Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue 12 - Evidence - Morning session
EDMONTON, Thursday, October 23, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met this day at 9:02 a.m. to study the issue of education within minority official language communities.
The Hon. Rose-Marie Losier-Cool (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: We will be able to visit the Faculty at the end of the day. This is the first time the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages has held hearings outside of Ottawa. It was high time we did so.
We decided to study the issue of French education in minority francophone communities, because this matter is fundamental to their survival. The committee is proud to show that it is interested in the needs of francophone communities in Alberta and British Columbia. We will be hearing from representatives from these communities today and tomorrow.
Today, we will be hearing from witnesses from Alberta. We will hear from teachers, community representatives, delegates from the education sector and members of the Faculté Saint-Jean. We will begin with Ms. Nicole Bugeaud, the director of a school called Maurice-Lavallée.
Ms. Nicole Bugeaud, Director, École Maurice-Lavallée, as an Individual: Madam Chair, I would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about some of the challenges and successes we have experienced with regard to francophone education. My colleague will explain how we will divide our presentation.
Mr. Pierre Eddie, Teacher, École Maurice-Lavallée, as an Individual: Thank you for your interest in education and learning, issues which are very important to us. Nicole will begin and talk about early childhood education, with an emphasis on access to professionals and to early childhood education services.
I will talk about the challenges facing teachers working in a minority situation, challenges which are unique to teachers working in a minority situation in Alberta. We will also address the issue of recruitment and student retention.
Ms. Bugeaud: In the last several years, the provincial school board has taken a closer look at preschool, and at the importance of creating a relationship with communities and preschool associations. We recognize that there are new people coming up the ranks in French education.
The school boards had originally supported the idea of paying for the rents of pre-schools. We began by making room for preschool organizations and associations, or, in other words junior kindergarten groups, in our francophone schools. There is no doubt that we must build relationships with these groups. It is important to harmonize preschools and school boards, because we have an important role to play in training preschool educators.
The requirements for preschool educators are not very specific, and in any case training is not available here in French. We have to make sure that we are on the same wavelength in terms of criteria with regard to French-language skills at that level.
We play a major role in helping our students learn, and sometimes ``re-learn,'' French. We want to make families aware of the situation and help them integrate into a French community in their area. That is the level we work at.
Since 1999, we have built in this province a network called the Réseau provincial d'adaptation scolaire (Provincial School Adjustment Network), because we were aware of the great need for experts and professionals for francophones.
We were able to build this network with financial help from the federal and provincial governments. This strategy paid off in spades for young francophones in our school system, especially at the early childhood education level. This means we can begin turning the situation around with very young children.
However, this type of network poses certain challenges. The provincial network covers all of Alberta. Under the provincial mandate, teachers must frequently travel throughout the province to work in the 24 francophone schools.
It is hard for us to recruit bilingual or francophone experts in those areas. Many teachers are close to retirement age. But it is important to make sure that new teachers are coming up through the ranks.
Another obstacle in this area is the absence of evaluation instruments adapted to the francophone population. There is an English version of several instruments and they have to be translated by experts and professionals. There is certainly a lack of evaluation tools.
These are a few of the challenges we face in the area of early childhood education. We created the network in 1999. The mandate with regard to services provided to the community grew from year to year. We realized there was a need in every school in the province.
Mr. Eddie: You said you wanted to address the challenges with respect to finding qualified teaching personnel. As a teacher, I do not want to talk about how qualified my colleagues are, or how qualified I am, but I would like to speak to the challenges and particular situations faced by teachers working in a minority situation in francophone Alberta.
Nicole talked about the 24 francophone schools in Alberta which have an enrollment of about 3,500 students. The École Maurice-Lavallée is the biggest of these schools. There are about 200 students in 10th, 11th and 12th grades. So I am talking about what is going on in a small school. In Lethbridge, in Saint-Paul or in Rivière-La-Paix, the schools are even smaller than the one I work for.
To start on a positive note, there are many advantages to teaching in a small school. I get to know, and I get to teach, almost all my students. I got to know 95 per cent of my students in Grade 12. I was able to teach them, to travel with them, to engage in sporting or other activities with them. That is a great advantage.
In a francophone school, there is the feeling of being part of a francophone community, of taking part in its development, and there is a feeling of belonging. Let me talk about the particular situation of the teacher, and about the number of classes a francophone teacher must give. For instance, we, at the high school level, are experts. In university, we have to major in one area and do a minor in another. But when we teach at a small school, we are asked to teach three, four, five, or even six, different classes. My anglophone colleagues who teach in a large school sometimes only teach the one class which is their area of expertise. But we are often asked to be generalists.
We sometimes have the feeling of being isolated since there are so few of us. In my school, I am the only one who teaches social studies 30. I do not often have the opportunity to share my experiences with fellow teachers who teach the same course. I am often the only one in my area, as is the case with many other teachers who teach mathematics, biology or other subjects.
In workshops or at conferences, it is possible for elementary teachers not to be affected by something because there are more of them. But for someone who teaches social sciences or physical education in grades 10, 11 or 12, it is not easy to organize a conference or a workshop in French because there are so few French teachers. Nevertheless, I can always go to workshops given in English.
On a regular basis, the department, and sometimes even the community, asks us to sit on committees. Sometimes, teachers sit on two or three departmental committees. I do not know whether the same is asked of my anglophone colleagues.
When Grade 12 students sit for the department's exams, the results of the social studies 30 course are published. I am the only one who teaches social studies 30 in my school. So it is obvious that my anglophone colleagues — eight of them teach this class in one particular school — are not subject to the same amount of pressure I am. The marks I award reflect directly on the students in my two classes and on all of my students.
The Faculté Saint-Jean offers the education and immersion program to francophones. We are frequently asked to help student teachers in training who come to our school.
Inter-school sports are very important to me. Among other subjects, I also teach physical education. We have many inter-school teams. We are part of a Grade 10, 11 and 12 league with 22 other Edmonton area schools. We often compete against schools which are five, six, seven, eight, or ten times bigger than ours. We do not need to win all the time, but we want to be proud and competitive. That is quite a challenge.
I would like to talk about the resources and material available to francophone teachers. Within the Department of Alberta Learning, there is the French Education Directorate, which prepares support documentation, French versions, evaluation tools and other documents.
However, it does not make sense for a publisher to publish a book or a basic resource for a program. This may be easier to do if the subject is math and if the program is similar to what is offered in Quebec. But for a program like social studies, there is no learning material for the small francophone population; we use materials from Quebec, Ontario or elsewhere, which only address half the learning objectives set by the department.
Sometimes we are asked to implement a new program. Sometimes we get the translation, if we are lucky, of an English book, two or three years after the program has been implemented, which represents quite a challenge.
I do not know whether you are aware of certain initiatives — I imagine so — such as the Protocole de l'Ouest et du Nord, whose aim is to find common ground within the programs. The Protocoles de l'Ouest et du Nord of Manitoba, British Columbia and maybe of the Territories, as far as math is concerned, have been gaining ground and have managed to gain a foothold. However, Alberta has withdrawn from this protocol as far as social sciences are concerned.
If we could find common ground for our high school science programs from Manitoba to British Columbia — I know that there is a pan-Canadian protocol — publishers would publish material we could use.
Ms. Bugeaud: I would like to talk about the changing face of the francophone situation in Alberta. Twenty years ago, when, as a parent, I became involved with francophone education, we never would have thought or imagined we would see the day when the francophonie would be the way it is today.
Over 70 per cent of the students in our schools come from exogamous families, with one anglophone parent. Our families increasingly come from all over the world, in our case, more specifically from Africa.
We certainly welcome these francophones who come from all over the world into our schools. But this has forced us to deal with situations we were not prepared for. We have to manage several value systems, including the ones which were created when Alberta's French schools were founded.
We have a very difficult task in convincing some of our parents of certain things, in making them aware of certain things, in destroying myths regarding French education. We are working extremely hard and devising recruitment strategies in order to make our school the number one choice for francophones living in our province. That is not always easy.
Often, when you are dealing with exogamous families, French education represents a compromise. Unfortunately, the compromise is that the child will go to a French grade school but to an English high school. No matter how much we invest, we have this problem at the high school level, because we live in a society where there is competition within the education system. It is sad to say that funding the education system is more important than learning. This especially affects francophone education, because we do not have enough teachers.
There is also a lack of administrators in French schools. People are not necessarily interested in working as administrators. The work involves building a community, not management or administration. So we have to work extra hard to ensure that our French schools are adequately and fairly funded.
We have many students from Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. When they come to Alberta, these people often want to learn English. We also have to deal with this phenomenon in our schools and make sure that English is taught, because we live in a bilingual country, but we have to make sure that this is not done to the detriment of French. It is not easy to convince people that their child will be bilingual if the child goes to a French school located in a sea of English.
