Official Languages committee  I would like to answer your questions in English. It's a vicious circle, I think. I have pre-service candidates who come to me all the time who want to be French teachers, but they say they don't think their French is good enough. We do what we can to provide extra opportunitie

Official Languages committee  I'm not sure if you read the book written by the former commissioner Graham Fraser, but he addresses this phenomenon. There was a group of students from the Ontario city of Kingston, where I'm from, who learned French in an immersion program, but when they went on a school trip

Official Languages committee  It also poses a problem. Certain school boards from here go east to hire instructors. The instructors they hire are francophone by birth, so they speak excellent French. They might come here and teach math, in immersion for example, but they aren't trained to teach immersion. Th

Official Languages committee  I would say that we need to insist that school boards prioritize French. As I said earlier, they can choose whether or not to offer it, depending on parents' interest and budgets. I think it's shameful.

Official Languages committee  Certainly.

Official Languages committee  Thank you. It's my pleasure to speak to you today in my capacity as an instructor of French pre-service teachers in the Bachelor of Education program at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. I teach the French specialization courses for teacher candidates who