Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for this invitation to appear before your committee. My name is Ghislaine Pilon and I am accompanied by the Director General, Murielle Gagné-Ouellette. I live in Mississauga, Ontario. I am the mother of two teenagers, Nicolas and Mathieu, and it is beca

Canadian Heritage committee  Parents who want access to such schools must fight for this right. As I have shown you, it takes seven years before a case is heard before the Supreme Court, where we can claim our rights. The Court Challenges Program gave us the wings we needed to claim what we are entitled to.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are federal policies which provide protection and are in effect, but the provinces do not comply with them. It is difficult to have anything better than a policy that is already accepted, in effect and signed by all the other provinces. Do you understand what I am saying?

Official Languages committee  The two of us shall be speaking.

Official Languages committee  Thank you for this invitation to appear before your committee. My name is Ghislaine Pilon, I live in Mississauga, Ontario. I am the mother of two teenagers, Nicolas and Mathieu. It is because of them that I am here today. I am the President of the Commission nationale des paren

Official Languages committee  The vast majority of cases involving parents going to court concerned schools. There was no French education. If we hadn't gone to court, if we hadn't taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, there might not be very many francophones left. If our kids hadn't bee

Official Languages committee  Everywhere. For example, only one out of every two francophone students attends our schools, and that's because too few schools have been built. Where I live, in Mississauga, a secondary school already has 850 students and is overpopulated. We cannot build another school for an a

Official Languages committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ghislaine Pilon, and I am president of the Commission nationale des parents francophones, the CNPF. I am here with our acting executive director, Adèle David. First we want to thank you for granting us this hearing.

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Godin. That's definitely a good question. In the past, money has been invested in child care services. We are aware that, when we offer the option of French-language child care services, parents who are exogamous or francophone will turn to those services. Based

Official Languages committee  Thank you.

Official Languages committee  To my knowledge, there is no federal-provincial agreement on early childhood. In any case, it's a provincial jurisdiction. The government has decided to grant families $100 a month per child.

Official Languages committee  I don't know whether any of you have young children, but $100 isn't even enough to buy diapers for one week.

Official Languages committee  To date, no. We are doing an environmental scan; it isn't complete. I'm going to ask the executive director to talk about it, with your permission, because it's a very technical matter. However, we have something underway to quantify needs.

Official Languages committee  Yes. We'll come back and talk to you about it, if you wish.

Official Languages committee  We received an amount for early childhood under the Roadmap which is expiring.