ABSTRACT
Canada is the world’s second largest country geographically with a population of just over 35 million people. Canada’s population ranks close to 40th, having less than a half of a percentage point of the world’s population. The country consists of 10 provinces and three territories. Offi cially, Canada is a bilingual country (French and English), although these languages are not equally distributed across the country. New Brunswick is the only offi cial bilingual province, Quebec is considered a Francophone province, and the other provinces are considered to be Anglophone. According to Statistics Canada (2013), there are just over fi ve million students enrolled in Canada’s 15,500 publicly funded schools. There is a small private school system in Canada that services about 8% of eligible students across the country (Ontario Federation of Independent Schools, 2012). Statistics further suggest that the overall population of children in Canada’s schools is slowly but steadily declining.
