Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser has spent the past 10 years promoting bilingualism across Canada. The former journalist is a Francophile who learned French in high school and perfected it by working in Quebec while in university. Even so, he ruefully admits even his grandson and granddaughter quit French immersion.

His grandson, he says, was interested in a robotics program, while his granddaughter was also interested in a program that wasn't available in immersion.

It's not an unusual problem. For many students interested in a specialized program, "that means dropping immersion," Fraser said.

French immersion in Canada is celebrating its 50th anniversary with some 378,000 students enrolled across the country and an additional 1.3 million in core French. That means half of all eligible Canadian students - outside Quebec, as numbers aren't available for the province - are learning French. But the program faces significant challenges as it looks ahead: inadequate resources, too few teachers who speak the language, and a view of the program as one more welcoming to upper-middle-class families and students without special needs.

It's so dire in British Columbia that the Senate official languages committee is studying French immersion access in the province. The B.C. study is delving deeper into the challenge following the committee's June, 2015 report on improving bilingualism among Canadian youth. (The committee expects to report next March.)

But B.C. is far from the only province trying to manage a growing demand for immersion. Fraser says it's simply where the problems with access are most acute.

"There is the most dramatic conflict between the desire on the part of parents and the paucity of available places," Fraser said in an interview with Â鶹´«Ã½ following his last month.

"Some of the school boards have reacted to the embarrassing sight of people lining up and staying up all night to get their children in immersion by doing a lottery system instead... That just hides the problem."

The program's benefits are clear: for many who wouldn't otherwise learn a second language, it can provide fluency. French immersion "has enriched the lives of millions of Canadians," Fraser wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed last summer, calling it "one of the most successful Canadian educational experiences available."

But while immersion remains a desirable program - increasingly so in several provinces - that popularity has led to growing pains despite the program's age. With more and more parents choosing to put their kids in French, critics say it's hollowing out English-language programs, taking away both students and resources from standard classes, but providing little benefit in return.

Looking for better schools

The argument goes like this. Most kids go into French immersion in kindergarten or Grade One, but some drop out over the years to pursue more specialized math and arts programs, because they change schools, or simply because they don't like it. Those with learning difficulties get streamed out of the program, and new Canadians already learning English as a second language don't go into immersion in the first place, so the classes end up being more homogenous. And, particularly in areas where parents have to line up for hours or days to get their kids into the program, the students tend to be from homes with higher incomes or with parents who put a high priority on education, experts say.

Further, kids go home to Anglo families and those in mixed-program schools spend recess on English-language playgrounds, so many who start in kindergarten graduate without being fluent. Meanwhile, elementary schools have to divert resources to staff French programs.

Andrew Campbell is one of the critics raising concerns about immersion. Campbell teaches in an elementary school in Brantford, Ont., and writes about education issues. He's not an immersion teacher, but says he's taught at dual-track schools (which offer both English and French streams). He first started thinking about immersion when his now-grown children were entering elementary school. One of the reasons he looked at French was to move his oldest child into a class where fewer children would have learning challenges.

He saw the same thinking from other parents when he taught in an area he describes as "a fairly well-to-do part of Toronto." Some of the children had a 45-minute bus ride every day to be in French immersion, he said.

"The parents were quite open about why they did this. It was because they wanted their kids in what they saw [as] a better school - a school that had more upwardly mobile peers and out of the school that was in the neighbourhood that they were living in because they wanted something better for their kids," Campbell said.

"I think we see that all across the country."

The elitism critique in particular frustrates Fraser.

"I get really indignant at the suggestion that immersion is an elitist program," Fraser said.

"Once you've got a certain diversity of skill, of ability in a classroom, the system then conspires to push all of the children who have manifested any kind of problematic behaviour or learning skills out of immersion, and then they turn around and criticize immersion as elitist."

Like Fraser, Nicole Thibault, national executive director of Canadian Parents for French, is a strong supporter of second-language programming. Thibault says one way to solve the elitism perception problem would be for school boards to put immersion programs in areas with mixed socio-economic levels.

"Often those schools are empty. If you think of an inner core of a city, the families move away from those areas and then you have overcrowding in the suburbs. And that's often where the parents are fighting for a French immersion program," she said.

Putting French immersion in a city's core would draw students from crowded schools while benefiting students whose parents may not be advocating for special programming, Thibault said.

'People want to make the right decisions'

As for the idea too many kids quit, Thibault says attrition isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it's simply because the child moves to a school where it isn't offered (say, from an elementary school with immersion to a junior high without). In other cases, the students are motivated and finish their French credits early, or, like with Fraser's grandchildren, they decide to drop out to pursue specialized programs.

"If the person taking the course is satisfied, then it's not a failure of the program," Thibault said. "They're just making a different choice. And everybody's level of what they want for bilingualism is different based on their future plans, whether it's career or if they plan on travelling. Not everyone's goal in life is to be fluently bilingual."

At the same time, enrolling kids in immersion gives them a substantially better chance of learning a second language. Once they graduate, it's up to them to keep it up.

In his op-ed, Fraser said critics have unrealistic expectations for immersion. He says it's not intended to give grads the fluency of a native speaker.

"What immersion does provide is an important building block on which graduates can develop their language skills. Language proficiency is both an intellectual and a physical activity; without practice, it diminishes dramatically," Fraser wrote.

Campbell says he isn't opposed to French immersion - he just wants Canadians to think more about it and how it's changing the educational system. In Ottawa, for example, 2015 was the first fall that saw more students enrolled in early French immersion than in English in the English public system, the Ottawa Citizen reported last spring.

"People want to make the right decisions for their kids," Campbell said.

"I'm not criticizing anybody's decisions that they make about their parenting. What I'm saying is we have a program here that is changing the face of our educational system and we don't know a lot about it, we aren't asking a lot of questions about, and we need to start doing that."

While Thibault brags that her daughters are perfectly bilingual, Campbell says none of his three kids - who are 18, 20 and 22 - speak a second language now. Their mother learned French mainly in university by living in Quebec, so they left it up to the kids to decide whether they wanted to learn. So far, none of them have chosen to.