Priority: Develop a plan to achieve true equivalency and reduce the huge gap between the current capacity of Francophone schools and the approximately 67,000 children eligible for Francophone education under Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In Alberta, Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees rights holders a Francophone education of equivalent quality to that offered to the English-speaking majority for all their children. Yet, recent Statistics Canada census data for 2021 shows that there are 67,140 children eligible for Francophone education; Alberta has the second highest number of eligible children outside Quebec. The current infrastructure is limited, with only 8,700 students in the province. At the rate of two new Francophone schools per year, which seems to be the norm in recent years, it would take 140 years to accommodate all current eligible children. This is not acceptable.

Reference to read: “897,000 children are eligible for instruction in the minority official language in Canada”, Statistics Canada

 

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