictions there are today, about 55,000 of that population were what today we would call non-English non-French allophones, and about another 30,000 were actually French-speaking families who c

Official Languages committee  It's absolutely true. You just have to spend a few minutes in many of our playgrounds and you'll see that our children and young people are speaking on one side to a friend in English, on the other side to a friend in French, and over there to a friend in another language, even.

Official Languages committee  We're a system that has to respond to the needs of the families we serve. There is a need. In order for us to keep our young people in Quebec, they have to be able to speak and live and work in the French language. The English system has gone to great lengths to ensure that there

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  Maybe I'm older than most of you, but when I went to elementary school we got 45 minutes a week in French. Today up to 90% of a student's day may be in French. So we are creating bilingual students, absolutely. It's a goal that all of our school boards have. As you know from you

Official Languages committee  The reason we're asking for this type of data is that many people don't know they have a rights holder in the family, so they never even look to the English system. We need to know who is out there, and right now we don't have that information.

Official Languages committee  We have 100,000 students in our system already; somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 students attend French-language school because that is what their parents chose.

Official Languages committee  They come from the Quebec government, which tells us what our population size is, including how many children with certificates of eligibility are in the French-language system. Those are the only numbers we have.

Official Languages committee  A portion of them may be, but many families do not know they have a rights-holder. That is the case even today, even though Bill 101 has long been in force. A lot of people just don't know.

Official Languages committee  It's very important to us that we know how many people there are. We need the real figures. It's a matter of planning for us. There are numerous cases. We have 340 schools, and more than two-thirds of them have fewer than 200 students. Those 200 schools with fewer than 200 stude

Official Languages committee  Laval is an exception.

Official Languages committee  The Laval area is an exception to the rule.

Official Languages committee  I am not.