TORONTO - For Jessica Harris, going to school meant learning all her subjects _ from her earliest ABCs to high school math and science -- en francais.

Enrolled in French immersion since pre-school, the 19-year-old from Prince Albert, Sask., is a shining example of the power of introducing kids at an early age to Canada's two official languages.

Having the gift of the gab in both French and English has opened all kinds of doors that would have been firmly shut had she been unilingual, says Harris, a University of Ottawa student studying biology as a potential entree to medical school.

"I've gotten to meet and I've become really good friends with a lot of people here that I wouldn't know or wouldn't be able to converse with if I couldn't speak French,'' says Harris, who earned one of only 40 positions as a bilingual page in the House of Commons last year and now works part-time as a tour guide on Parliament Hill.

But she concedes that she may be an anomaly among her French immersion classmates, many of whom she suspects have not continued to flex their fluency because of limited opportunities to use the language in their home province.

And census data released Tuesday by Statistics Canada seem to confirm that suspicion. Many students who graduate high school with French immersion certificates are losing their highly prized linguistic duality over time.

Outside Quebec, the anglophone population's knowledge of French increased slightly between 2001 and 2006 from 7.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent, but it continued to decline among young people aged 15 to 19, and it declines even more as that cohort matures.

Bilingualism traditionally peaks among anglophones in the teenage years while French is still being taught at school.

But the proportion of bilingual teens is dropping. A decade ago, 16.3 per cent of anglophones 15 to 19 said they were bilingual, compared to 13 per cent in 2006.

Teenagers who peaked a decade earlier lost their ability to maintain their knowledge of French as a second language, with the rate of bilingualism falling to 11.8 per cent in 2006 from 16.3 per cent in 1996.

There are a number of reasons why bilingualism rates outside la belle province may be waning over time, from a dearth of qualified teachers to issues of access to a lessening of enthusiasm among parents, experts say.

About 300,000 students outside Quebec are in French immersion programs, says James Shea, executive director of Canadian Parents for French. Monitoring by his organization shows enrolment among school boards is actually up in some provinces, often at the expense of core French classes taken as part of the English curriculum.

But he admits there is concern about a shortage of French-speaking teachers qualified to give instruction in an array of subjects.

"We certainly could benefit from a program that would allow teachers to move,'' says Shea. "We would like to see the Council of Ministers of Education pick up that concept and develop a process by which teachers in Canada could move from one province to another on an exchange basis.''

For example, he suggests, "if there is a need for French teachers in Calgary or in British Columbia who could exchange with teachers in Ontario or Quebec or New Brunswick, (that would) allow English-speaking teachers to come into Trois Rivieres and teach English in French schools.''

Heather Stauble, a staunch proponent of second-language schooling who enrolled both her children in French immersion, says that while many school boards offer terrific programs, it is not always easy in some parts of English Canada for students to access them.

When her son Michael, now 19, entered kindergarten in the mid-`90s, a bus picked him up outside their eastern Ontario home in Pontypool for a 40-minute ride to a school in Lindsay.

But by second grade, the school board drastically altered busing arrangements, forcing parents to drive their kids to central pickup points for what was called "express busing.''

"It had a huge effect on the enrolment, in a very negative way,'' says Stauble, who adds that some parents had a 50-kilometre round trip to get their kids to the pickup points.

One girl, raised by a single mother on social assistance without a car, had to live in town with another family during the week to get into French immersion.

Parents eventually persuaded the public school board to share busing with the separate board, and since then enrolment has edged up yearly, says Stauble, whose 11-year-old daughter Brigid is in Grade 5.

"But it is still a really long bus ride. There are still too many kids who are on the bus from 2 1/2 to three hours a day.''

While language immersion has remained a fixed feature of the Canadian educational landscape since then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the concept as part of the 1968 Official Languages Act, it has not really evolved, says Fred Genesee of McGill University, an expert in bilingual education.

"Canada has been in the very enviable position that 40 years ago we pioneered these very, very exciting and very effective programs in bilingual education and now in the 21st century we find ourselves in a global world where knowing other languages is really fundamental in a sense.''

Genesee says that the United States and many European countries have drawn on Canada's experience to create their own bilingual education systems, but have since surpassed us in preparing their young people to operate in multilingual societies around the world.

"Someone once observed that Canada is weather, but I also think you could say Canada is language,'' Genesee muses.

"The one thing that is really striking about Canada is how many languages there are and how important language is to us as a nation. Because we have indigenous (First Nations) languages, we have these official languages and we have all of the languages that immigrant groups bring.''

"And that actually positions us to be extremely powerful in the global scene today . . . And yet I really don't have a sense that we're using immersion programs as springboards to catapult our young learners into the new century. We're sort of stuck.''

So 40 years on, what plans does Ottawa have, if any, to beef up our children's linguistic proficiencies?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper who once said that Trudeau's doctrine of bilingualism was "the god that failed,'' signalled in October's Throne Speech his intention to renew the five-year Action Plan for promoting official bilingualism.

The plan expires this spring and included a $381.5-million component for education.

And on Monday, Harper announced the appointment of former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord to head a high-profile committee on bilingualism.

Described by Harper as the model of a bilingual and bicultural Canadian, Lord will travel to seven cities in December to speak to members of English and French minority communities then report to Ottawa in January.

Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser says he was ecstatic to see the government flag the plan.

"But at the same time, the Speech from the Throne is a menu, it's not a meal,'' says Fraser. "So, I'm waiting to see what comes forward when the government actually starts moving on this commitment.''

Stauble, too, is anxious to see what Ottawa plans for promoting linguistic duality among the next generation of young Canadians.

"I think that we have a responsibility to these children to make the opportunity to become literate in both our official languages available to everyone.''

"To me it's like teaching reading and writing was to people 100 years ago,'' says Stauble, who regrets being unable to continue French immersion past Grade 4 while growing up in Toronto.

"I feel like in my own life, I would have had some opportunities that I didn't and I couldn't take advantage of because I wasn't comfortable speaking French, whereas my son and my daughter take it for granted that they can go anywhere in Canada.''