I think it's both.

When you listen to what our early childhood colleagues are saying and you also take into account what we're experiencing on our side, it quickly becomes obvious that the common factor is the shortage of French-language staff. Unfortunately, until that problem is addressed, we will not be able to take advantage of the many other opportunities that could be available to us.

The good news is that many of the solutions can apply to educators as well as teachers, not to mention mental health workers, for example. Indeed, the shortage is affecting many other sectors. We have to solve this problem and devote significant resources to it, because it has an impact on all the other great measures we can implement, particularly through the OLEP.

As far as funding is concerned, the issue for French-language public school boards is the number of schools. We know that in many regions of our province, people don't have access to a French-language public school. So parents often have no other option than to put their child in an immersion school. It's always the reasonable parent's test: faced with the choice of sending their child to a nearby school in the neighbourhood, even though it's an English school or an immersion school, or registering them in a French-language school that requires a one‑hour or one-and-a-half-hour bus ride, the reasonable parent sometimes has to choose the first option, unfortunately.

Those are the big challenges we're still facing. That is why we are fighting every day for these key elements.

In my opinion, it is imperative to focus on finding solutions, both for educators and teachers. The good news is that the federal government also has a big role to play, of course, because the solutions lie in large part in immigration, recognizing foreign credentials and welcoming newcomers.

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