Mr. Eddie: I would like to provide a few statistics. In terms of recruitment, we have 24 schools in Alberta and 3,500 students. A study by our board found that in our schools, we probably had 15 per cent of the available francophone client population, which means that many francophones are not in our schools, as Nicole pointed out.
A study by a woman named Angéline Martel, entitled ``Rights, Schools and Communities: 1986-2002'', provides even higher figures. It is quite a challenge to recruit students.
On the positive side, for 10 years now, the Conseil scolaire du Centre-Nord and our school have experienced growth every year. That is not easy. Nicole mentioned that Alberta's francophone and anglophone population largely come from out of province. Some come with the preconceived idea that they are going to leave.
At our school, for example, last year, among students who left, more than half came from families that moved elsewhere.
Nicole spoke about the concept of exogamous parents and homes. The fact that we have over 70 per cent of our children coming from exogamous homes creates a very difficult situation. The anglophone parent debates with the francophone partner before deciding that French school is perhaps the best choice. If you add to this factor a very high assimilation rate for francophones, for whom English is the language of work and recreation, it becomes an even harder task.
We often hear parents insist that their children complete Grade 12 in English. They think that if their children go to school in French, their knowledge of English will not be as extensive.
However, when you look at our students' results in the Grade 12 English exam, the same exam that is given to anglophones, since 1996-1997, there was one year where our results were worse in terms of the number of students whose scores were acceptable. These results mean that every year, our students had better results than the anglophone provincial average. We need to dispel the myth about the quality of English learning in French schools.
Currently at our school, we just offer from grades 7 to 12. That is to our advantage.
Ms. Bugeaud: Despite all of the challenges and obstacles in francophone education, I mentioned the fact that wanting to work in francophone education is a dual calling. Contrary to what we see in the field of education, increasingly, particularly in Canada's high schools, we are getting into competition to become specialists in a field. As a francophone school, our mandate is to serve a varied population. Our mandate is not only to provide quality programming but also to bring out the cultural aspect of our francophonie.
We have to form partnerships with other associations. We often do that. But the public perception is that we are a general school, thus of lower quality. Our mandate is to serve and build a community.
As francophones, we have chosen to work in francophone education even if it is not always easy. After assessing all of the daily challenges, Pierre and I decided to come back to our school because it is francophone. This choice says a lot about who we are. As francophones working outside Quebec, our mandate is to build a community, to forge ties with the community and to pave the way for the next generation.
Mr. Eddie: There are a lot of schools in Edmonton. Teachers have the option of going to a huge English school. It truly is a choice. Despite all of these challenges and all of these things, we are very happy to be in the field of francophone education in minority communities, and we make this choice every year. It is a pleasure to come back. It is something we feel strongly about.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for that exchange. I visited your school, and I believe that this choice or feeling of belonging to the French community is well reflected in everything you have done over the years at Maurice- Lavallée school. When you enter the school, you sense the French ambience and the desire to be a part of it.
First of all, I would like to apologize to my colleagues. I should have introduced them at the beginning. The deputy chairman of the committee is Dr. Wilbert J. Keon, from Ontario. Sometimes he says he is from Quebec. He is a highly valued member of the committee.
Allow me to introduce Senator Comeau, from Nova Scotia, and Senator Chaput, from Manitoba. Unfortunately, the other members of the committee were not able to come. Senator Léger, from New Brunswick, is held up in Ottawa, as well as Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier, whom you have certainly seen and heard over the 30 years of his political life and of defending francophones.
The committee also has a representative of the anglophone minority in Quebec. We also have Senator Maheu and Senator Jean Lapointe. It would have been nice to have Senator Jean Lapointe with us because he really likes to focus on early childhood, but he does not like flying. So he did not come to Edmonton.
I am thinking about your numerous challenges and the issues of recruitment and retention. I know that education comes under provincial jurisdiction. You said in your notes that you had a very good rapport with the provincial government and the department of education.
Do you sense any federal presence in the things you do? Pierre, you mentioned sports. Ms. Bugeaud, you mentioned school dynamics, immigration and African families. Do you receive any funding, grants or encouragement from federal organizations in these communities?
Ms. Bugeaud: In terms of families coming from out of province, we are subsidized for these families the same way as we are provincially, the same way as for any student.
However, we do receive a few additional subsidies for students in need of francization. But clearly, for a number of these families, the level of schooling is low. They have a completely different life experience and they are going through reintegration into a new culture and a new education system. We have to be sensitive to the unique features of this population in our schools. We cannot just say that everyone gets X dollars and add a little top-up to meet student needs.
When you add a top-up of $300 per student for further francization, I cannot, as an administrator, go very far in a teaching task aimed at re-education or re-francization.
The Chairman: You mentioned a loan. That brings me to funding. Pierre, if you went to teach in an English school, doing the same kind of work in Edmonton, would the salary scale be different?
Mr. Eddie: Salary scales in Edmonton are quite comparable. There are over 60 school boards in Alberta. In last year's bargaining, teachers and administrators ranked 20th and 21st on the provincial salary scale. That is quite comparable to my colleagues in Edmonton.
Senator Comeau: I congratulate you and thank you for choosing to work in your community. With that choice, you are passing on values to our young people. You promote values in life that are more important than seeking work or salaries.
You mentioned that about 15 per cent of francophone students are enrolled in French schools, which leaves a rather large number of students going to English schools instead of French schools. If these young people go to English schools, will they be lost to francophones? Will these families lose their French character?
Mr. Eddie: I have a very interesting statistic: up to 73 per cent of our board's clientele comes from exogamous homes. That is quite a challenge. My wife is not a francophone. It is a challenge deciding whether our children will go to francophone or anglophone schools.
The rate of assimilation in Alberta is very high. There is still some growth within our board and our school. We have many students coming from Africa and from elsewhere. The growth is there, at 15 per cent, even though it is not very high.
Ms. Bugeaud: I would like to add that at the very beginning, when francophone schools were being established, French was already losing ground. So the remedial clause is certainly being respected, the clause allowing for the re- establishment of the use of French.
In general, once parents have decided which language their child will be educated in, it is very difficult for us to retrieve them from a specific system. We do not spend much time on those people because we do not have the statistics to back us up. That is why we need to concentrate on the very young, before decisions are even made. Several programs have been established to recruit those young people.
There has been a program for several years in the north of the province called: ``Francophones aux couches.'' As soon as a child is born in a community, home visits are undertaken in order to convince that family to register the child. So we need to start very early.
Senator Comeau: In Nova Scotia, I have seen whole villages become anglicized and assimilated. I would like to know if that is happening here. I do not know if the phenomenon exists because of the location of the villages, on small peninsulas. These villages existed as a whole and all of a sudden, from one generation to the other, they became anglicized, assimilated, very rapidly, within 25 years.
Children are born and the parents decide to send them to school in English. If they go to school in English, even though they are hearing a little French at home, they cannot understand it nor speak it.
Have you seen the phenomenon of entire villages becoming anglicized?
Ms. Bugeaud: Absolutely. We have seen that phenomenon all over Alberta. I am a Franco-Albertan from Bonnyville, a small very francophone village. It has been almost entirely anglicized. Services have become less and less available to people and this type of assimilation has been observed throughout the province.
We have also seen a lot of urbanization. Francophones from all these small communities come to the cities. In the provincial francophone schools, we have seen many students leave to go to the big city. Young people do not want to stay in their native community. Ensuring this continuity is another big challenge.
Senator Comeau: You talked about isolation. You teach certain courses and you feel alone because very few people teach similar courses. Do you have a way of communicating regularly or easily with your colleagues throughout Canada who are in a similar situation? Is there any financial encouragement, for example, to visit your colleagues?
Mr. Eddie: There have been attempts to develop networks between francophone teachers, with organizations such as the ACREF or other associations.
Senator Comeau: I am not talking about the telephone or the Internet. I am talking about people you can become friends with. You need to be able to meet them regularly.
Mr. Eddie: Other than through conferences or my travels, I would say no. I do have access to some funding to attend conferences. But for the most part, on a daily basis, we are working alone doing our own thing.
Ms. Bugeaud: We have access to an official languages bursary that allows for a maximum of $850 per year for participation in francophone conferences outside the province. That only represents a part of the cost and you can understand how difficult it is to send several people.
As francophone administrators from the province, we have given ourselves the mandate to go as a team each year to a congress called ``Le Congrès des cadres'' in Quebec City, and that is where we go to bring ourselves up-to-date in francophone education.
Senator Chaput: I congratulate you on the enormous amount of work that you have achieved in our French schools, and I say ``our'' because I am from Manitoba, but I am also from the west. And the francophone communities in the west are experiencing in general the same reality and challenges that you are.
