Official Languages committee  I speak French with my friends. I always speak French, even with those who speak English and French. I'd really like to speak better English, but I still speak French with them.

Official Languages committee  That depends what you mean it.

Official Languages committee  The only language I speak fluently is French.

Official Languages committee  As I told you, my father would have had to go to university for two more years to get recognition, and he was asked to submit his marks from his last year in high school, when he has been a teacher for 25 years.

Official Languages committee  I would, yes. The French language is very diversified. You can use it in a number of ways to say the same thing.

Official Languages committee  That's what I like about the French language. When I go to the theatre, it's funnier in French than in English. I really like the French language, and I grew up with it.

Official Languages committee  I must say we're lucky to be able to speak French—and also to be able to speak French and English, but especially to speak good French, since it's difficult. When I go to the store, I ask people whether they speak French, and I often see they look downcast, sorry. They would like to be able to speak French, but they don't have that opportunity.

Official Languages committee  It's only been a year, but yes.

Official Languages committee  Mine didn't; they spoke French.

Official Languages committee  I would say it affects us. When I was in Cameroon, I spoke French. My parents worked, my father was a teacher, a teacher at a lycée—the equivalent of high school in the French school system. My mother was a primary school teacher. When we arrived in Canada, my father was asked for his marks from “terminale”—that's the last year of high school in Cameroon.

Official Languages committee  For me, it's Booba, a French rapper.

Official Languages committee  Not really in French. As you know, the city is mostly anglophone. I can say that I attend concerts in French, music concerts. Apart from that, I work in English. I try to speak English, but for the moment I don't speak very good English. I arrived a year ago. I'm trying to speak English, because I need to speak English to live here.

Official Languages committee  In fact, I understood that it was absolutely necessary to speak English because we only heard English in the halls. As Kelly said, when you speak French, people answer you in English. That isn't very easy. For example, if you're part of a group of people and you're only speaking French, you have to listen to what they say, but they don't speak French.

Official Languages committee  I'm from Cameroon, which is essentially bilingual, like Canada, but where the minority is anglophone.

Official Languages committee  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this opportunity to speak today. My presentation concerns the integration of students in the school environment. I find that the student population is growing quickly, especially at the Collège catholique Samuel-Genest. I'm going to talk mainly about the Collège catholique Samuel-Genest because that's where I arrived.