Mr. Chair and members of the committee, first, I want to thank you for welcoming me as a witness. Since I feel a bit stressed, I'm going to rely on the notes I have before me.

My name is Stephanie Hickey, and I am a teacher, but, above all, I am the mother of four Franco-Manitoban children. I have been living in Thompson, Manitoba, for nearly three years. This is my second time in Thompson because, as a result of my husband's career, we've travelled extensively across the country. One of the things we look for before settling somewhere is French-language preschool and school services so our children can be in French immersion. That's really important. Both of us are francophones from the eastern part of the country, but western Canada is now our home.

Preschool education is the first point I want to raise. I have one child in preschool, and, every time we move, it's hard for us to find a French-language day care or learning centre, something that's very important for us. We're lucky because, Les Louveteaux, a francophone day care centre, has been attached to our beautiful school, La Voie du Nord, in Thompson, since 2018. It isn't always easy to find a space because they're very limited as a result of many factors, including the labour shortage, of course. It's very hard to find certified francophone employees.

I've also been sitting on the day care centre's administrative committee for a year. We lost the centre's management staff, but management ultimately wound up in the hands of our parents committee, which consists of volunteers who work from Monday to Friday and are then responsible for the centre's human resources, hiring, interviews and finances. It has been very difficult, and I've been on the committee for only a year. The situation has lasted for more than two years. This is something that the parents set up, but we had to delegate the centre's management to the Fédération des parents de la francophonie manitobaine, which is now responsible for it.

The situation is difficult because there have been many personnel changes. Some employees leave. When I was there, we had to hire an anglophone director and several anglophone employees because, otherwise, we might have had to shut down and lose our day care service. We're gradually seeing improvements. Finally, after two and a half years, we opened the nursery this month. I forgot to mention that we now have 16 preschool children and four in the nursery. We also have six employees on the day care team, five of whom are francophones. So we've managed to find more francophone staff, but we still have constant turnover. It's never stable, and we know there's always a chance we'll lose employees. In addition, only two of those employees, an anglophone and a francophone, are certified.

One of the points I want to make is that virtual training is the only way for day care employees to be trained in French. It can be tough at times because they all have to work and have other obligations.

I've probably forgotten to mention some things, but I just want to say this: As a teacher, I see children who leave day care and arrive here in kindergarten. We unfortunately don't have a pre-kindergarten program. I would like it if we could get the necessary funding to create one because that would help improve the children's language skills before they enter kindergarten. For the moment, as one of the witnesses said earlier, a large percentage of children who enter kindergarten don't understand and can't speak the language. Consequently, we spend a lot of time in kindergarten teaching them the language. Before grade one, they aren't ready to learn advanced literacy or numeracy skills because they spend so much time learning the language.

In conclusion, I would simply like to say, as a mother, that this is having a significant impact on families.

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