Winnipeg, October 3, 2009
Notes for an address at the Canadian Parents for French Annual General Meeting
Graham Fraser – Commissioner of Official Languages
Check against delivery
Good morning everyone.
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Mrs. Lucian and Mrs. Davies for inviting me to speak today.
As you know, this year my organization is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Official Languages Act. We’ve come a long way since 1969 on the road to linguistic duality. But, as you know, the journey is far from over.
Since its creation in 1977, Canadian Parents for French (CPF) has also come a long way. CPF has made a profound and lasting impact on the linguistic landscape of our country. My office has worked closely with your organization since the very beginning, and I consider CPF a valuable partner in our vital work on second-language learning and the promotion of linguistic duality in all parts of Canada.
In the first-ever published CPF National News, my predecessor, Keith Spicer—Canada’s first commissioner of official languages—wrote that members of CPF would “exert a powerful influence in lifting the horizons of tomorrow’s Canadian parents and in shaping the civilized Canada we all want them to inherit.”1 More than 30 years later, I strongly believe that all of you who have given your time and energy to this organization and its mission have achieved the goal that Commissioner Spicer envisioned.
The numbers don’t lie. French second-language programs are more popular in Canada than ever before. More than 300,000 young people across the country are enrolled in immersion programs. And the demand keeps growing, thanks in part to your efforts to promote and support these programs. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the West, where demand significantly outweighs the supply of immersion programs.
Of course, the work you do requires resources, human and financial. In these harsh economic times, many organizations such as yours face difficulties, not the least of which is the pressure to do more with less.
This morning, as you look toward the coming year, I invite you to continue to search for new and innovative approaches to your work that will help you meet these challenges head on.
Already, through the French for Life program, you have given new energy to French second-language programs and have created an excellent tool for students, parents and teachers. I sincerely hope that the federal government will recognize the impact that such programs can have on the province’s population with respect to language competencies—and grant it the necessary funds to reach an even greater number of people.
In the coming year, I also encourage you to pursue new partnerships with the local French-speaking community, its schools, its organizations, its leaders. Indeed, Manitoba has a vibrant and engaged French-speaking community, particularly here in Winnipeg.
The fruits of such partnerships are evident all over the country. Activities such as Francofièvre and Mini francofièvre in Saskatchewan bring together French-speaking youth from the immersion and Francophone communities alike. I’m often told that such events take place in Ontario and New Brunswick because there are so many Francophone communities in those provinces—and that such events can’t possibly succeed in the West.
But they can and they have. The French-speaking communities of Western Canada, albeit more spread out, are just as enthusiastic as the communities in the eastern provinces about sharing their love of French culture and life with others. A great example is French for the Future and the annual forums it organizes in major cities throughout the country, including here in Winnipeg.
By bringing our youth together we teach them about local French-speaking communities across Canada and show them that French is thriving outside Quebec. We show them that it’s possible to use, live, experience and appreciate French all over the country. We also enable our youth to build bridges between our majority and minority communities, and hopefully establish life-long bonds.
Through your support, our youth in Manitoba—and their parents—will continue to recognize the benefits of French as a second language, and of participating in our national dialogue, which happens in both official languages.
In today’s global economy, our increasingly bilingual youth will be better equipped to face the language requirements of a cosmopolitan workforce. It’s no longer just the public service that is looking for bilingual and multilingual employees. Private companies, which now commonly do business all over the world, will increasingly consider those who know two, three and even four languages to be an indispensable asset to their teams.
One of the biggest challenges remaining is that when our youth reach university and college, second-language learning opportunities are not available in equal measure across the country. This is an issue my office is looking at in depth and we intend to publish a study on it later this month. As of the end of the month, we will offer on our Web site a great new interactive tool that will help students, parents and organizations like CPF map out the universities in their regions that offer programs in French.
Since you follow these students during their formative years, I hope that your organization and mine can continue working closely together—and find ways to encourage students to pursue second-language learning. I also hope we can count on your support as we call on universities and colleges to offer these same students opportunities to pursue their post-secondary education in French.
I assume that over the course of the day your discussions will come back to CPF’s resources—both your funding and workforce—and I sympathize with the difficulties you face. Throughout the CPF network, I meet people who are passionate and talented. I also see they are tired and worried that their work will be endangered by funding that can be insufficient, or that comes late.
Remember this: The results of your work are measured over many years, even decades. It took committed investment and effort to build what you have so far. It may take a redoubled effort to continue, to innovate and to adapt.
CPF should be able to rely on adequate, multi-year support from the Canadian government so that it can reach and even exceed its goals. It is not unhelpful to remind the government that many of CPF’s goals are the same as the ones the government set out for itself through its Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality and also through a number of Canadian Heritage programs.
We are all in this together. I don’t mean just you and me, but all of Canadian society. As my predecessor Dyane Adam once said, “official languages must become a shared heritage; it is not only the responsibility of Francophones and minorities.” The work you do as volunteers and employees of Canadian Parents for French contributes greatly to reaching this goal as well.
Thank you.
1. Keith Spicer, “Strasbourg Goose Syndrome?” in Canadian Parents for French, CPF National News, Issue No. 1, June 1977, www.cpf.ca/eng/pdf/CPF_National_News_Issue_1.pdf
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