Some Sackville parents are making plans to head to Moncton Thursday night for a consultation session hosted by New Brunswick Education Minister Bill Hogan to discuss his plan to phase out French Immersion and move to a universal conversational French program for all Anglophone students in the province. The plan is set to launch in September for kindergarten and grade one students.

Valmai Goggin is planning to attend the session at the Delta Beausejour at 6:30 p.m., hoping for a chance to weigh in on the government’s plan. Goggin is concerned that the province’s proposed “innovative immersion” program will not just be bad for her own children’s French language success, but bad for the province in general, and its reputation as a bilingual province.

“This is not an immersion program and its outcomes will not be comparable to the outcomes of the current French Immersion program,” says Goggin who has two young kids, one who started immersion this year, and another who would start school under the new system. “This new ‘one size fits no-one’ plan removes choice and manages to simultaneously decrease the amount of learning available to students,” says Goggin. “So I’m extremely unhappy and [Monday’s] Q&A online session did nothing to alleviate my concerns.”

On Monday night, Hogan took to Youtube for about 30 minutes for a Q&A to kick off a brief series of consultations. Hogan read prepared answers to questions gathered from emails and online communications, which touched on a number of concerns that parents have been raising, such as the speed of the rollout and concerns that the new universal program would either be too challenging or not immersive enough.

One question focussed on the level of consultation both before and after the proposal was released. Hogan referred to formal and informal consultations done by the education department over the past year, including the review of second language learning written by Yvette Finn and John McLaughlin, which proposed a single French learning system for anglophones. McLaughlin was appointed deputy minister of education after the previous deputy minister was fired in November, and is now helping to spearhead the new universal French program.

“But let me be clear,” said Hogan, “there’s still a chance for New Brunswickers to have their say. We need to hear about the strengths and challenges, where we may have missed any opportunity, or where there are challenges. So I strongly encourage everyone to check out our website, read more about what we’re proposing. And then come out and join us with their thoughts, ideas and input.”

Canadian Parents for French director Chris Collins attended the first in person session in Bathurst on Tuesday night, and told The Northern Light’s Nathan Delong that the questions asked during the session were designed to elicit positive responses. Delong reports that about 50 people attended in Bathurst, for a "world cafe" style meeting with the audience breaking into discussion groups, and then reporting back to the larger group.

Valmai Goggin has some specific questions she’s hoping to bring on Thursday in Moncton. Goggin is concerned about not just the quality of the new program, but the promise by the government to ensure all current immersion students can finish their educations in that program. Goggin says she plans to bring up that question on Thursday night, as well as the question of what kind of mandate Hogan and the Higgs government have for undertaking this radical reform.

“This massive, earth-shattering change to New Brunswick’s education system was not on the ballot in 2020,” says Goggin. “And the PC government does not have a mandate to make this change… They are trying to shoehorn this change in before the next election.”

Goggin also has concerns about whether the new program plan–for a maximum of 50 per cent of instruction in French, with no focus on reading and writing–will be enough to have a meaningful impact on students’ language skills. She cites the example of her daughter’s current French Immersion program, and the impact she sees with it. “My daughter’s grade one teacher sent a note home this week saying she is now speaking French in the classroom 85% of the time, and the students are keeping up,” says Goggin. “My daughter started French in September, four and a half months ago. And she’s now in a classroom where 85 per cent of instruction is now in French and they’re keeping up.”

Goggin says she has yet to see research or evidence that the new program will have, “anywhere near the same meaningful outcomes” as the current French Immersion program.

The original timeline for a French Immersion reform plan included a longer consultation period on proposed reforms that would take place this year, with reforms due to start in 2024. But Premier Blaine Higgs famously dismissed that timeline, insisting that the reforms begin this fall, so as to avoid happening too close to an election year. That was the decision that also triggered the resignation of then-Education minister Dominic Cardy, which in turn was the first time many parents learned that there was a plan to phase out French Immersion.

Since Hogan took over, a much shorter period of consultation has been proposed, with four in-person meetings, two virtual sessions, and Monday’s Q&A, to cover the whole province.

Goggin says she is wary of the extent of the consultation program planned over the next few weeks, which calls for a ‘What We Heard’ document to be published by the end of winter, and a final framework for how the program will roll out by spring. CHMA asked if Goggin felt her input would be taken seriously by the department.

“I’d like to think that the government is operating in good faith here,” says Goggin. “And that if it truly is a consultancy process with the community, that they are going to listen to our concerns, and they are going to respond accordingly.” But, she adds, “I’m not going to buy any lotto tickets based on that outcome.”

Goggin says that she had a “thoroughly unsatisfying” email exchange with Moncton PC MLA Sherry Wilson.

“It just confirmed for me that, you know, the MLAs themselves don’t understand what this program is going to be, because it could not be explained to me by a member of the PC caucus. So I have yet to see the government respond to its community appropriately. But I’m hopeful that this week will produce results.”

The session in Moncton is scheduled for Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. at the Delta Beausejour hotel. No registration is needed to participate in the consultation session. The Facebook group French Immersion Supporters in Sackville, NB has a number of posts attempting to coordinate carpooling.

The province is also accepting feedback via email at consultation.eecd.edpe@gnb.ca and they are also asking resident to fill in an online survey.

Listen to the CHMA story below: