The Opposition Critic for Education and Early Childhood Development is weighing in on the province’s decision to launch a public consultation into French immersion.
MLA Chuck Chiasson says it’s evident the survey questions are written with an end result in mind, “I think it is a kind of a joke because it is so biased towards the outcome that Dominic Cardy is looking for. I believe he wants to move it to the grade 3 level and he is looking for every reason to do so.”
Chiasson says, “If Minister Cardy is looking for New Brunswicker’s unbiased opinions, then I would suggest that he hire an outside agency to conduct his consultations as it is crystal clear that he is trying to influence the outcome of his so-called consultation to satisfy his own desire. I would like to point out that in 2014 then leader of the NDP Dominic Cardy stated that where second language training is concerned the earlier the better. Why this change of heart now?”
Chiasson says moving it to grade 3 or cancelling it all together is not going to fix the teacher shortage. “It’s not going to have a big impact, because this is an issue across the country. One of the issues we have in this province is we have teachers who graduate who are perfectly able to teach here in New Brunswick, but for a lack of a B contract, they go somewhere else to get full time work. I think this is one of the issues that not helping here in New Brunswick. We seem very reluctant to give them a B contract and give them full time work.”
He adds at the end of the day, it’s the students who are going to pay the price if we keep flip flopping back and forth on the issue, “There is no stability and I imagine it will be very confusing for the children.”
Follow
