Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, I want to thank you for this invitation to appear before you and to draw your attention to the current challenges we're facing in education in French as a first language in an official language minority community.

First of all, Thompson is a northern Manitoba community located some 760 kilometres from the city of Winnipeg, a distance that can be covered in approximately 8 hours by automobile and an hour and a half by plane.

This year, the École communautaire La Voie du Nord welcomed 106 students from the city of Thompson and one from the community of Paint Lake, which is located in Paint Lake Provincial Park. Our team consists of 20 people: a school principal, a special education teacher who also works as a guidance counsellor, 10 teachers and eight support staff members. Of our student population, 77% come from exogamous families, 28% are newcomer students and 10% are indigenous students.

Our parents want their children to be proud of their Franco-Manitoban language and culture when they complete their education. Newcomer parents and non-rights-holder parents also want their children to be able to identify as francophones. These parents recognize the importance of bilingualism in Canada and a high-quality education in French.

We have to face many challenges as a francophone school in an official language minority community in northern Manitoba.

Recruiting and retaining francophone teachers who want to work in the north are our greatest challenges. This has a direct impact on student learning and on the development of staff members. For example, as a result of a teacher shortage last year, 30% of my time, and that of our special education and guidance counsellor, was devoted to teaching. Consequently, students didn't always receive the attention they needed to further their education, and teachers didn't always get the support and feedback they needed to develop professionally in order to meet the needs of our students, particularly those with special needs. As a result of that additional workload, staff was not always able to consult me or receive my support.

It's also important to note that, for those same reasons, the invaluable moments of collaboration for teachers that occur during the school day, and are designed to further our teachers' professional development, rarely occurred. Those moments of collaboration are important and invaluable; they enable us to come together as a professional learning community team, to engage in professional reading, to review our literary and numerical knowledge and to model teaching best practices.

We currently have no one to replace a teacher who becomes ill and goes on extended sick leave or a female teacher who takes maternity leave.

We also have to overcome the major challenge of supporting and mentoring newcomer teachers who have no experience of the Canadian education system. They find themselves in classrooms as permanent teachers, even though there are major differences between our education system and the ones they have known. For example, inclusion, differentiated instruction, adaptation and modification are approaches with which they may not necessarily be familiar. Furthermore, virtually most of those teachers aren't capable of teaching English starting at grade four. This year, as a result of the teacher shortage, we have two individuals who have a limited teaching licence because they haven't taken the university courses they need to do the job.

Consequently, our students may not complete their school year at the expected level in our curricula. If this alarming situation continues, our children may not receive the education that they deserve and that their parents expect. They need that education in order to pursue the post-secondary studies required to fill jobs in the fields of health, technology, science, mathematics and, of course, education.

In conclusion, I want to thank you for your attention to the challenges we face in education in the north and in an official language minority community. Thanks as well for your work on the important issue of the education of our children and our Franco-Manitoban and Canadian youth.

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