I see the enormous effort being asked of our teachers in minority French schools. You are the builders, you said so yourselves. You have been trained in a specific area but you have to be generalists. You need to teach several subjects at a time because our schools are small. You have to deal with students who see the majority language schools that are more appealing, bigger, that have more to offer in terms of, for example, sports, et cetera.
You have to be able to tell them that they are fine where they are and furthermore, you have to promote French and be able to recruit more students. This is an enormous task. I wonder how it is that we still have teachers in our schools and I congratulate you. It must be because you believe in it, and you have a sort of mission.
That said, my first question is about the protocol. I believe Pierre mentioned the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for establishing a common base. What is this? Who is responsible and what are they doing?
Mr. Eddie: There were two initiatives. The first was a pan-Canadian initiative for the sciences mainly, biology, chemistry, physics, with the exception of Quebec. The provinces met. The purpose was not to establish a common curriculum but rather to establish a basis that each province could use in order to reach the same learning outcomes within the same number of years.
Then there was an initiative called the ``Western and Northern Canadian Protocol'' which included Manitoba to British Columbia, including the Territories. I know that mathematics is still under discussion. For social studies, there were other problems.
Senator Chaput: Is it provincial representatives that met?
Mr. Eddie: They were committees. We have both been members of these committees. The purpose was to represent francophones from Alberta on the Alberta committee. Then, representatives from Alberta sat at meetings with representatives from the other provinces.
Senator Chaput: Were French studies a part of this meeting and this protocol, given that we are talking about western Canada?
Mr. Eddie: A very interesting phenomenon occurred. Our social studies program — which, for our purposes, means history and geography together — is very different from the programs in other provinces. Alberta had requested that the program include the francophone fact, the aboriginal fact, and the anglophone and multicultural fact. This was truly a step forward and very interesting. But it did not work.
Alberta withdrew from the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for social studies.
Senator Chaput: Can I ask you why it did not work? Is it because other provinces did not want to adopt that type of approach?
Ms. Bugeaud: When we are talking about the history of this country, as francophones, anglophones and aboriginals, we do not completely agree on the interpretation of our history. In that respect, negotiations were difficult because many people, even within the provincial committees, had difficulty in understanding us as francophones, in understanding the place that we, francophones, wanted to ensure that we had in our history. All students in the province, be they francophone or anglophone, should know our history and the contribution that francophones have made to the history of Alberta and Canada.
We had some very lengthy discussions.
Mr. Eddie: Clearly, discussions about common math programs are easier.
Ms. Bugeaud: Yes.
Mr. Eddie: But when we started talking about identity or the feeling of belonging, all of a sudden that created problems.
Senator Chaput: I would like to know who implemented this initiative and who funded this provincial initiative? Did the federal government play any role in that?
Ms. Bugeaud: The ministries from each province reached an agreement.
Senator Chaput: The Franco-Sakatchewanians talked to us about recruiting. When a parent of a Franco- Saskatchewanian child wish their child to start attending a francophone school — if I understood correctly, and my colleagues will correct me if I am wrong — they must obtain permission from the division or the anglophone school to remove the child and register him in a French school. Is that what we were really told?
The Chairman: It is permission from the majority for a minority. I understood that this only occurred in Saskatchewan.
Senator Chaput: I wanted to know if this type of thing occurred here.
The Chairman: I think that that concerns article 29.
Senator Chaput: Did you hear about that? Does that happen in Alberta?
Ms. Bugeaud: I do not fully understand the situation.
Senator Chaput: Let us say that your child is attending an anglophone school and you decide, as a parent, that you would like to send your child to a franchophone school. Do you need to obtain permission from someone somewhere to do that?
Ms. Bugeaud: No, not at all.
Senator Chaput: You do not have to ask for permission?
Mr. Eddie: No.
Ms. Bugeaud: The parents who meet the criteria of article 23 of the Charter, namely, whose first language is French, or who are francophones, automatically have access to francophone education.
When they come to us, they have to indicate on the registration form if they are members of an entitled group.
Senator Chaput: So it is like the situation in Manitoba.
The Chairman: Yes, we were told that this was a situation unique to Saskatchewan and the matter is now before the courts.
Mr. Eddie: I just wanted to make a comment about students from Edmonton who select the school they wish to attend. We have some fierce competition, if I could call it that, with schools specializing in soccer, hockey or ballet. So when students make their choices, there is a great deal of competition.
Senator Chaput: You mentioned the Provincial School Adjustment Network, which is funded by both the federal and provincial governments. I am presuming that this is an education agreement?
Ms. Bugeaud: Yes.
Senator Chaput: And you talked about the participation of early childhood. I think that early childhood is involved one way or another. Could you provide me with a little bit more explanation on how this network operates and how many children participate? When you talk about early childhood, do you have any figures?
Ms. Bugeaud: Indeed, I do not have the exact number of early childhood students who have used these services, but the network is available to all young children. In Alberta, starting at age three or four, children can go to nursery school and starting at that point the children who need services can have access to the network. However, the School Adjustment Network is designed for children who have learning, physical or other difficulties. This network gives students access to professionals in all areas of health.
Senator Chaput: This network, therefore, does not pertain to students who have to re-learn French.
Ms. Bugeaud: Francization is not part of the adjustment network. In our primary schools, we do have francization programs where people work with the students, in small groups or individually, to help them improve their French.
Senator Chaput: Are the francization programs partially funded by your education agreement?
Ms. Bugeaud: We do not have a francization program. People in the field work along with our board's educational services and other francophone school boards to create tools and find the required material. It is not the same type of francization that an anglophone learning a second language will undergo. Finding resources is quite a challenge for us.
The Chairman: We were told that in Saskatchewan, in Manitoba and elsewhere — we have also experienced this in eastern Canada — teaching material is often translated from English to French. Do you have books or teaching tools that are really typical of the west or do you use Quebec teaching materials?
Ms. Bugeaud: Most of our resources come from Quebec. However, over the past few years, in Alberta we have been seeing more and more writers who are publishing stories about our history, our experience. These texts become resources in our programming. But our list of resources is not long.
Some teachers have produced, in cooperation with the ministry, resources in various fields. After providing so many years of francophone education, we have reached the point where we recognize that we need to begin producing our own resources, because we can no longer wait for others to produce them for us.
The Chairman: You are the ones who know what your needs are.
[English]
Senator Keon: When I entered post-secondary education a long time ago at the University of Ottawa, a student from Edmonton here who has been a lifelong friend was in the same class. He was educated by the French religious orders here. I was educated by the English religious orders at St. Patrick's.
However, it seemed to me that our curricula were virtually identical as we took our degrees in science and so forth, and subsequently in medicine. He is now a psychiatrist and his practice in Ottawa is largely francophone.
At that time, it seemed that the curriculum here was very close to the curriculum in Ottawa, except mine was English and his was French, and fortunately, he had the option at the University of Ottawa of continuing in French in many of his courses, and I continued in English.
Has that capability been preserved? I know that the religious order that ran St. Patrick's College has since virtually disappeared. I suspect the same happened here.
Ms. Bugeaud: Well, if I can speak personally, I am a graduate of Faculté Saint-Jean and I can attest to the fact that over the last 20 years, there has always been a base in post-secondary education, but we are now seeing development of courses that correspond to the needs of the community of that province. If we look at the whole area of education, when I took my Bachelor of Education, we did not have access to many courses. They were particularly designed to teach children in a francophone setting in a province that had a majority English population.
More and more, we are seeing institutions like La Faculté Saint-Jean develop courses that correspond to the students in education who are presently in the schools in Alberta in regards to francophone education.
However, I think you will agree with me that the curriculum across universities in this country does not change drastically quickly.
Mr. Eddie: If I can speak about the curriculum in the earlier grades, our students start taking English in grade 3, and by grade 12 have the same curriculum as far as language arts are concerned. Obviously, our students have an equivalent language arts course in French, which, because it is for francophones, is not offered on the anglophone side. Our problem in terms of differentiation from other provinces would be in certain things such as social studies, where we put everything together. We were talking about resources a while ago, possibly in Quebec, and one year they teach history and another year they teach geography; it is not an advantage for us in terms of having access to resources or books. Those are big differences that create some problems for us.
Senator Keon: Where do you try to fit your curriculum now? I was enquiring in Manitoba as to why they did not try to duplicate the Quebec educational system or tag along with it, because it is a superb system. Are you making an effort to have your students easily lock into the Quebec educational system or not?
Ms. Bugeaud: It is difficult for us to bring about change there because we do not control that aspect, but our curricula are very different. We do not have the same curricula here, the same program of studies, particularly in social studies. We study, at the various levels, different aspects of Canadian history, whereas in the Quebec curriculum, it is more a study of provincial history and geography. The curricula are very different, and we have not undertaken that battle because we do not control that.
Mr. Eddie: I am not sure if you will meet somebody from the Department of Learning here in Alberta. There is a section called la Direction de l'éducation française, and they might be better prepared to answer that question.
