With an increasing number of immigrants, Canada has become a multilingual and multicultural society. English and French are dominant but not the only languages spoken in the Canada. According to the Canada Census, one in five speaks a foreign language at home.

More than 200 languages were reported in the 2011 census, with the Chinese language continuing to dominate, with more than a million people saying they speak either Mandarin, Cantonese or Chinese (a non-specified category that includes Mandarin or Cantonese).

Punjabi was listed as the next most common foreign language spoken in Canadian households, with 460,000 reporting it as their mother tongue.

As an immigrant parent myself, I understand more about what non-English speaking parents and children have been experiencing while living in mainstream Canadian society, especially in regards to the development of bilingualism, and how children learn and maintain their mother tongue as well as being able to learn English.

Fortunately, in the BC lower mainland, there are so many language schools for parents and their children to choose from:

• Chinese Language Schools
• Arabic Language Schools
• Spanish Language Schools
• Punjabi Language Schools
• Tagalog Language Schools
• Japanese Language Schools
• French Language Schools
• English as Second Language (ESL)

Some questions for parents:

1. What is your own attitude and belief about your children maintaining their heritage, culture, language and traditions?
2. Do your children have the ability to learn both their heritage language and English?
3. What if your children are of the opinion that they do not want to learn their heritage language?
4. How would you act or what have you done based on your attitudes and beliefs to support your children’s bilingual development?