IDEA says GN should press Ottawa for English school money

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Iqaluit education officials suggest the Government of Nunavut is missing an opportunity to pry more schooling money out of Ottawa, especially when it comes to helping Inuit students struggling with English.

At their first meeting since the summer break, members of the Iqaluit district education authority said the federal government needs to change its official linguistic map of Canada, where Quebec is the only province in which English is considered a minority language.

Because of this, Quebec receives millions of dollars in extra federal funding for English classes.

IDEA member Katherine Trumper said, with English also being a minority language in Nunavut, the territory should also take advantage of the extra funds available for English programming.

In an earlier meeting, Trumper said “kids are falling through the cracks” in their schooling because they don’t have the language support they need.

She added that although Iqaluit officials are initiating the lobby for special funding, the entire territory could benefit from the boost in resources for teaching English.

“There is no help for Inuktitut-speaking students for English,” Trumper said. “We can only do it from an Iqaluit perspective, but I think it’s a Nunavut issue.”

Dyane Adam, federal commissioner of official languages, told Iqaluit board members in a letter last month that she had no previous record of Nunavut applying for special funding.

To date, Nunavut only benefits from extra funding for French-language school programs, because the federal government recognizes French as a minority language in the territory, Adam wrote.

However, Adam took particular interest in Nunavut’s case, as the territory remains the only jurisdiction in Canada where both official languages are generally considered minority languages.

Adam was responding to a previous letter from the IDEA, which argued Nunavut deserved extra funding under the federal Official Languages Act. Under the law, the federal government must “encourage and assist the provinces to provide minority and second language education.”

IDEA officials believe the law favours Nunavut, where only 26 per cent of residents speak English as their first language, according to the 2001 Census.

But Adam indicated the federal government couldn’t help Nunavut with extra funding until they received a formal request from the territorial department of education.

IDEA members are writing to Education Minister Ed Picco about their request, and hope to have an answer in the coming weeks.