The Chairman: I am glad, Mr. Eddie, that you added that.
[Translation]
Senator Keon talked about the school program and Senator Chaput spoke about the demanding role that you have as teachers in minority situations.
Do the education faculties provide facilitation courses to teachers who wish to teach in minority situations? Would such courses be useful?
Ms. Bugeaud: It is absolutely essential for any teacher who comes to teach in Alberta or in any minority situation to understand the experience of the people.
When we talk about the needs of francophones living in a minority situation, we need to ensure that the teachers understand the psychology of the student who is living in a minority situation, which is not always obvious.
The Faculté Saint-Jean provides courses on teaching in a minority situation. Out of pure interest, I have already taken some of these courses because they add a great deal to a teacher's knowledge. But such courses are not provided at every university. Our school boards understand the value of understanding francophone education in Alberta, in knowing the values underlying the establishment of these schools and being aware of the important role the educator plays in training young people.
When a teacher comes to us from Quebec, he or she does not have the mentality of a francophone who has had to do constant battle with failure and overcome the obstacles pertaining to the francophonie. It is important that these teachers understand what our communities have had to go through.
Mr. Eddie: I too took courses at the Faculté Saint-Jean about 20 years ago. Some courses dealt with the issue of the francophonie in minority situations. I know that today's education students are much better prepared than we were 20 years ago.
The Chairman: I would sincerely like to thank you. I believe that you have the passion. You have got our day off to a good start. The challenges that you have noted and your accomplishments are things that we will be able to delve into more deeply as we meet people representing early childhood, training and the community.
We will now have a round table with representatives from the Fédération des conseils scolaires de l'Alberta, Mr. Bissonnette, Mr. Desrochers; from the Fédération des francophones de l'Alberta, Ms. Andrée Verhogg; and from the Institut Guy-Lacombe de la famille, Ms. Patricia Rijavec.
Mr. Desrochers, you have the floor.
Mr. Pierre Desrochers, President, Fédération des conseils scolaires de l'Alberta: I am appearing here today as the President of the Fédération des conseils scolaires de l'Alberta. The Fédération is comprised of five francophone school boards in Alberta: the Conseil Centre-Nord, which is in the Edmonton region; the Conseil Nord-Ouest, in the Falher region; the Conseil Centre-Est, in the Saint-Paul, Bonnyville and Cold Lake region; and in the south of the province there are two school boards, a Catholic board and a public board.
On page 10 of the document we handed out, you will find a map showing the locations of the schools in the province.
The Conseil Centre-Nord is in pink; the Nord-Ouest is in yellow; the Centre-Est is in blue; and the green in the south is either Catholic or public.
Francophone schools are still at their initial stages as compared to the schools of the anglophone majority and also as compared to francophone schools in several other provinces. They have been here since 1984. At that time there was no francophone governance as such. These francophone schools had been opened by anglophone boards. The first two, in Calgary and Edmonton, at that time had, respectively, 239 students and 125 students.
Now, as you can see, we have 25 groups with more than 3,500 students and, of these 25 schools, 15 schools were opened before the province had begun to implement the policy of management by francophones, in 1994, and the 10 remaining schools were opened after 1994.
You can see on the map that we are widely scattered and that we have small schools all over the rural regions of the province and we also have small schools in urban regions.
We try to bring all our students together at least once a year in an activity which is called ``le Rage''. This activity is very popular with young children. I think that this activity does a great deal to fulfil our mandate, which consists of adding a cultural component as well as an element of pride to the education process. But this kind of cultural activity is very expensive. It is a real challenge.
Many of the schools have less than 200 students, and 7 of the schools are attended by students from kindergarten to high school; 6 schools are attended by students from kindergarten to junior high school; and in many of these schools, several grades are found in the same classroom. And I think that this morning, we mentioned something about the challenges facing teachers in this kind of situation.
As our student population is scattered, more than 90 per cent of our students go to school by bus. Thus, there are challenges to be met with regard to bus routes, expenses and the time that students have to spend on the bus.
Most of our students are children of mixed marriages: one parent speaks French and the other speaks English. These are the circumstances we deal with.
The provincial government made several changes in funding to try to respond to some of these challenges. In the last Funding Framework, as we call it, there are mechanisms to deal with all the francophone schools, be they rural or urban, as rural schools, and thus eligible for funding to compensate for the scattered student population. There are ways of improving the share allocated to francophone school boards.
For instance, with regard to transportation, we received a transport allowance for each child which is three and a half times larger than the allowance given for each child in an urban anglophone school board, which allows us to offer transportation without the parents having to pay.
We have taken measures with regard to full-time kindergarten. In the province, at this time, anglophone school boards do not provide full-time kindergarten. There is only half-time kindergarten, funded by the government. We received funds for half-time kindergartens from the provincial government but we now provide full-time kindergarten to our students everywhere in the province. We have a large deficit in this file but we believe that it is very important to attract clientele and also to provide French-language education to the students as soon as they come to us.
Many eligible students come from families that mainly speak English and we take advantage of the full-time kindergarten to teach them French. In fact, we would like to start even earlier.
Most kindergartens also have a junior kindergarten which is partly subsidized by the school board. Junior kindergarten is for three-year-olds and kindergarten is for four-year-olds. But apart from helping them to pay the rent and a part of the salaries in some very small schools, we cannot help them more than that, because of our budget.
In 1981, we set up the Provincial School Adaptation Network so that we could hire francophone professionals for students with special needs. There is still much work to do, but we have a very different model from the ones used by the anglophones in attempting to fill these needs.
I said at the outset that we have five francophone school boards in Alberta and this is partly due to the scattered student and parent population, and the fact that parents feel a need to get involved in their children's education. And to respond to parents who have constitutional rights, it is important for them to feel that they play a part in running their schools.
In Alberta, funding formulas provide for a 6 per cent envelope to fund management. For some school boards, 6 per cent is not enough to pay for a superintendent and the rest. Therefore, the government contributes more money.
I think that there is a lack of transparency in funding programs when it comes to knowing where the money goes, because they are managed by ministerial agreements between cabinet and Canadian Heritage.
It is said in Alberta that the province carries out its responsibilities well, and even better than other provinces do, when it comes to funding francophone schools. The province invested in infrastructure, which other provinces did not do, and it found ways to provide funds, in a discreet manner, so that francophone schools could receive more funding.
But we realize that much of these funds come from the federal government, as it helps the province to carry out its duties and responsibilities in the funding of education. We had financing formulas that worked well but, as I said at the outset, these formulas are constantly changing.
On page 4 of our brief, we state that last year we received money for building operation and maintenance. To provide you with some background, we inherited several buildings that were no longer used by anglophone school boards, and these building were too large for our own needs. Thus, the province found a way to help us, and said that it would consider that our buildings are 80 per cent full and that we would be funded accordingly.
Last year, the province transferred this responsibility from Alberta Learning to Infrastructure and the money disappeared. Thus for our Conseil Centre-Nord, the difference is nearly $400,000, which previously helped to subsidize our full-time kindergartens and all that.
The provincial government changed the financing formulas. We no longer deal with formulas for scattered populations to help rural schools, now we are dealing with schools that are small by necessity. And there is a project afoot to find financing formulas for schools that are small by necessity that will also help francophone schools which are small by necessity and small rural schools.
The entire cost of this is somewhere between $50 million and $55 million, and up to now, Alberta Learning has not been able to get this money from the provincial Treasury Board. We are told that it might be for next year, but we are not sure. Nor do we know what the rules are.
As regards the present and future needs of the French-language boards, a great deal remains to be done to make communities aware of the advantages and importance of education in French.
The boards still have a huge job to do to seek out another 70 per cent of those eligible for education in French who are not in our schools, either because there are no schools in their region, or because they think English schools and immersion programs offer other choices. It is an enormous challenge.
Increasingly, francization is becoming a mandatory service, because a number of our students come from families where English is predominant. So there is a great deal of work to be done when they come to our schools. The earlier we can do this, the better it will be. And in order to achieve this objective, I think that full-time, funded kindergarten will help us achieve this francization earlier and ensure that the services offered are somewhat more effective.
There is a great deal to be done to develop the culture and identity of our pupils. It is a matter of resources. The arrival of significant numbers of francophone immigrants from urban communities requires additional recruitment efforts and strategies to ensure these newcomers settle properly into our communities. The face of the francophone community in Alberta has changed. A number of people have come from Africa and elsewhere in the world. So there is no longer an issue of an old-stock francophone identity in Alberta. Ours is a very multicultural reality.
In addition to having to meet all sorts of special needs in our schools, we have to deal with cultural and language complexities.
As regards the federal, provincial and territorial agreements, both our knowledge of them and their transparency leave a great deal to be desired. There seems to be a lack of harmonization between these agreements and the needs of the community, particularly where there is no provincial funding for early childhood programs, day care programs, and so on. In my view, the focus and objectives of these agreements should be based more on services for early childhood development.
