Bilingual Mandarin-language kindergartens should be established in Vancouver public schools to give children an edge in the global community, says a group of Vancouver parents.

"In terms of language learning, at the kindergarten level, there are only two choices: English and French," said Eileen Sue, a member of B.C. Parents for Mandarin.

"We do feel that children learn languages best before the age of nine. They are language sponges."

Learning Mandarin will give children an edge, helping them better compete with European students who regularly learn English on top of their native languages in school, she said.

Sue's group submitted a proposal to the Vancouver school board in April, asking for an optional program aimed at English-speaking families interested in having their children spend 50 per cent of their class time learning in Mandarin.

They would like the program in place by September of 2009.

The parents have taken some clues from the Edmonton school board, which has offered a variety of bilingual programs, including Mandarin, Cree and Ukrainian, for the past 25 years.

A Mandarin language program already exists in the Vancouver school district, but it starts in Grade 4 and only takes about 30 students. Additional language instruction is offered throughout the district, but mostly at the high school level.

"We're asking for expansion of what's already there. [The Mandarin language program] has very limited enrolment," Sue said, adding the program could help quell declining public-school enrolments by offering options otherwise available only at private or alternative schools.

If the program is successful, it could be expanded to include other languages like Spanish, German or Japanese, she said.

Vancouver school board chairman Clarence Hansen said the proposed program has the potential to succeed.

"We have the model of French immersion to look at," he said. "I'm quite surprised we're going to be looking to a city like Edmonton for guidance but they have done this for a number of years."

School board officials, language experts, academics and parents will come together for a forum in November to discuss the program, he said.

Parents in North Vancouver have launched a similar effort and submitted a proposal earlier this year to their own school district.

Vancouver has strong ties to other Pacific Rim communities, with statistics indicating a higher proportion of residents speak Mandarin or Cantonese fluently than speak French.

More than 125,000 Metro Vancouver residents said Cantonese is their native tongue, according to the 2006 census, and roughly 69,000 said it's Mandarin.

Only 24,130 residents said French is their first language.

Nearly 850,000 people identified themselves as allophones -- people whose native tongues are neither French nor English.

Of those allophones, 33 per cent said they regularly speak something other than English or French when they go to work.

University of B.C, historian Henry Yu, who is interested in enrolling his children in the proposed program, said "it's about time" for such a program.

He said Vancouver has managed to ignore the need or desire for bilingual training because immigrants have often taken on employment roles that require language skills in something other than French or English.

"In Alberta, they don't have that flow of natural diversity," he said. "Our diversity has actually hidden this problem for a long time."

Yu said opposition to the program could come from staunch supporters of Canada's two official languages.

Vancouver's Susan Duffy adopted her two young daughters from China and said it is important to her they be able to speak Mandarin.

Many of the parents Duffy has surveyed about the potential program are interested for the same reason, she said.

"We come from different backgrounds but the one thing we have in common is we want our children to get early exposure to a language we ourselves don't speak at home," she said.

Duffy has enrolled her daughters in private language lessons, but feels a bilingual environment would be much more effective.

Duffy will run a parent information session about the Vancouver program on Tuesday at 7 p.m., at the Kensington Community Centre.