During this upcoming provincial election campaign, the Fédération des francophones de la C.-B. as well as Canadian Parents for French BC & Yukon branch ask for your commitment to identify the measures you propose to help strengthen British Columbia’s substantial francophone and French-second-language communities.
BC’s Francophone community is the third biggest of its kind outside of Québec (around 330,000 French speakers, around 7% of the total population throughout the province). The BC francophone Federation (la Fédération des francophones de la C.-B.) is the official umbrella organization for the French-speaking community in BC. It is made up of 49 member organizations, across the province, working in various sectors.
More than 40% of public school students are enrolled in French-second-language programs in BC annually, including nearly one in ten in French immersion programs. Canadian Parents for French is a nationwide, research-informed, volunteer organization that furthers bilingualism by promoting opportunities to learn and use French for all those who call Canada home.
We ask for your public commitment that, should your party form the next government, you would set out a long-term, bold and measurable plan to:
i) strengthen the recently introduced policy for francophone services by making it binding, specifically in order to frame primordial sectors like health and education; in particular, by increasing and fast tracking the recruitment of bilingual professionals in these two sectors.
ii) ensure that every student has the opportunity to learn French and access the French as a second language program that meets their needs and aspirations.
During this campaign you will be setting out some of your biggest priorities for shaping our province’s future. We urge you to make these aforementioned measures among them.
We are available to meet with you and advise on how your election platform could reflect these priorities. We hope you will commit to harness the knowledge and expertise of individuals with lived experience and other stakeholders with significant knowledge and skills to take a long-term determined approach.
We hope you will accept this offer to work together – we can arrange a meeting with representatives from this collaborative group to discuss in detail what we can do in partnership to truly practise the founding linguistic principles of the Canadian confederation.
We look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Marie-Nicole Dubois
President
Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique
Alex Hughes
President
Canadian Parents for French, BC & Yukon