As regards the negotiations, we are completely in the dark. We have no idea where we are at. Announcements are made about funding. Parents think that the money exists, but that is not the case. Perhaps the funding will be available for 2004, 2005 or 2006. We simply do not know. The announcements are made long before any funding appears. I imagine this is because of the negotiations between the various levels of government.
We are now continuing our discussions with the department here to play a much more important role in these negotiations. Recently, at the last meeting of the Fédération, the representatives of the department in Alberta spoke about a $20-million budget for special projects for Canada as a whole. Of this $20 million, we were told that $100,000 was earmarked for Alberta. So where will the rest of the money go? What type of project will it finance? There is no transparency at all, and in our view, there does not seem to be any equity either.
With respect to the federal-provincial agreements on second-language teaching, the Fédération supports these programs without reservation. We also support anything that can be done to increase funding for these programs. Even though this does not benefit us directly, we see the benefits of these additional funds for the francophone community in Canada.
What we want is access to early childhood services and professionals. We think access to these services is still very limited. There are only two French-language day care centres in the province — one in Calgary and the other in Edmonton. Some initiatives, such as the directory of health care professionals, have helped us identify them, but generally there is minimal information of this type available in Alberta.
There is a great deal to be done to recruit and retain pupils, and to recruit and retain qualified teaching staff. It is always a major challenge to recruit qualified teaching staff, particularly in rural communities, as long as the demand exceeds the supply.
I would like to talk a little about post-secondary education. Equitable access to post-secondary education in French is an important factor in recruiting and retaining pupils for our French-language schools. There should be some federal-provincial agreements to ensure stable funding for these institutions. Work is required as well in the college sector, which does not yet really exist in our province.
That is a short overview of our brief. I am prepared to answer any questions you may have.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for a very good presentation, Mr. Desrochers. There will be a question period and we will come back to your conclusions.
I would now like to introduce Mr. Ernest Chauvet, President of the Association canadienne-française, and Mr. Raymond Lamoureux, the Director of the ACFA.
Mr. Ernest Chauvet, President, Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta (ACFA): I will turn the floor over to Mr. Lamoureux. He is familiar with the issues and prepared the brief. That will be a more efficient way of proceeding.
Mr. Raymond Lamoureux, Director General, Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta (ACFA): The ACFA is the organization recognized in the Statutes of Alberta to represent the francophone community in this province. The ACFA has existed since 1926. Its activities cover the whole province, through 10 regional and one local chapter. A local chapter is a developing regional chapter, and in this case, it is located in the Red Deer region.
The ACFA has the following mandate: to speak for its members and the francophone community as a whole. It is responsible for coordinating our demands and community development initiatives in cooperation with the francophone organizations of Alberta. It is also responsible for following up on this work.
It is responsible for ensuring community development by taking charge in areas that have not been assumed provincially by organized groups. Often, ACFA will get involved in one area, and once an organization is established and is well under way, it turns over responsibility for this area to the new organization.
One of the sectors being developed at the moment is heritage and history. At the moment, we have no provincial organization prepared to look after this.
The ACFA ensures community development by supporting sectoral groups in various fields, and by providing support and assistance for regional initiatives.
The association ensures the unity and cohesion of its members.
It is responsible for coordinating the efforts of francophone organizations throughout the province, and for all the planning and community development activities, by ensuring that the priority-setting, coordination and evaluation procedures of the Franco-Albertan community are working properly.
It is responsible for promoting the pride and cultural expression of the francophone communities throughout Alberta, in cooperation with francophone organizations in the province, and for promoting a positive image of Alberta's francophone community to other communities in the province.
Two years ago, about 100 people from all parts of the province met to discuss the community's vision and values. The vision we adopted is that Franco-Albertans are full-fledged citizens living in a fully developed francophone society.
In the last two years, we have been focusing on the future, on a development plan. We have targeted nine development sectors. First and foremost, the ACFA has adopted an overall approach to community development.
At the moment, we are quite far advanced in developing a five-year plan. The nine development sectors included in our plan are arts and culture, communications and the media, the economy, education and training, immigration, heritage and history, policy and government services, health and welfare, and sports and leisure activities.
This presentation will highlight the interventions targeted by the community over the next five years.
In a few moments, I will ask Ms. Patricia Rijavec to speak to us about early childhood education. And I believe that Mr. Bissonnette will deal with post-secondary education this afternoon. I will therefore be leaving those two aspects aside this morning.
The arts and culture sector has always been extremely important for all of our communities in Alberta. Unfortunately, there are constraints that prevent us from achieving everything that we would truly like to accomplish in those areas.
A great deal of work must be done at the regional level in order to provide a broader range of programming. At this time, we have a regional office with one development officer and one office staff member, and that is it. Our funds for program development in the regions are somewhat limited.
I must admit that the more comprehensive development approach that we are advocating will greatly improve our operations in the regions. In the past, our development officers spent a great deal of time working on cultural activities. They did a lot of the work themselves but they had less time to deal with other important development issues. With our community development plans, we will attempt to move forward in each one of our nine development sectors.
Our development officers will become community development coordinators. They will have to work more closely with members of the community in order to ensure that progress can be made on these issues.
There are more than 62,000 francophones in Alberta and roughly 10 per cent of them belong to our association. This means that a large number of francophones are not directly involved in our association. Our history, as is the case for any other provinces, is not devoid of problems that divide our communities. Some of these divisions arose with the implementation of French-language schools. This caused a great upheaval in some of our communities, and the effects were felt in other sectors as well.
We hope that with nine sectors for development, we will be able to get beyond these sources of disagreement from the past. I believe that today, the French-language schools are well established in a number of communities and people are beginning to understand the rationale that led to the creation of these schools. We will not only focus on education and culture but also the economy, sports and recreation, health, and many sectors that directly affect the lives of many people within the community.
We hope to attract other individuals who were heretofore not involved in their community.
The arts and culture sector requires extra funding. We will, of course, require a greater number of volunteers. There are provincial organizations providing services throughout the entire province of Alberta.
The distances are great between Edmonton and Fort McMurray, Edmonton and Lethbridge or Edmonton and Grande Prairie. And when budgets are limited, it is almost impossible to provide the same level of service throughout the province. The closer one lives to the centre, the less it costs. And often, smaller areas cannot afford to bring in a theatre troupe or a group that could provide a workshop on theatre arts, for example.
In order to provide the same level of service throughout the province, where everyone would be charged the same amount, the provincial organization responsible for this file will have to change the way that it subsidizes the outlying areas. And this will require increased funding.
In the past, we had the Canada-Community agreements, which provided most of the operating funds for our organizations. There were about five provincial organizations at the outset. There are now more than 30. When the budget remains the same but the number of organizations goes from 5 to 30, each individual share will become smaller with every new organization that sees the light of day.
A new organization is a sign of vitality in a community but we must also realize that the amount earmarked for each one of the organizations will decrease in proportion to the numbers. Finding the necessary support to ensure that provincial organizations will run smoothly becomes a difficult matter.
When it comes to the primary intervention, namely communications and coordination, a number of sectors are neither developed nor even considered in the regions because of the cost, of course, but also because of the lack of resource persons. This relates to the need to coordinate cultural activities at the provincial level in order to provide for a more intensive cultural experience.
The second intervention involves financial and development aid. In order to do a proper job we require a large number of resources. This does not only involve funding from the federal government; we must also identify other funding sources.
Moreover, the ACFA, in our regions as well as in our organizations, increasingly recognizes the limitation of the Canada-Community agreements and we are attempting to determine what the federal government as well as the provincial government might be willing to provide by way of human or financial resources.
We are looking for foundations that might be willing to support us. You will note that throughout our brief there are requests for extra funding for our interventions.
The third intervention relates to representativeness and networking. There again, a number of points relate to funding. Some of the strategies include lobbying the governments as well as working together in order to reduce our costs.
The second sector, communications and the media — and the community feels that this is one of our greatest needs — involves the visibility of our communities in the media. People do not see themselves represented often enough on television, in the media, either on the radio or in print. Even those who work on our paper, Franco, must rethink the way which they use this publication to better serve our community.
Community radio is a project that has drawn a great deal of attention in Alberta. These radio services are available in some regions but it is a tough slog because of the cost involved. Communities that benefited from their own radio station were thrilled with the experience and various Alberta communities would like to have their own community radio stations. We might devise some way to share the resources. We need some way for the community to express itself, to listen to and relate to one another.
I will now move on to the economy. There is a provincial organization in charge of the economic sector in Alberta. The Chambre économique de l'Alberta operates throughout the province and has proven itself. Interventions relating to the diversification of the rural economy as well as tourism have been identified. In Alberta, there is a move from the outlying areas towards the cities. Young people are leaving the country to move into town. This becomes a problem. Through economic diversification, we are hoping to encourage more young people to stay. We are also seeking to develop entrepreneurs.
