Our two official languages are both an asset and a source of pride for all Canadians. We support and encourage their use, because bilingualism unites us and sets us apart from other places in the world.
Today, the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, along with the Honourable Rachna Singh, British Columbia Minister of Education and Child Care, announced more than $13.5 million in funding to help train, recruit, and retain French teachers in British Columbia. The Government of Canada and the Government of British Colombia are each providing $6,793,854 to support initiatives aimed at providing more opportunities for our youth to learn in French.
Specifically, the Government of Canada will be providing $2,095,000 to the Government of British Columbia to facilitate capacity building and cross-governmental collaborations, add seats to French teacher training programs at postsecondary institutions, support the coordination of immigration of French teachers, and improve the French teacher international certification process and teacher workforce data collection.
The Government of British Columbia will be investing $4,708,944 in operational grants for the province's public school districts to support processes tied to recruitment and retention activities and for public universities to support French teacher education programs.
Make a Future, an online provincial education job board, is receiving $3,490,826 to create a recruitment website targeting French-language teachers and to establish a recruitment enhancement fund to issue grants to school districts to conduct specific recruitment and retention activities.
The Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF) will receive $1,188,084 to expand its teacher recruitment capacity and take part in the larger provincial workforce marketplace. This investment is allowing the opportunity to enhance French teacher recruitment, integration and retention strategies. With this funding, the CSF developed, among other initiatives, new ongoing recruitment approaches throughout the year to improve the hiring process.
UBC Okanagan will receive $528,190 to take steps to build a long-term presence of French teachers in the B.C. Interior by developing future French teachers' proficiency and confidence to speak French and develop their identity as French teachers, and by providing currently practising French teachers with greater access to professional development. Concretely, this funding will allow, for example, components of the Bachelor of Education to be taught in French and language development support to the students in this program. Initiatives of professional development include the creation of networks among practising teachers of the Interior and mentorship activities for early career teachers.
Financial support of $214,955 will be provided to the University of British Columbia to increase enrollment to the existing French specialization options in the French-Language Teacher Education program (BEd) and redirect generalist teachers with sufficient language proficiency to a new Core French Certificate.
Simon Fraser University (SFU) will receive $513,000 to increase access to a network of professional development experts by providing workshops and resources for teachers working in both French minority language (FML) and French second language (FSL) contexts. SFU will also implement a graduate program in educational leadership and coordinate a provincial network of school administrators in the goal of retaining French-language teachers.
Four provincial anglophone school districts will receive $474,109 to explore innovative and locally adapted means to address the challenges associated with meeting the demand for French immersion teachers, such as hiring an itinerant French teacher.
Canadian Parents for French B.C. will get $227,500 to develop cultural and community programming to work with new French teachers in remote and rural school districts to improve retention rates.
Lastly, British Columbia Language Coordination Association will receive $147,100 to offer professional learning activities to support the development of language leadership capacity across B.C.'s French Immersion and Core French school districts.
By supporting these initiatives, the Government of Canada is reaffirming its commitment to all Francophones and Francophiles who choose to learn, live, and speak in French every day. These programs are key to ensuring the vitality of French everywhere in British Columbia while allowing our children to grow and develop in a country that promotes both our official languages.
Since implementing the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy in Minority French-Language Schools and the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy in French Immersion and French Second-Language Programs in 2019, Canada has invested $62 million in initiatives to address the teacher shortage across the country.
