Ottawa, October 20, 2006
The Challenge of Immersion
Notes for a speech at the Annual Conference of the Provincial Association
of Immersion and French Program Teachers
Graham Fraser - Commissioner of Official Languages
Check against delivery
I want to start by thanking you for inviting me to speak here. I accepted this invitation in the spring, as an author, and now, I am pleased to be giving my first public address as the Commissioner of Official Languages.
When I went before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages, which was considering my qualifications for the position, I talked a bit about immersion education. I was surprised to learn later that the first version of the transcript indicated that I was not particularly in favour of immersion programs.
I must have mumbled or cleared my throat; what I said was that I AM very much in favour of immersion education. Luckily, the transcript was corrected. My own children were immersion students, and one of them now lives in Montréal. I am also the proud grandfather of two immersion students.
I have given speeches to immersion classes and have participated in conferences organized by French for the Future. I also interviewed immersion students and their teachers for my book, Sorry, I Don’t Speak French. I was extremely impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of these young people, and the dedication and commitment of the teachers.
Therefore, my support has been concrete and practical.
As a result of this experience and these interactions, I have great respect and admiration for the work that you, as teachers, do in the classroom. I am also aware of the problems that you face daily in your work.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Immersion programs are neither a panacea nor a magic solution that enable students to master both languages equally or to have the same confidence and skill level of those whose mother tongue is French. Immersion programs are an important step in the training of students, allowing them later to function without difficulty in a French-speaking environment.
Let me take a moment to introduce myself. I was born in Ottawa and moved to Toronto with my family as a teenager. I studied at the University of Toronto, where I obtained a bachelor’s degree, and later a master’s degree in History. I became a journalist in 1968, and with a few breaks to travel, study and write books, I have worked in Canadian journalism since then for The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and The Gazette, in the cities of Toronto, Montréal, Québec, Washington and Ottawa.
I spent a significant part of my career writing about Quebec for the rest of Canada, and between 1995 and 2000, I wrote about the rest of Canada for Quebec in Le Devoir. However, the pivotal experience that made that career possible occurred when I was a unilingual English-speaking university student.
In 1965, I worked on an archaeological dig at Fort Lennox, on Île aux Noix, on the Richelieu River, south of Montréal. That summer, in addition to learning French, I realized just how little I knew about my own country. This is when I became deeply interested in and passionate about Quebec, feelings that have never subsided.
Paradoxically, this experience also helped me understand how difficult it is to learn a second language and what it means to be an immigrant, because learning another language and culture makes us more open to those who come from other countries.
Ever since, I have always believed that linguistic duality and cultural diversity are not contradictory, as some would claim, but deeply linked. In fact, without the recognition—conscious or unconscious—that Canada is made up of two language communities, the very idea of multiculturalism would be difficult to accept.
And while this link between linguistic duality and cultural diversity is a close one, it strikes me as poorly understood—even to this day. In my mind, one of the main duties of the next commissioner will be to continue to explain this important relationship—not only for majority language communities, but for minority communities as well.
Since my appointment, I have been asked several times to articulate my vision for the position of commissioner. The first and most important point is my conviction that Canada’s linguistic duality is important. I believe it is one of the central defining characteristics of the country.
However, Canada’s language policy is misunderstood. Its purpose is not to force all Canadians to learn another language. On the contrary, it exists to protect those who speak but one language, that is, the country’s 20 million unilingual Anglophones and 4 million unilingual Francophones. Both groups have the right to federal government services in the language of their choice.
And I want to stress something that may seem self-evident or banal: French is a Canadian language, just as English is. French is neither the exclusive property of Quebeckers nor a private code for Francophones. French and English belong to all Canadians.
As you know, the commissioner must perform six roles or functions in implementing the Official Languages Act: a promotion and education role; a monitoring role in terms of the effects of government initiatives; a liaison role with minority communities; an ombudsman role in investigating complaints; an auditing role with respect to public services; and an intervention role before the courts.
These six functions can fall under two categories: promotion and protection. Or less formally, “cheerleading” and “nagging.”
I am happy to start my mandate before you, in my role as cheerleader, to encourage you in the important work that you do and I’d like to wish you a happy 20th anniversary.
Recently, I gave an address to Millennium Scholarship recipients. I was amazed at how many students from British Columbia could speak a very polished French with no difficulty. They had all been enrolled in an immersion program here in British Columbia. Congratulations! You all have good reason to be proud.
One of the problems of immersion continues to be the environment in which it exists. Wallace Lambert of McGill University launched the first immersion program in Saint-Lambert, south of Montréal. The students lived in a Francophone environment and did not have to step far outside the classroom to hear French being spoken.
Here, the situation is different. A student in a class of 20 hears the other students speak French, but 19 of them are Anglophone. It is not surprising that students coming out of immersion programs have a distinct accent—what some might call a patois.
Your greatest challenge as teachers is to break up the group of English speakers who are comfortable speaking amongst themselves and to develop a link between your students and the French language, as it is spoken by Francophones on T.V., in movies, on the radio or in music. You are fortunate because, although Quebec films are rarely shown here and when they are, it is only for a short period of time, the Internet offers a wealth of information: the films of Denys Arcand, Denis Villeneuve and many others.
But you are faced with other challenges as well.
Paradoxes in the current system exist. It is very easy for a teacher in English Canada to be part of an exchange program with Australia. There is opportunity to go teach in Australia for a year or two through a direct exchange, that is, you live in the home of an Australian teacher and he or she lives in your house. Your pension and seniority are not affected.
If you are a teacher in Quebec, it is just as easy to participate in an exchange with France. A number of exchange programs are available. Unfortunately, an exchange between a teacher in Quebec and one in English Canada is very difficult, if not impossible. Institutional, provincial and union-related reasons have created a barrier. I find this regrettable.
There are other contradictions in Canada’s linguistic landscape.
Canadian taxpayers pay large sums of money to support the French-Canadian film industry in Canada, and it is almost impossible to see French films outside Quebec, even the ones that are international blockbusters. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions was the first Canadian feature film to win an Oscar, and yet it grossed more in Australia than in English Canada.
Forty years ago, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism stated that Canada was going through the worst crisis in its history. Four years later, the government passed the Official Languages Act.
In the early 1970s, another contradictory occurrence took place: while the federal government started requiring a certain level of bilingualism in the public service, universities in English Canada dropped the second language requirement as an admission criteria.
This led to another contradiction: despite the fact that year after year some 300,000 Anglophone students are enrolled in immersion programs, universities in English Canada continue to teach French as a foreign language.
Personally, I think that this is absurd. I am certain that if engineering schools said to their students, “You don’t need to learn how to use a computer, the engineering firms will teach you that,” there would be an immediate protest on the part of employers. Yet the federal government continues to send employees who are 37, 47 and even 57 years old to language training courses, at the expense of taxpayers. Over the years, my predecessors have maintained that the focus should be on young people, given that it is easier for them to learn a second language.
This is exactly what you are doing. Here in British Columbia, interest in immersion—and in French—continues to be very strong. Recently, the Chinese community asked the French ambassador to set up an Alliance française office in a Chinese community centre.
Students who have graduated from an immersion program can now complete their post-secondary education in French, without having to leave the province. Simon Fraser University recently introduced a program that allows students to obtain a bachelor’s degree in French.
This is proof of the important work that you do.
Congratulations, thank you and a happy 20th anniversary!