We want to enhance the use of the French language in francophone-owned businesses.
As part of our succession planning, we are seeking to integrate our youth and increase their awareness of the knowledge economy.
I will now turn to Ms. Rijavec who will speak to you about early childhood.
Ms. Patricia Rijavec, Institut Guy Lacombe de la famille: I will start by saying a few words about our organization and explain how it fits within our partnership with other groups.
As you can see, our community and its organizations are blossoming. We are the new kids in the community. Our organization, l'Institut Guy Lacombe de Famille, was founded in 1998. We are the new arrival within the Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta. Francophone families have discovered that in spite of the services that were available to them through the boards of education, there was precious little available for young children. And as you know, childhood does not end at the age of four and a half. Children continue to be children until they leave home, and these days, they are staying longer and longer. Therefore, support for the family has become a new outlet for the francophonie.
The Institut Guy Lacombe de la Famille is an apolitical organization, open to all cultures, all religions, all levels of language in our community and all ages. We are talking about from age zéro to 99, because we see that in order to support the family, you have to be open to all francophone families, and the definition of francophonie is constantly evolving.
All those who wish to support our mission, which is basically to develop and provide service programs and family resources, are invited to become members.
We have been in existence for five years and have become an organization that is at the table, with all of the major players, and it is really because we were serious about meeting basic needs. We work together. We have regular and very personal contact with families across the province, through our 14 resource centres. And it is based on these needs that we create programs, develop services and find resources to meet specific needs. That is more or less why we are so successful today.
I should say that our 14 centres were initially founded as preschool resource centres, but very quickly, we adapted to the needs. We are now open to the entire family.
These 14 centres were launched by the community. They are independently run by local organizations. We find that it is very important for them to maintain local control, because, like Mr. Desrochers said, people identify with one another and get involved in their organization. And in order to be able to respond promptly, I think you need to have a very close relationship with our communities and our families.
These centres were launched by volunteers: that is one of our strengths, but it is also one of our greatest weaknesses. When we began working just with our children, we did not understand the political significance of what we were doing by committing to raise our children in the French language and culture, and with a francophone identity in Alberta. We now understand that.
As I said, volunteers are our strength but they are also our greatest challenge, because, as you can see, if these are resource centres that depend heavily on volunteers, we cannot necessarily provide our families with well thought-out, continuous and stable development.
The success of our projects and organizations depends heavily on our volunteers. But we are now reaching a point where it is no longer reasonable to ask these people to spend so much time away from their own family. The irony is that we are a family support institute, and if we burn out our people, that would not make a lot of sense.
Among the projects of the Institut Guy Lacombe de la famille, I would like to talk about project La famille de l'an 2000a, the purpose of which was to introduce families to new technologies in order to give them better access to programs and services, as well as health professionals, through the Internet. We provide them with interactive conferences that are now archived on our Internet site. It is a highly appreciated service.
Our approach is a cooperative one. We work hand in hand with many organizations, because when it comes to family matters, the clientele is very broad. We have already cooperated with health authorities to provide programs and services like clinics for young children. We have also set up a project for pregnant women, project PANE. It is one of our largest projects. It is well in keeping with the mandate we set ourselves as an organization, to increase the visibility and accessibility of projects, programs and resources for families, to follow up with political action and to continue developing programs and projects to support families.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I would now ask Ms. Verhoog to take the floor.
Ms. Andrée Verhoog, President, Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta: The Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta was founded in 1986. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to get parents involved in the education of their children at home, in learning institutions and within the francophone community of Alberta.
Members of the FPFA include school boards, preschool and school-sector parent committees, and regional committees working in the area of education in French as a first language. Nationally, the FPFA is a member of the Commission nationale des parents francophones.
The objectives of the FPFA are, amongst others, to promote the role of parents in the education of their child with regard to French as a first language; to help develop an education system with French as the first, strong language and to ensure that every francophone child living in Alberta is treated fairly; to promote meetings and exchanges between francophone parents living in Alberta so they can share their experiences; to offer services involving support, development, information and training programs for parents and members; to enter into alliances with the main stakeholders working in the field of education with French as a first language, as we did with the PANE; and to represent and defend the interests of our members with regard to education.
Alberta, in 2003, has 25 francophone schools, 20 junior kindergartens, two day cares and seven playgroups. Over the years, the FPFA created several resources and programs. It created a guide entitled I'm With You, which was drafted in English to help exogamous families find French education opportunities. The guide is addressed to the anglophone parent to help him or her better understand what French education is all about, and why his or her children should be enrolled in a French school even if the child does not speak French. It is a very good guide.
The FPFA also developed a manual entitled L'élève francophone au coeur de la communauté, which contains strategies and tools to develop community integration projects with students.
Another publication is called Tu peux compter sur moi. It is a guide for children studying French as a first language. We also created a training program for parent committees and school boards, a training program which targets members of parent committees to help them fulfil their roles and responsibilities.
Le Chaînon is a provincial magazine containing information on French as a first language. It is written for parents.
At the preschool level, we created a project called ``Francophones aux couches'', which is an excellent tool to promote French, to make parents more aware of the issues and to provide guidance with regard to their children's education.
The four practical preschool guides aim to help parent committees with respect to setting up the management of preschool services.
In Alberta, if you want to set up a preschool service, you must apply to the Department of Health and Social Services and obtain a licence.
These guides are very detailed and are easy to understand for parents who do not know where to begin, especially if they want to create a preschool group.
Le lien du préscolaire is an information sheet which helps parents communicate with the preschool sector.
We have also created ``La boîte à outils du préscolaire and a related Web site which contains a plethora of information on various subjects. It is available to kindergarten teachers and parents and provides a convenient forum for them to exchange their views.
Les Caramboles are activity sheets for parents and preschool-aged children.
Alberta does not require preschool teachers to have any training, and most of them do not. Often, the teachers are mothers who care very much about preschool and who become deeply involved. One day, we would like every preschool teacher to receive the same kind of training.
Further, we have two annual meetings: the exchange forum is an annual meeting of the elected representatives of our member associations; and the annual symposium is the provincial meeting for parents and people and groups involved in the education sector. There is a conference and several workshops, the general annual meeting of the FPFA, as well as a day care and workshops for the kids.
The FPFA is currently preparing a series of information sheets on young families and francophone education. These sheets cover many of the questions that parents ask themselves about French education as well as answers showing the benefits and grounds for choosing education in French, as a first language.
We would also like to pursue a second area of training aimed at exogamous families. The FPFA wants to ensure continuity in that training.
Early childhood and exogamy are two very important issues for the FPFA. In Alberta, I believe that approximately 70 per cent of families registering their children in our schools are exogamous. We are working towards success in terms of identity, that is that our children not only be bilingual but that they be francophone. Two other important issues are the integration of students in the community and support for our member associations.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. You mentioned that there is no training for nursery school teachers. There need to be criteria. One cannot open a small day care or nursery school in your region with five or six children.
Ms. Verhoog: The criteria are set out in the Alberta Day Nurseries Act, but for a nursery school where children are only there three hours a day, the teachers do not need to have training.
Therefore if I, as mother, want to be a teacher, I do not need any training. But there are criteria. For example, the rooms have to be large enough. Nursery school teachers are evaluated but they do not need training. The only certificate that teachers need is a first aid certificate.
The Chairman: Children in nursery schools are four years old?
Ms. Verhoog: Most of them are between three and five years old. The children need to be toilet trained. If a three- year-old child is not toilet trained, then he or she cannot go to school.
The Chairman: Thank you to all four of you, for these very comprehensive presentations. There are certainly many issues.
Senator Comeau: In the Fédération des conseils scolaires presentation, you mentioned that you are not familiar with everything happening within the Official Languages in Education Program. There seems to be a lack of information about negotiations between the federal and provincial governments. You state that you receive $100,000 within the $20 million program.
I find it strange that Alberta is only receiving $100,000 out of such a high amount. Is that the correct amount?
Mr. Gérard Bissonnette, Fédération des conseils scolaires de l'Alberta: Yes. We can tell you what our experience has been. As you are no doubt aware, the Official Languages in Education Program provides funding in three ways. The first is based on the number of students. The province provides a certain amount for each student. The second envelope is guaranteed to the province in order to create new projects or expand existing ones.
The third is a supplementary amount of $20 million annually, which provinces apply to in order to expand its programs and services.
This year, the province presented a proposal — we are not familiar with all the details — which included the activities we had suggested under distance education, recruitment and full time kindergarten. The answer we received was that for this proposal, which would cost approximately one million or a million and a half dollars, we would be granted $100,000 for this year.
We do not know who makes these decisions nor how they are made.
