News Release

Transforming plans into action

PIER 21, HALIFAX, March 30, 2005 — The Honourable Joe Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), launched Towards Building a Canadian Francophonie of Tomorrow, a document that outlines progress made on projects designed to attract, welcome and integrate immigrants to Francophone Minority Communities outside Quebec. It also includes plans for continued work in 2005 and 2006.

“Linguistic duality is a core value of Canadian society. Through immigration, we want to help Francophone minority communities prosper and grow. We have made a lot of progress over the last few years and would like to thank all of our partners, particularly the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, for their hard work in helping us move forward,” said Minister Volpe. “The summary released today is a solid example of how we can reach our objectives if we all work together.”

The initiatives described in the summary stem from the release of the Strategic Framework to Foster Immigration to Francophone Minority Communities, launched in November 2003 by the CIC–Francophone Minority Communities Steering Committee. The Strategic Framework is contained within the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Official Languages, launched in March 2003. The first objective in this framework is to increase the number of French speaking immigrants to 4.4% by 2008.

“I am happy to report that we have surpassed our goal. In 2001, 3.1% of immigrants outside Quebec spoke French. In 2004, this percentage increased to 4.9%,” said the Honourable Mauril Belanger, Minister responsible for Official Languages, who also attended today’s event. “Through hard work and dedication, we hope that this percentage will continue to rise each and every year. I am also looking forward to the release of the Steering Committee’s five-year action plan which will further support the development of Francophone minority communities in Canada.”

For more information on what CIC is doing to foster immigration to Francophone minority communities and/or to learn more about the document released today, please visit the “What’s New” section of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s website at www.cic.gc.ca

For more information (media only):

Stephen Heckbert
Director of Communications
Office of the Minister
(613) 954-1064

Maria Iadinardi
Media Relations
Communications Branch
(613) 952-0740

Orli Namian
Director of Communications
Office of the Honourable Mauril Bélanger
(613) 299-6422

Backgrounder:

• Immigration helps official language minority communities grow