The planned abolition of French immersion in New Brunswick has provoked the wrath of some local residents, and a grassroots organization appears to be taking shape in Sackville to oppose the change.
About two dozen people turned out for a public meeting Tuesday evening at the Sackville Commons Co-op.
Valmai Goggin, the parent of two young girls, lived away from New Brunswick for 15 years. Access to French immersion was among the factors attracting them back to the province.
“To be in a position now where the only bilingual province in the country is looking at having the worst French program nationwide, is mind-boggling and it cannot happen,” she said.
Listen to local residents who turned out for the meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022, in Sackville:
The event featured two guest speakers: Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton and Chris Collins, executive director of Canadian Parents for French NB.
Collins, who was formerly a Liberal Party MLA who served as Minister of Local Government, encouraged parents to oppose the changes through a letter-writing campaign.
He said letters should target Progressive Conservative MLAs whose seats are vulnerable in the next election, notably in Moncton and Fredericton.
“People like Ernie Steeves, Daniel Allain, Sherry Wilson and Greg Turner, all in Moncton, are hugely vulnerable right now,” he said.
A pilot program at Maplehurst Middle School in Moncton could replace French Immersion, according to CPF NB.
In a media release, the groups said it has had “numerous conversations with ten Maplehurst families, students, and former educators about the curriculum that is being offered by Maplehurst School in-lieu of French Immersion.
Collins said the program is significantly worse than what’s currently on offer in French immersion.
“The province cannot expect these offerings to produce fully bilingual students, as they are far from reaching the core elements of an effective immersion program,” he said in a statement.
Mitton told the crowd that community organizing would be required to reverse the government’s decision.
“I think that people organizing, making themselves heard, speaking up to government, speaking publicly, is the only thing that’s going to help move the needle,” she said.
Listen to Collins and Mitton speaking to CHMA on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022, in Sackville:
Higgs’ controversial decision became widely known in October, when then-Minister of Education Dominic Cardy announced his resignation in an explosive open letter.
At the time, Cardy blasted Higgs, saying the Premier had pushed the Education Department to “abolish French immersion by September 2023.”
The province says French immersion will be replaced with a program geared towards better conversational French for all students.
Supporters of that plan argue that immersion has failed to produce enough graduates fluent in French, while creating a two-tiered system of education, in which students with learning challenges are concentrated in the non-immersion stream.
But many questions remain about what exactly will replace the French immersion system, which some parents say is a crucial aspect of the education system.
Critics of the government also point to the Premier’s push for a unilingual province dating back to the 1980s, when he ran for the leadership of the anti-bilingual Confederation of Regions Party.
He also presented an 11-page brief to the Guérette-Smith Commission on Official Languages in 1985, calling for official unilingualism.
Correction: The name of an attendee was misspelled in an earlier version of this article. It was updated on Dec. 1, 2022, at approximately 11:40 a.m., with the correct spelling.