Bravo to New Brunswick for protecting its lands, waters, and French heritage

According to CTV News, the Canadian province of “New Brunswick has protected roughly 420,000 hectares and expects to get to 700,000 hectares by April 2023, which Holland says that would be equivalent to about 19 Fundy National Parks” (https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/new-brunswick-announces-the-protection-of-another-100-000-hectares-of-land-and-water-1.5987785). Bravo! Lebanon needs a bit of New Brunswick in it today more than ever (https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/d/lebanon-news/654809/fire-breaks-out-in-roumieh/en) to protect its beautiful green land and water.

This being said, and as per 91.9 The Bend, a second piece of good news from New Brunswick, Canada, is a five-year development strategic plan with France launched yesterday “as part of celebrations surrounding France’s national holiday — Bastille Day” (https://www.919thebend.ca/2022/07/14/n-b-launches-development-strategy-with-france).

The underlying guiding idea of this beautiful New Brunswick-France initiative is to “expand recruitment to increase the number of Francophone immigrants“, always as reported by the 91.9 The Bend. The latter will consist of activities to raise awareness in France of the many tourist attractions in NB. As noble as the above seems to be, how could touristic sites secure jobs for newcomers, Bambi cannot help not to wonder? She is asking because, usually and as per a Lebanese old saying, “you stick to living in a certain place if you earn a living in it“.

Anyhow the New Brunswick-France strategy also aims to promote and market Acadian artists on the international stage. The latter is an excellent idea to help support the international career of Acadian artists. This being said, perhaps the most promising piece of information for new immigrants is the plan to” facilitate the credential recognition in priority occupations“.

Unfortunately, the 91.9 The Bend media article does not expand much about how NB plans to facilitate the recognition in priority occupations. Bambi was also curious about the priority occupations. What are they? This motivated her to quickly read the report produced by the government of NB, which announced this initiative (https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/iga-aig/pdf/canadian-francophonie-canadienne/france%E2%80%93nb-development-strategy-2022-2027.pdf). This report describes the five-year-long nine objectives cited in the media article above with key performance indicators for each one of them. Once again, good for New Brunswick, and best wishes to the potential future French newcomers!

Although it is reassuring to know that NB seem to have a will and a strategy to recruit more francophone immigrants, it is Bambi’s hope that the increasing bureaucratic federal delays/barriers will not unintentionally discourage those French-speaking (apparently economic) immigrants from choosing our province as their home. It would also be interesting to know how many of “the over 500,000 new comers to Canada per year” will be French-speaking. This question is naturally and particularly critical for the French-speaking province of Québec (https://icpimmigration.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4094:will-canada-welcome-over-500,000-new-immigrants-per-year&catid=85&lang=en&Itemid=1003).

To conclude this post on a musical note, here is Ms. Mireille Mathieu and Mr. Yves Duteil singing his lovely song ❤️ about the beautiful French language in North America. Thanks to both NB and our federal government for any efficient effort to keep protecting our second official language.