I'll expand on Mr. Foucher's comment about schools. If we wanted to bring Ontario rights holders into our school system, 150 schools would have to be built. That's a major shortage preventing the inclusion of all rights holders, even if we know that they wouldn't all attend our schools.

It's obvious that the chain is broken or snags at several points, as you've said, which raises questions.

As Mr. Foucher mentioned, section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not necessarily provide protection or a guarantee of minority French-language education at all levels. That creates problems at the early childhood level, in particular. Nothing is guaranteed at the secondary or post-secondary level, either.

What's more, there are currently no guarantees ensuring that francophone students could take teacher training in French. For example, the University of Ottawa is bilingual and offers a teacher education program in both English and French, but nothing guarantees that the French program will always be offered. If there are more anglophone students one year, there will be fewer francophone students. In other words, there are no guaranteed spots that would allow 500 francophones, let's say, to take the program each year.

Should it be easier to bring immigrant teachers into the system? That's a question for the Ontario College of Teachers. It could determine how to better or more rapidly integrate these teachers into the system. Teachers trained at the three Ontario universities who complete their certification year should automatically be allowed to work in our schools. That's not the case, however, because the Ontario College of Teachers still uses a drawn-out process.

Many factors in the system therefore hurt the continuum.

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