Cardy resignation puts focus on French immersion's future

French immersion was the last straw between Premier Blaine Higgs and Dominic Cardy.

The education minister's dramatic resignation last week was sparked by the premier's insistence that immersion be replaced next fall by a yet-to-be-defined new program.

There's no starker illustration of their disagreement over that September 2023 date than the Higgs government's own website.

As of 4:30 p.m. on Monday, the "Evolving French Language Learning" page still showed a slow and careful two-year consultation process leading to implementation in September 2024 – a timeline Higgs has now publicly rejected as too slow.

"My goal would be that we would be able to roll out a change in the program in the fall of '23," he told reporters the day Cardy quit. 

Higgs said that was the original target date, "and then it got moved." 

The website went live in May with the 2024 timeline.

Cardy says cabinet approved the longer, more cautious process described in elaborate detail on the website, and Higgs was overruling it on his own — without any substitute program on the drawing board.

"You cannot change deadlines on large systems based on your emotional state, without undermining the quality of the work or the morale of your team," he said in his resignation letter.

The two men were once aligned on education reforms.

Both agreed immersion needed to change. Both agreed, as well, the school system had seen too many disruptive, poorly thought-out overhauls.

Over time, however, they diverged. 

"The problem I had was that the premier was intent on adding to that list" of disruptions, Cardy told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton last week.

"The premier's emotional connection and opposition to the French immersion program has become his overriding and singular concern."

Any reporter covering Higgs can attest to the fact that, when asked almost any question about minority language rights — an overriding issue for the province's francophones — he soon segues to French immersion, a program for anglophone students. 

Higgs's four daughters took French immersion so he's not against children learning French. 

But he's frustrated that, in his view, the program isn't working for everyone and that Cardy and his department were not moving fast enough to change it.

'Streamed' system

An independent commission that reviewed French second-language learning said in a report in February that 90 per cent of students who stick with immersion through Grade 12 achieve a conversational level of French.

"Seen in that light, French immersion has been a very effective program," wrote the co-authors, provincial court Judge Yvette Finn and former deputy education minister John McLaughlin.

The problem, they added, is more than 60 per cent of anglophone students aren't in immersion for one reason or another. 

Almost all students with learning challenges are not enrolled, it said, creating a "streamed" or two-tier school system in which "our academically strongest students are overwhelmingly in French immersion."

So the report recommended replacing immersion with a program for all students, aimed at achieving a conversational level of French.

But the commissioners warned that government should approach the recommendations "cautiously."

"We anticipate that if the above recommendation is approached strategically and with careful planning, it may take a number of years to be fully implemented," the report said.

Former auditor-general Kim Adair-MacPherson issued the same go-slow warning in her 2019 report that found frequent education reforms hurt classroom learning. 

Any new reform of French immersion should have a "realistic" implementation schedule and should consider staffing requirements and the risk of more disruption, she said.

'Wrecking ball'

Higgs is ignoring those warnings by rushing, Cardy says.

"Change requires care, not a wrecking ball," he wrote in one of the many memorable lines of his resignation letter.

Moving up the implementation date of a new program to September 2023 goes against civil service advice and was not approved by the cabinet or Progressive Conservative caucus, Cardy said last week.

That will place "huge stress on the education system and damage the education of our province's anglophone young people," he wrote.

The same day the website with the 2024 timeline went live in May, a government press release announcing consultations made a little-noticed reference to the province "moving away from the two-tiered system of the English Prime and French Immersion programs."

The site's longer timeline includes several layers of consultation, piloting and assessing.

Prototype program underway

Chris Collins, executive director of the New Brunswick chapter of Canadian Parents for French, says he's concerned the "so-called consultation process" will mean little.

"We want to know that they're going to be intensively listening to data," he told CBC's Information Morning Moncton.

Eleven schools tried out new French-second-language methods last year. This year, 23 schools and nine early-learning centres are experimenting with a "prototype" program.

Next year was supposed to see more preparation and planning and more consultations to figure out staffing needs and transition plans.

All of that will be jeopardized if Higgs rushes a new model into place next fall, Cardy argues. 

One question now is what Cardy's replacement, new Education Minister Bill Hogan, will do.

Hogan told reporters last week he shares the premier's concerns about immersion.

But what if he becomes convinced — as Cardy was — that Higgs is moving too fast?

"Certainly everything I've seen from Minister Hogan is he's someone who speaks his mind and stands up for what he believes in, so I would certainly expect that," Cardy said last week.

The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development would not say Monday whether Hogan supports the premier's timeline or the one on the departmental website.

Higgs made it clear last week, however, that September 2023 is the implementation date.

Waiting another year, until just a month before his Progressive Conservative government goes to the polls, would mean no change at all, he said.

"We all know that in an election year, if you think you're going to implement something significant, it's not going to happen. It just won't happen."

Higgs used to complain about that election-year-politics phenomenon when he was finance minister in the Alward government.

Now as premier he's suggesting he's still powerless to stop it.

To ensure the change happens, he said, and to guarantee it's "sustainable, long-term, despite the outcome of another election," he'll impose it next fall — against the advice of experts and at the cost to his government of a high-profile cabinet minister.