Official Languages committee  In our Senate brief—I've touched on it in this presentation, and I know it's in our briefing documents—one of the challenges is the integration of immigrants. We know that as a country our population base is going to be receiving more and more immigrant families. It's important t

Official Languages committee  I sure can.

Official Languages committee  Sure. We'll give this a go again. Good old technology. Financial reporting alone, however accurate or complete, does not measure the complete success of FSL programs across Canada, and we'd like to encourage the adoption of an outcomes-based approach in the next round of our OLE

Official Languages committee  Where did he leave off? Where did you get to, Mr. Rothon?

Official Languages committee  Thank you again for the opportunity to present, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, and for the opportunity to use this video conference technology, which allows me to stay closer to home and work, but it also makes me more accessible to work as well. It helps me balance a li

Official Languages committee  All right, I will respond briefly. To bring them in, again, it's in making it a living language, whether that be through exchanges, through bringing cultural groups in or through modelling the behaviour, such as the people who graduate from immersion coming back and saying, “Loo

Official Languages committee  I'd like to reassure you that, from our perspective, French immersion and core French programming, and the demand for them, are alive and well across this country. There are lineups. There are caps on programs that parents are very frustrated with. School districts would love to

Official Languages committee  Canadian Parents for French is uniquely positioned to help work with all orders of government and, indeed, with folks right on the ground. As I said earlier on, we're a collection of parents from coast to coast to coast, primarily anglophone parents who have made a decision to pu

Official Languages committee  I would say, why not? True. Coming from my province, it's go big or go home.

Official Languages committee  I can speak for the city of Red Deer. In the city of Red Deer, we have a francophone carnival with lumberjacks who seem to be everywhere in Alberta to make toffee and things like that. In terms of CPF, I'm going to ask my executive director to give you a very brief example o

Official Languages committee  Thank you. Yes, that is accurate, although I'm going to say it was grâce à mes parents, thanks to my parents, that I am bilingual. Education decisions are made by parents, although the reason they continue to embrace their other official language or their bilingualism as adults

Official Languages committee  As a parent — my son is 15 years old —, I will answer that directly from my own experience. We would say not only do they have to have chances to meet, they have to have the opportunity to learn their other official language. First and foremost, if we don't have that base in th

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Dion. There are a few recommendations in our brief. Number one, we would like every celebration across the country to be bilingual, and not rely on the fact that certain communities.... I'll speak from Red Deer's perspective, and when we have Canada Day or a c

Official Languages committee  In my presentation on Canadian Parents for French, I indicated that we have a lot of experience in organizing pan-Canadian events for our youth across the country and in working with families. You must recognize that French is not the first language of most of the parents we d

Official Languages committee  We're very lucky to work very closely with our colleagues in organizations like French for the Future and Canadian Youth for French, who do a lot of work and exchanges, along with programs like Encounters with Canada. In our brief, we point out two things that are very interest