DONOVAN: The new Tower of Babel? How mass immigration is transforming Alberta's classrooms

Riley Donovan is a freelance journalist and editor of Dominion Review.The Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) is considering axing a longstanding requirement for students to take a second language course, partly because the number of students unable to speak English fluently is skyrocketing.The May 12 motion by Trustee Jan Sawyer to end the second language requirement, which was established in 2006, cites several factors, including changes in “student demographics.” Superintendent Ron Thompson further elaborated on this in a board meeting, saying, “Our context has changed. Twenty years ago, in 2006, we didn’t have nearly the number of English as an Additional Language learners.” This demographic change the school board speaks of has been significant. According to the Annual Education Results Report (AERR) for the 2023-2024 school year, the number of students in the English as an Additional Language (EAL) category rose by 105.3% from 2011 to 2023 alone. The report uses the politically correct acronym EAL rather than English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Language Learners (ELL) because “many students are fluent in languages other than English” and “all students are also learning English.” Rosy new acronyms do not change the reality that a drop in English fluency in Alberta’s schools has become a real problem. Indeed, when Alberta teachers describe increasing “complexity” in classrooms, this language barrier is one of the main factors they are referring to..A report by the Alberta Teachers’ Association released in the fall of 2024 reveals that nine-in-ten teachers in the province “reported an increase in the complexity and diversity of student needs,” with half citing lack of English fluency as a significant cause of “complexity.” Statistics from the Alberta government bear this out. In one data table, we learn that the total number of students learning English in the province has risen dramatically from 65,803 in the 2009/2010 school year to 136,042 in the 2024/2025 school year. The epicentre of classroom linguistic chaos in Alberta is Calgary, the province’s main destination for new immigrants. A remarkable Calgary Board of Education (CBE) document explains that no fewer than 31% of students in the city’s public schools “are learning English as an Additional Language.” Startlingly, the document even recommends earmarking additional funding to specific schools (presumably those with high numbers of immigrants) to hire interpreters for classrooms.The decline of English in Alberta’s schools corresponds to high levels of immigration, especially in the years immediately following the pandemic. .According to a report from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, Alberta saw a gain of 79,216 people in 2021-2022, only for this to be dwarfed by a gain of 173,767 people in 2022-2023, and then totally eclipsed by an astonishing gain of 204,209 people in 2023-2024. The vast majority of this growth was from international migration. For instance, during the 2023-2024 period, 145,395 immigrants came to Alberta, while 43,750 people came from other provinces, and just 15,064 people were added through “natural increase” (births over deaths).As Canada’s immigration source countries have shifted markedly towards East and South Asia, the linguistic makeup of provinces with high immigration intakes is changing profoundly. The 2021 Census found the percentage of Calgarians with English as their mother tongue has fallen to just 64%. The top foreign mother languages include Punjabi, Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and Urdu. In Edmonton, one-in-five residents now speaks a foreign language at home. Data from Canada’s 2026 census will likely show a further drop in English fluency across Alberta’s urban centres. The eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesis tells the famous Tower of Babel narrative, where God is said to have punished Man’s arrogant attempt to construct a tower to heaven by cursing the builders with a multiplicity of tongues: “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”It was self-evident to the ancients that a lack of linguistic cohesion would frustrate a building project. It is obvious to most Canadians that this same phenomenon is straining and fracturing our society. Nowhere is this more evident than in the classroom.Riley Donovan is a freelance journalist and editor of Dominion Review.

DONOVAN: The new Tower of Babel? How mass immigration is transforming Alberta's classrooms

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