French is in decline in Canada, this can be seen in numbers and can be heard even in French immersion schools, which are struggling to recruit French-speaking teachers from coast to coast. In Ontario, our colleague Lise Denis told us this week, the puzzle has become insoluble to the point that French immersion schools are resigning themselves to hiring English-speaking teachers who speak “not a word of French”. A teacher is a teacher, right? Yes, but no, even less in immersion.
Due to a lack of sufficient qualified teachers, it is not new that establishments are falling back on teachers whose level of French is not perfectly up to par. Already, in 2021, it was estimated that there was a shortage of nearly of 10,000 French-speaking teachers in Canada in French immersion and French as a second language schools. In the absence of thrushes we eat blackbirds, says the adage. But now, this basin is now dry too.
We saw the bottom of said pool coming. Bilingualism may be pulling the devil by the tail in the proverbial rest of canada and even in our virtuous but oh so delinquent federal institutions, it continues to awaken vocations almost everywhere in Canada. Over the past five years, the Canadian Association of Immersion Professionals has seen the number of conscripts jump by 20%. There are nearly 500,000 students enrolled in Canada. We should be happy about it.
This is no reason to force us to swallow anything. To avoid having to give up on their unloved or orphaned immersion classes, some schools – due to lack of thrushes and blackbirds – have increased the use of substitutes from several sectors. In Ontario and New Brunswick, one school in two has encountered this type of puzzle. Among the teachers called in as reinforcements, some have basic knowledge of French, but others do not speak a word of the language of Miron and Tremblay.
Traitor word: the expression hits where it hurts. To deprive a class of a thrush or a blackbird to make it swallow snakes is to betray the very spirit of these immersion classes. The first victims of this second best are of course the students and their families. But we also shouldn’t overlook the effect that such service disruptions have on the communities where these programs are rooted.
Last October, stung by an article in Globe and Mail in which the supposedly elitist nature of these programs was criticized and their effectiveness questioned, the Commissioner of Official Languages wrote a letter. Pugnace, Raymond Théberge recalled that one of the royal roads to ensuring the vitality of “everyday bilingualism” is precisely found in our French immersion schools.
In recent years, Mr. Théberge has increased calls in the desert for an increase in the resources devoted to the consolidation and improvement of these programs. The same goes for the establishment of greater coordination at the national level to recruit and retain qualified personnel.
There is also work to be done on the professional orders side. The shortage of teachers is glaring across Canada. However, we continue to deprive ourselves of valuable applications from abroad. They face administrative hassles and undue delays while waiting to see their equivalences recognized.
As if that were not enough, uncertainty still floats in New Brunswick, where French immersion programs almost fell by the wayside. The Higgs government is far from being a team player when it comes to bilingualism, which has earned it some skirmishes and veiled threats from Justin Trudeau. Even if the abolition of the current immersion program has been driven away by the popular wind, the fact remains that the report of the steering committee responsible for formulating recommendations to ensure a better educational future tabled last week leaves us wanting more. Its family support plan and its wishful thinking postpone most of the work without moving anything substantial forward.
The nonchalance mixed with resignation that surrounds immersion programs is disappointing if not surprising. The fact remains that in light of the more than 2 billion dollars spent by Ottawa to ensure the vitality of English in Quebec since 1995, this apathy seems even more damning. As recently as last April, the federal plan for official languages provided $137.5 million to finance services to the English-speaking communities of Quebec.
This double standard irritates the Quebec Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, who is right to call the federal government to order. The dynamic is not the same in Quebec. Its English-speaking minority is solid while its French-speaking majority is wavering. The asymmetry between the two official languages was recently recognized in the new version of the Official Languages Act. It’s time for it to be felt in Quebec as well as from coast to coast.