The federal government funds official languages in education through annual or specific project funding.
Annual funding is negotiated by provincial and federal governments. These negotiations create the following agreements that set funding details:
Specific projects or goals are funded through a separate application process.
Regular annual funding
Step 1. Federal, provincial, and territorial governments negotiate a single base agreement, called a protocol
The Protocol for Agreements for Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction sets out how the governments work together and shows how the federal government gives money to all provinces and territories.
Governments renegotiate the protocol every 4 or 5 years to reflect changing priorities.
It takes an average of 2 years to negotiate each new protocol.
Step 2. The federal government negotiates with each province and territory individually to create unique agreements
The Alberta government and the federal government are currently negotiating the Canada-Alberta Agreement for Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction to:
- expand on important objectives in the Protocol for Agreements for Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction
- identify strategies and initiatives specific to Alberta
- create a detailed action plan to show how Alberta will distribute federal funding
It takes an average of 6 to 12 months to negotiate these agreements.
Step 3. Provinces and territories get federal funding
Each province and territory gets federal funding to give to funding recipients according to its action plan. The federal government usually gives this funding in 2 parts each year.
Step 4. Funding recipients report back to government
The Alberta government collects reports during the protocol term from each funding recipient, creates a combined report, and submits it to the federal government.
We repeat this process at the end of the protocol term to create a more detailed report showing how funding helped recipients achieve their goals.