Special Feature: The 25^th anniversary of the Charter

Achievements and challenges for French minority language education in Canada

by Marc L. Johnson

The vitality of the school system for Canada’s Francophone minority communities is astonishing, with 31 school boards, 600 schools, 29 school-community centres, 16,000 staff and 140,000 students. In total, the budget for French-language instruction in these communities is estimated at over a billion and a half dollars.¹

The education system has been revitalized since the Sommet des intervenants et des intervenantes en éducation dans la mise en oeuvre de l’article 23 en milieu francophone minoritaire held in June 2005. This event, organized by the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones, created unprecedented enthusiasm throughout the country. The section 23 action plan that was the result of the summit is now used as a guide by stakeholders working to improve the French-language education system in Canada². The implementation of the plan is ensured by a tripartite committee made up of representatives from the Francophone communities, provincial and territorial ministries of education and the federal government.

However, the French-language education system has not always been a success. When Canada came into being, the Constitution Act recognized the right to education in French, which was provided by Catholic schools in certain provinces. Yet this arrangement did not prevent the provinces, one by one, from denying this right to Francophone communities, thereby creating what historians call the “school crises,” a century of discrimination that led to the decline of the Francophone Catholic school network³.

After the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism found that “Francophone minorities have largely been denied the right to education in their first language,”⁴ Francophone communities have been increasingly vocal in asserting their demands. Nevertheless, it was the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and its section 23 in particular, that led to a major shift in policy⁵. This must be understood in terms of “led to” because it took almost a decade of court challenges before Francophones were able to fully benefit from the scope of the rights granted by the Charter.

In fact, the real trigger occurred in 1990 with the decision in Mahe, which stated the purpose of section 23, “to preserve and promote minority language and culture throughout Canada” and at the same time “to remedy past injustices”⁶. This Supreme Court of Canada decision clarified the scope of the rights of the linguistic minority to have their own schools and manage them. Subsequent decisions would define these rights even further⁷.

Even though issues still remain to be argued before the courts, the provinces now generally recognize the right of Francophone minorities to have educational facilities in their language, to manage their schools and to receive quality education that is equivalent to that in the schools of the majority⁸. The Senate Committee on Official Languages recently defined this principle of equality: “educational results that are the consequence of substantial equality, which requires that Francophone communities in a minority setting be treated differently, if necessary, according to their particular circumstances and needs, in order to provide them with a standard of education equivalent to that of the official-language majority⁹.”

During the course of these legal battles, the Francophone school system has gradually been developed, first in New Brunswick and then in Ontario. In New Brunswick, where the school system is made up of separate Anglophone and Francophone networks, Francophone school boards were created in 1978. In 1986, Ontario created its first Francophone board, which has grown into a network of 12 today. This province is now a true leader in terms of investing in French-language education. It has also adopted a language planning policy, supports the Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pédagogiques and recently created the Ontario French-Language Educational Communications Authority. The other provinces and territories created their Francophone school boards following the decision in Mahe.

Creation of Francophone School Boards
New Brunswick	1978: homogeneous school boards are established; they were dissolved in 1997, and five were then re-established in 2001.
Ontario	1986: the first board in Toronto is created, followed by a second in Ottawa, in 1988, and a third in Prescott-Russell, in 1992; eight Catholic Francophone school boards and four public Francophone school boards have been in place since 1998.
Prince Edward Island	1990: a school board is created that covers the province’s entire Francophone population.
Yukon	1990: the Comité scolaire de l’école Émilie-Tremblay becomes a school board; the actual Yukon Francophone School Board is created in 1995.
Alberta	1993: the first three Francophone boards are created, followed by a fourth in 2000.
Saskatchewan	1994: the Conseil scolaire fransaskois de la Vieille is created in Gravelbourg; seven new Francophone school boards are established in 1995; all boards are brought under a single school division in January 1999.
Manitoba	1994: the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine is created.
Northwest Territories	1994: the Conseil scolaire francophone de Yellowknife is created.
British Columbia	1995: the Conseil scolaire francophone is created.
Nova Scotia	1996: the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial is created; however, a board administered in French had already existed in the Clare-Argyle region since 1982.
Newfoundland and Labrador	1997: the Conseil scolaire francophone provincial is created.
Nunavut	2004: the Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut is created.
Source: Commissioner of Official Languages.Annual Report 2004–2005. Special 35th Anniversary Edition 1969–2004. Ottawa, 2005, p. 15. (Updated)

Strengthening the school board structures has not solved all the problems however. While the decline in the student population is a general trend across Canada, the population of Francophone minority schools is declining steadily and is cause for concern (see table below).

Studies on academic achievement also reveal a worrying situation: the results of minority Francophone students are below the national average in reading and writing and in written science assignments. Only in mathematics do they come near the average.¹⁰

The challenges to be addressed over the next few years have been clearly outlined in the section 23 action plan. They revolve around six major themes:

• The promotion of French-language instruction, in order to enrol the majority of children of rights holders;
• The creation of adequate infrastructure in French-language schools, in accordance with the principle of equality;
• The training, recruitment and retention of human resources required by French-language schools;
• The development of teaching approaches and resources adapted to the specific context in which Francophone minorities find themselves;
• The creation of cultural and artistic educational activities and activities related to the development of identity that promote the Francophone identity;
• The assurance that Francophones have access to high-quality early childhood and family services in their own language.

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Notes

¹ Canadian Council on Learning. Report on the state of learning in Canadian minority Francophone communities. Ottawa (forthcoming).

² Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones.Plan d’action — article 23 : Afin de compléter le système scolaire de langue française au Canada, Ottawa, 2006 (in French only).

³ Behiels, Michael D. Canada’s Francophone Minority Communities: Constitutional Renewal and the Winning of School Governance. Montréal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004, pp. 325–326.

⁴ Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. General introduction and first book. Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer, 1967, p. 127.

⁵ Clarke, Paul T. and Pierre Foucher. École et droits fondamentaux : Portrait des droits collectifs et individuels dans l’ère de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Institut français/Winnipeg: Presses universitaires de Saint-Boniface, 2005, p. 36.

⁶ Mahe v. Alberta, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 342.

⁷Reference re Public Schools Act (Man.), s. 79(3), (4) and (7), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 839; Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 3; Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), [2003] 3 S.C.R. 3.

⁸ Power, Mark and Pierre Foucher. “Les droits linguistiques en matière scolaire,” Les droits linguistiques au Canada, under the direction of Michel Bastarache. Cowansville: Les Éditions Yvon Blais, 2004, pp. 442–458.

⁹ Corbin, Eymard G. (Chairman). “Glossary,” French-Language Education in a Minority Setting: A Continuum from Early Childhood to the Postsecondary Level. Interim Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages. Ottawa: Senate of Canada, June 2005.

¹⁰ Council of Ministers of Education. Pan-Canadian Results of Minority Francophone Students in the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP). Analytic Report. Toronto, October 2004, p. 24. Report prepared for the Pan-Canadian French as a First Language Project.