Elisa Brosseau makes Top 10 Influential Canadian Francophones 2022 list

Mayor of the Town of Bonnyville Elisa Brosseau has been recognized as one of the Top 10 Influential Canadian Francophones of the year.  

Released by FrancoPresse, the 2022 list gives the chance for the public to discover inspiring people who take their Francophonie to heart and know how to leave their mark in their communities.

Brosseau is being recognized as one of the top influential Francophones because she is the Mayor of the Town of Bonnyville since 2021 and the Chair of the Alberta Bilingual Municipality Association (ABMA). 

Bonnyville and the M.D. of Bonnyville are two of the 19 municipal members with the purpose of showcasing bilingualism. 

The association is “for the sole purpose to showcase bilingualism to help with the added value of prosperity and the form of economic development,” said Elisa Brosseau, Chair of the ABMA. 

“It helps us access as a municipality funding through the federal government in showcasing we have bilingualism in our community, that’s what we hope to foster.” 

For Brosseau, bilingualism helps attract Francophone investors and workers to her province. It works to make its counterparts in other municipalities aware of the Francophone reality of the province and promote bilingualism as an economic advantage. 

“Any access we can have as a municipality for extra exposure or funding opportunities with utilizing whatever that we have in this case bilingualism whether it’s the graft funding or attracting investors or tourism,” said Brosseau.

The ABMA initiative began in November 2010, inspired by the Association of Manitoba Bilingual Municipalities. 

“We are still in the forming stage of the association, we have almost a sister’s association in Manitoba and that is what we are trying to mirror,” said Brosseau. 

“We meet with them frequently to work not only to build our association to model off of what they have created but also to work on some larger national priority fees as bilingual municipalities need that exposure.”