Senator Comeau:I do not see why you are not sitting at the table — not necessarily as negotiators — when discussions between the federal and provincial governments are taking place, given that these negotiations are supposed to be in your interest.
Mr. Bissonnette: I think we can somewhat guess at the answer. It may depend as much on the provincial government as the federal government. The provincial government probably prefers to consult us about our needs, but when its representatives present a proposal to the federal government, they do not necessarily want to share any information with anyone before the negotiations are over.
Senator Comeau: But the dynamics are always very special when it comes to the negotiation —
Mr. Bissonnette: Yes.
Senator Comeau: — when two groups of negotiators sit down a the table. And it is important that the reality of francophone communities in Alberta be represented.
I have a second question. Very often, we get the impression in Ottawa that there are no francophones in Alberta, that there are only anglophones. And if there are any minority groups, they are Chinese or other communities. It is very rare to hear your federal representatives refer to the Franco-Albertan reality.
Senator Comeau: Is there not some way of reaching your members of Parliament and senators to explain your reality to them so that when we francophones from other provinces are discussing programs and needs, such as those you mentioned today, your members of Parliament and your senators could be more active and aggressive in looking after your problems and meeting your needs. It is not that we do not want to do this. We would certainly like to do this.
I think they have a role to play in this matter, because given the commitment and enthusiasm you have shown today — and yesterday we met with representatives from Saskatchewan and Manitoba — I think your strength should be reflected in greater attention in Ottawa.
Mr. Chauvet: That is a very valid point. I would like to make two comments.
First, during the year, I met with Mr. Dion three or four times to make him aware of our community. I believe that Mr. Dion, Mr. Bélanger and others are very aware of our situation.
Of course, we are not familiar with all the levels of government, because it is a huge structure. We therefore targeted the people we see as playing key roles.
Second, many times over the last two years, we have asked to have a francophone senator from Alberta. It would be good to have someone familiar with federal policies to defend our rights. We submitted three names as possible francophone senators, and we are still waiting for a reply.
I can assure you that having a francophone senator from Alberta would advance our cause tremendously. I would even say that not having one will become a serious handicap, because under the Dion plan, there will be increased awareness at various levels of government, and that will be a great support to our community.
I would like to say that if this were done on the basis of official languages, it would be very much appreciated.
In addition, we obviously cannot speak to everyone in government. We speak to key individuals and we hope the message will spread.
The Chairman: You mentioned the Dion plan, but there are other organizations as well. There is Canadian Heritage, there is a regional official languages office here in Edmonton. Do those people help you promote the cause? Can they help you?
Mr. Chauvet: We know Ms. Copps very well, as well as Mr. Coderre and others, depending on the issue.
Promotion is a huge job. We have to look after our own people, and that is why we have provincial organizations. Often, the anglophone community is not aware of the francophone community.
Generally speaking, people who head departments are aware of the francophone community. Of course, at the moment, there is a challenge in implementing official languages in various departments, such as the Department of Immigration. I do not know how much money has been earmarked, but Alberta ended up with $50,000 or $60,000. The intention is to set up two reception centres — one in Calgary and the other in Edmonton. We will not go very far with that amount of money.
We have a very good relationship with Sheila Copps. Personally, I know her quite well. So we have these contacts, though we can always forge more.
Our approach is to constantly broaden our horizons. We also have to broaden our horizons with the changing governments. Soon, we will have to undertake new negotiations.
I would like to stress, however, that having a francophone senator for the province would enable us to move forward much more quickly.
The Chairman: Mr. Desrochers, at point number three of your conclusion, you state that you want the rules of the game to be the same, you want a level playing field. Who is now influencing the rules of the game? Is there some political influence at play here?
Mr. Desrochers: I think that the influence is largely political. This is something we would know if we had a seat at the negotiating table. We do not know the rules of the game.
For five years, I was with the Conseil scolaire du Centre-Nord, Alberta's francophone school board. It took five years of enormous involvement to learn the contents of the bilateral agreement. In my view, as a simple school councillor, such knowledge seems to be reserved for administrators in provincial and federal governments. And it seems that what appears to be going on is not really part of genuine negotiations. We are simply told what the amount is, and how things will be done.
If our goal is genuinely to promote official languages, we have to see how this goal can best be achieved through special projects.
Allow me to give you an example. Alberta's Commission on Learning has just published an extensive report on second-language education. In the report, Alberta states that it will be the last province to require a second language in order to graduate from high school.
But, as we hear from Alberta politicians, that second language can be anything, for example Mandarin. The choice is up to the child's parents.
I think that OLEP money could be used to promote French, to ensure that French becomes the main second language in English schools.
In a nutshell, if we are not at the table and if there is no transparency, we cannot see how political objectives are translated into concrete action.
The Chairman: But under the Official Languages Act, politicians do not have a choice really. It is not a question of numbers. It is a matter of law. This is an equality issue. The fact that 99 per cent of Alberta's population is anglophone does not mean that francophones should have no access to funding.
This is the kind of information we are looking for at these western hearings. We want to determine the extent to which the federal government's financial and human resources reflect equality with respect to the majority and any minorities.
Ms. Rijavec: An excellent example is the PANE project. This is a project that we, the organizations here at the table, launched under the National Children's Agenda. We had heard about a departmental agreement giving priority to early childhood, and we had heard that there would be money for early childhood in the budget. We very much wanted to be a part of this initiative. We organized a number of round tables, prepared background documents and put forward a proposal, an action plan and budgets.
The chart before you does not show only schools, but also shows preschool facilities, day care centres and resource play centres across the province. What we have set up is pretty impressive. But you know as well as I do how fragile our programs are, since they owe their existence solely to the goodwill of school boards willing to recognize early childhood as a priority. Our organization depends largely on volunteers to provide programs and deliver services for early childhood and the family.
We had an excellent meeting with the Honourable Denis Ducharme, a francophone member, who is President of Alberta's Francophone Secretariat. He was very helpful, organizing a meeting with the Honourable Iris Evans, the Minister of Child and Family Services, for us. Ms. Evans was extremely welcoming. She understands our situation very well. She indicated a number of programs in which we could take part. Now, it is up to us — the small organizations — to go knocking on doors to plead our cause. People say that we are so much smaller than most organizations yet provide such broad services. You must understand that we are answerable to the majority. She smiled very kindly and invited me to submit a request along with our small...
Just yesterday, I received a call from one of our volunteers. She has two young children, and works full-time. As a volunteer, she is entirely committed to ensuring the survival of the Edmonton region's sole French day-care facility. In all of Alberta, we have two French day-care facilities. So as you can see, we have not yet met all the needs. She said: When you appear before the committee, please talk about me. This will help you understand where we are at present.
Willing as we are to operate as part of majority programs, we know full well that it is not an approach that works. We tried it for seven or eight years, as part of the Student Health Initiative Program in schools, and we saw that it does not work.
We were told to seek assistance from the federal government, because we would receive funding under Minister Dion's action plan for official languages. We were told the federal government would be willing to give us money, and to go knocking on doors to get it.
Before anything else, we have to ensure our daily survival, then go to the eight Child Services authorities to see whether they will give us funding. The third step is to go to the federal government and plead our cause.
We are very willing to do it all, but I think we are caught in a federal-provincial catch-22 situation. I am neither the first nor will I be the last to say it.
But we know our needs. We have an infrastructure there. We know what will meet our communities' needs. So we ask you to have confidence in us. Give us the money directly and we can take sensible, well-thought-out and ongoing measures to help our communities.
The Chairman: A few moments ago, it was mentioned that funding announcements were made far ahead of the actual funding. Announcements are made. It looks good politically, but recipients have to wait a long time before getting any of the money.
Ms. Rijavec: That's right. We are very happy to hear the announcement, but then we become despondent because we become discouraged.
Senator Chaput: Ms. Rijavec, you have explained the situation very well. Before I was appointed to the Senate, I worked in community development in the province of Manitoba. Things were the same then. I have to confess that they do not change very quickly.
You briefly mentioned the National Children's Agenda. As far as you know, you have never received financial support. There have been statements and discussions, but none of it has resulted in concrete action for francophones in Alberta.
Ms. Rijavec: There was concrete action flowing from the May meeting with the Honourable Iris Evans, Minister of Child and Family Services. She did two things: she wrote to her superiors and to the municipal government — the Family and Child Community Services Organizations — and said: ``There are francophones in your community. When they request something of you, I would like you to respond to those requests. You must show that you have done something about them.''
Senator Chaput: So she sent you back to Alberta government departments. Do you have to start negotiating with the departments again, and try to operate within criteria applying to the majority?
Ms. Rijavec: Yes. And frankly, we were already tired as it was.
Senator Chaput: I understand.
Ms. Rijavec: We are exploring the possibility of implementing a training project for preschool educators and for educators in day care facilities. This is a partnership project, because I wear another hat in another life. At the moment, I am the head of the Provincial Adjustment Network. We provide services for special needs in schools and nursery schools across the province.
