Federal government cuts funding to newcomer language programs

A year ago, the Beacon reported on a newcomer literacy program that helps families settle into Canada, improve their language skills, and adapt to the Canadian education system. The Immigrant Parents as Literacy Supporters (IPALS) program, which has been running for about 16 years as a collaboration between Decoda Literacy Systems and the Burnaby School District, has provided literacy training to hundreds of newcomer families in BC and Burnaby. 

According to a press release sent by Decoda, “For the past 10 years, Decoda’s IPALS program has provided over 4,500 newcomer parents and caregivers the opportunity to improve their language and literacy skills and help their young children with early literacy activities, supporting their successful integration into Canadian society. The program is offered in 19 communities across BC in partnership with school districts, settlement organizations, local community organizations, and libraries.” 

In December 2024, Decoda staff received an email from the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) informing them that federal funding for the program would be discontinued in April 2025. According to Aliza Dhungana, Decoda’s program manager, the news came as a shock. 

“We are getting lots of responses from other organizations and communities, and they are also equally shocked. This program is such a well-respected and very popular program, which has been supporting newcomer immigrants for decades,” Dhungana told the Beacon. 

While the number of families that benefit from the program may seem much smaller than the number of newcomers to the province, Dhungana said this is because of the specialized nature of the IPALS program. 

“This program is a very culturally responsive, bilingual, specialized program that we provide for newcomer families and every community where we run the program. We always have a cultural interpreter who supports the program,” Dhungana said. “Let’s let’s say, for example, if we are running the program in one of the communities in Surrey, we have the program for only so many families, and we have a cultural interpreter who speaks the language of so many families, and we have a program for Mandarin families, and we have a program for Punjabi families.” 

Last year, the Beacon spoke with Sheri Brattston, Burnaby School District principal for community education and child care, about the IPALS program. 

“It ensures that it’s providing fun and engaging and play-based learning opportunities for the children as well as the family. Family literacy programs are not only to benefit the children, but also to benefit the learning needs of the families as well, which makes this a pretty special program,”  Brattston told the Beacon. “In family literacy programs, they really try to ensure that those materials that are used can be things that could be household objects found around the home because you really want to replicate the learning from the family literacy environment back into the home. The delightful part about IPALS is that there are actually materials each session that align with the topic, and then those materials go home to families.” 

The IPALS program benefits primarily young children who have not started school and their families. Last year, the Beacon spoke with Peiling Chan, a parent who joined the Mandarin language program with her daughter Cathleen in 2023. Chan moved from Taiwan to Burnaby with her husband and daughter in 2021. She said the program taught her a lot about repurposing commonplace items for her daughter’s education. 

“I remember the last session was about math, and I remember the teacher said that an easy way to introduce your kids to math is when you’re folding the clothes, you just sort them. It’s a kind of math. I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ We have three people in our family, so now every time I’m folding the clothes, I bring her together with me and show her ‘this is Daddy’s, this is Mommy’s, this is yours,’” Chan said. 

According to the Decoda press release, the federal government is also cutting funding for adult programs such as Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC), a program funded by IRCC. 

LINC provides free English language instruction for newcomers with permanent residency status in Canada. In Burnaby, the nonprofit organization MOSAIC offers LINC classes to newcomers. 

The Beacon contacted MOSAIC for comment about the funding cuts, but the nonprofit said no spokespeople were available to discuss this subject. 

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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