Ottawa, November 16, 2004
Notes for an address Canadian Parents for French Annual Meeting
Dr. Dyane Adam - Commissioner of Official Languages
Check against delivery
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is truly a pleasure to be here in Quebec, discussing French as a second language. We can genuinely say that we have now come full circle. It was in Quebec that French immersion was born, in Saint-Lambert in 1965.
And now, with your new Quebec branch, French immersion once again has a strong voice in the province of its birth. And, most importantly, Canadian Parents for French now has a branch in every province.
We are already seeing Canadian Parents for French take advantage of its new status by building bridges with new partners. I’m thinking, in particular, of your collaboration agreement with the Commission nationale des parents francophones, which will promote linguistic duality.
It is this notion of building bridges that I want to talk to you about today.
Canada became officially bilingual 35 years ago, with the passage of the Official Languages Act. Throughout the 1970s, parents began to realize that their children’s opportunities would depend on their ability to speak both of our official languages.
That’s one view. But my view is that parents like you realized that they were not only parents, but responsible citizens. They wanted their children to engage in the shaping of this incredible vision for our country : enriching our society by building on our differences.
And so, Canadian Parents for French was founded in 1977, at a time when fewer than 40,000 children were enrolled in French immersion. We were now beginning to build our bridge over the river separating our cultures.
Over the years, the federal government has been building bridges, too, and it has concluded protocols with the provinces and territories to teach our official languages.
As you know, this remains an ongoing issue even today, as we strive to keep the provinces accountable for the funding they are getting to teach official languages.
In doing this, we are guided by the one lesson we have learned since the 1960s, which is that we move forward by working together, not just with each other, but with all interested organizations and with all affected segments of society. Our bridges have many rivers to ford.
For our part, at the Commissioner’s Office, our role is to act as a broker between organizations like yours and the government departments that can help you, such as Canadian Heritage. We are in a position to make well-publicized appeals on behalf of the issues we share.
I am encouraged by how successful this approach has been so far. Compare where we were in Quebec in the 1960s to where we are now. Today, 83 percent of Anglophone Quebecers between 15 and 25 are bilingual, according to the 2001 census.
But it’s not just the young. The rate of bilingualism among all English Quebecers rose nearly five percentage points between 1996 and 2001. On a percentage basis, Quebec Anglophones are more bilingual now than Quebec Francophones are.1
I know I am speaking to the "converted" but I cannot resist mentioning the incredible advantages of embracing bilingualism and multilingualism.
This year, York University researchers even found that bilingualism is good for our brains. They found that bilingual children enjoy widespread benefits across a range of complex cognitive tasks. And they found that the same applies to middle-aged and older people who are bilingual. As York psychologist Ellen Bialystok put it, and I’m quoting here now: "Being bilingual is like going to a brain gym."2
Another study shows that early acquisition of a second language and higher proficiency increases grey matter density.3
Happily, Canadians, especially young Canadians, are increasingly spending more and more time working out that bilingual brain muscle. That effort is paying off as we increasingly appreciate each other’s cultures.
Moreover, bilingualism is an investment in the future and in youth. It fosters and encourages the acquisition of skills that are essential to personal development and the global economy. But, more than that, studies show that an Anglophone who learns French, for example, will earn on average 10 percent more.4 Indeed, a recent study released by my office shows that knowledge of English and French is central to the economic advancement of Quebec’s English speakers. Quebec Anglophones between the ages of 25 and 34 who do not speak French have a rate of unemployment twice as high as the rate among their bilingual counterparts.5
By working together, we have made remarkable progress when it comes to teaching French as a second language. More than one and a half million students are taking French. That’s half of young English Canada. And 357,000 other English Canadians are registered in French immersion programs.6
Today, a quarter of young people from 15 to 19 are bilingual. That’s twice the ratio of a generation ago, but I think we can do even better. The Action Plan for Official Languages calls for half of all high school graduates to be bilingual by 2013.7
As noted in your report, maximizing the potential with regard to enrollments in core French would go a long way in contributing to this objective.
According to a recent poll, three-quarters of Canadians believe it is important to keep English and French as official languages. Eight out of 10 citizens agree that it is important for their children to learn another language.8
This change in public opinion shows that working together is clearly working! But there is still much work to do!
When I first came to this office, I went across the country to hear from Canadians and get their opinions about bilingualism. I found that we had “made the sale” to our core constituencies, but now we had to build more bridges: bridges that bring in the many vocal Canadians who have been suspicious about bilingualism.
We need to engage, not just the special interests that agree with us, but the broad majority of Canadians who don’t usually give us a second thought.
We can do this. It’s a government priority and it’s our priority.
That is why the Government of Canada introduced its Action Plan for Official Languages, which is recovering some of the ground we lost in the 1990s.
To move forward on the Action Plan, we worked with Canadian Parents for French and other partners to hold a national symposium held in Toronto last march. We brought together people from all sectors of society (education, business, culture and sports) to gauge our progress so far and to chart the path ahead.
We built a lot of those bridges I’ve been talking about!
Symposium participants also suggested four major areas of action that could be applied in other contexts or countries with similar challenges:
- promotion of bilingualism;
- establishment of structures giving more value to, and facilitating the acquisition of, language skills;
- concerted action of key players and a committed civil society; and
- enrichment and expansion of curricula, so our schools can have appropriate teaching material, stimulating cultural content and qualified teachers.
Canadian Parents for French was there with us every step of the way and ensured quick follow-up by organizing regional consultations. Now, I am working with you to see that there is progress in each of the four areas of action.
As you know, we have not come as far in the first year of the Action Plan as I would have hoped. Despite some laudable new initiatives, we see a loss of momentum. There are delays in how funds are allocated and federal-provincial negotiations are stagnating.
I raised these concerns in my last annual report and they have been echoed by your organization. The Government of Canada must conclude these important agreements on education so that the funds may trickle down into the trenches.
There is a lot of work ahead of us. But we are finding new people, like you, to share in this challenge, not just within the education sector, but within every sector, as every sector has a role to play with regard to bilingualism.
At the symposium, we concluded that the issue of official languages is everybody’s business. It is the collective effort of individuals, of parents such as you, that is making the difference.
Together, we can build a Canada whose two main language communities can communicate effortlessly across what was once a brick wall of Babel.
I look forward to being there.
Thank you.
Notes
1 Statistics Canada: Catalogue 96F0030XIF2001005, pg 15.
2 http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release.asp?Release=643.
3 Mecelli, Andrea et al. (2004) “Structural Plasticity in the Bilingual Brain”. Nature, vol 431 (14 October, 2004), p. 757.
4 Jedwab, Jack, It Pays to be Bilingual in Canada: Though Not Everywhere, Association for Canadian Studies, 2003.
5 Quebec Anglophones, between the ages of 25 and 34, with knowledge of both English and French had a rate of unemployment of 7.5% as opposed to 14.3% for those Quebec Anglophones that knew English only.
6 http://www.ocol-clo.gc.ca/html/speeches_discours_23072004_e.php
7 http://www.ocol-clo.gc.ca/html/speeches_discours_23072004_e.php.
8 Andrew Parkin and André Turcotte, “Bilingualism: Part of Our Past or Part of Our Future?”, The CRIC Papers No. 13, Montréal, Centre for Research and Information on Canada, 2004.