Since there is so little appropriate training for people working with very young children, we and the FPFA — the Fédération des parents francophones de l'Alberta (Federation of Francophone Parents of Alberta) — will be offering an intensive training session. This is a first in Alberta.
So we have some chance of getting access to the funds. The other thing the minister promised to do — this is slated for follow-up in June — is to put francophone needs on the agenda of the next provincial inter-departmental meeting.
Senator Chaput: But really, you have not received —
Ms. Rijavec: One red cent.
Senator Chaput: My other question is on cultural and identity development among students. You talked about this in your brief, Mr. Desrochers.
When francophone students in Alberta go from elementary school into high school, have you observed any changes in their behaviour?
I am asking this question because a study of French schools in Manitoba showed that, when francophone students finish elementary school and go into high school, their behaviour — the language they speak — changes drastically. They seem to put French on the back burner over night. They start to speak English, and then we have trouble bringing them back to French.
Have you seen anything like that in Alberta?
Mr. Desrochers: I have experienced it in my own family. I have four children. My eldest is at Maurice-Lavallée school, which has both junior high and senior high.
Because of programs provided at the school, which are funded primarily to establish a cultural officer position, a great deal is being done. We are really seeing results. Young people are exchanging songs and records in French.
But do our students speak less French in the hallways of high schools than they did at nursery school or in elementary school? I think that is true, up to a point. But we hear much more French than we did when I was young, when the schools were bilingual. We hear much more French. The students talk amongst one another in French.
In Alberta, that differs from school to school. Here in Edmonton, which is a major city, we know that elementary school children will go on to high school. It is something new, and they are enthusiastic about it.
Senator Chaput: Thank you.
The Chairman: Ms. Verhoog, do you have anything to add?
Ms. Verhoog: A brief comment, yes. Some regions like ours — Red Deer — do not even have a French high school. The Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord has hired a teacher from one of the immersion schools, and that teacher is running the French program and teaching French to our children. But they do not even have a school, because there are simply not enough of them and parents are sometimes not prepared to put their children into small schools. Moreover, distances are frequently too great.
We are what you might call a mixed family. The children go to school, but we live 40 minutes away. When we return home, the community is English, the children's father is English and the church is English. It is difficult to promote French because we are not actually in the region of Red Deer. It is not like living in Falher or Legal, which are both French communities, where grand-parents are French and where everybody is French. Here, there are people from all over. Each school has a different mix. Each area has its own problems and its own challenges.
And I have noticed that as soon as children begin to take English classes — in our school, they start in third grade — all at once they start speaking English because they are speaking English at school. There is a greater tendency to forget to speak French all the time. They do not do this in first and second grade, because everything is in French. The teacher never speaks English.
[English]
Senator Keon: Your presentations were superbly laid out and organized.
The funds for what you want to do are not very large in the overall scheme of things in Canada. When you look at all the federal-provincial resources that are being expended, you are not asking for very much money.
What has gone wrong? Who is carrying the ball for you? Are you going through the federal political establishment and having them carry it upstairs? Are you dealing with Minister Dion directly? How are you approaching the political systems here in Alberta and in Ottawa to get what you want?
[Translation]
Mr. Chauvet: I know there are different levels, but the major challenge, which Senator Comeau has just mentioned, is to be present as a community when agreements are being signed between the federal government and the provinces. They are not always up to date on these matters at the table. They could get the information in a more direct manner.
As Ms. Rijavec has said, we have to go knocking on doors, but a parent, someone from the community, does not necessarily know everything that is involved or how things have been done. This puts us at a disadvantage, therefore, when it is time to negotiate for the funds from the Canada-Community agreements. This is one of the major shortcomings in the present process. We see great things on paper, but in actual fact it is an enormous challenge.
The other challenge is to make federal and provincial officials aware of these issues. I think this is a weak point at the present time. There is still a great deal of work to do to make federal and provincial politicians aware of these issues.
I think that a big effort has been made here in the Francophone Secretariat. But once again, we must alert Albertan politicians to these concerns. Generally speaking, they are quite open-minded, but they are not necessarily aware of all the Canada-Community agreements and they do not always know how their department can help us. I am not convinced that they know this. They seem to be lacking information which could move things ahead.
As far as I am concerned, the best solution would be to participate directly in the Canada-Community agreements. At that point, we would be able to negotiate directly.
Ms. Rijavec: I think that one of our challenges is to show that our communities, our families and our children are really in danger, particularly at the early childhood level. They are in danger of forever losing a language, a culture, an identity.
We have seen the effects of an English or bilingual education. There has been an incredible loss of French over three generations. Even from my graduating class, only 10 per cent of us still speak French to our children.
Our challenge is to promote our cause, just like the Métis and the aboriginal peoples. We know that there are communities with specific needs. We know that they need structures which suit their communities. Thus in the long term, we must work to create the structures and infrastructure which directly meet our needs.
[English]
When you think out of the box —
[Translation]
— it is difficult to fit into the present financial framework. Thus I think that is the challenge of the day as far as we are concerned.
Ms. Verhoog: Often parents put their children into immersion because this system has more programs to offer. Our small schools cannot always offer commerce or computer courses because they do not have the necessary personnel. There is not enough money.
In the immersion school next door, you can take courses in French. Students have courses in French, and furthermore, they can take the courses that are not offered in the little schools. And so there are 750 students at the immersion school but only 80 students in a school which goes from kindergarten to Grade 9.
We receive money for each student, but we have the same needs, whether the school is big or small.
The Chairman: The related services are not always there, that is for sure.
Ms. Verhoog: No.
Mr. Chauvet: Let me sum things up. We have just been saying that communities should be present when agreements are negotiated. Secondly, we would very much like to see a francophone senator for Alberta. Third, the community is very dynamic. There are many good things being done but challenges still remain. As for funding, we need added funds at various levels and in many sectors.
Another question which may not have been raised — and a committee such as this one would help to move things along — is the matter of making Canadians aware of linguistic duality as an asset.
In business, publicity is used to increase sales. The TV series on the history of Canada was very well received. We must find a way of using the media to make Canadians aware of the cultural wealth of our country and of our linguistic duality. On the anglophone side and in Quebec, this could go very far. And I think that there would be some way of doing this through the CRTC and groups subsidized by the federal government.
They only remember to use publicity in election campaigns. But when we need to emphasize the fact that our linguistic duality is an asset, it is usually difficult to find any funding from provincial organizations.
One thing is clear, there is a great need for funds. The status quo is going to make us lose ground. We need more money. These were the four points I wanted to raise.
Senator Chaput: I need not ask for your recommendations. You just gave them. Thank you.
My question deals with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Do you feel that you are included in the work of the Office of the Official Languages Commissioner? When you read the report and the recommendations, do you feel that this responds to the needs you expressed?
I am trying to see whether there is a connection, because the promotion of linguistic duality is done at the federal level, and that is also where complaints are received. Do you feel included in their efforts?
Mr. Lamoureux: Yes. After reading the Official Languages Commissioner's report, I found that she had really captured the reality that a minority has to deal with, and this minority is going through great changes. As for me, I was not surprised by anything in the report.
I was not personally involved in the representations made to the Official Languages Commissioner or her Office with regard to French-language service in airplanes, although it was mentioned that steps had been taken to ensure that service in French would be available.
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages tells us that in some provinces, because of the number or the percentage of francophones, there are higher requirements with regard to services, depending on the proportion or number of francophones.
In Alberta, I understand that the service is not compulsory. There is only a certain level of compulsory service. Thus, I do not believe that there is one standard common to the whole country. This is my impression. I believe that in fact, an effort is being made in the province to provide service in both languages.
Senator Comeau: Where is the representative of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages located?
Mr. Chauvet: In Edmonton.
Senator Comeau: In Edmonton? Is this person involved in your activities? Is it someone who is proactive? You seem to be quite satisfied. This person visits you regularly.
Mr. Chauvet: As a whole, we are satisfied with the Official Languages Office. They certainly do receive information which they distribute as the need arises, and there is certainly also a watchdog, if I can use this term, who intervenes from time to time when things do not work. Do we always turn to them? No. We know that they are there to give us support and we feel that we are supported by Mr. Lorieau and his team.
Ms. Adam's reports help us greatly because they set the tone and give us support. These reports help us in our community work.
As a whole, we have no complaints about our official languages office in Edmonton. We are very satisfied. I might simply point out that just sometimes, the federal government does not pay enough attention to organizations working with official languages.
Senator Comeau: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, esteemed witnesses. I think that this proves that the work is never done, would you not say? This is what keeps us motivated. Thank you once again for your presentations. You are invited to join us for lunch. We will certainly be able to talk in a much less formal way.
The committee adjourned