It was to be expected: now the management of Dawson College is crying out for “discrimination” in the face of the about-face of the Legault government, which has decided to cancel the $ 189 million grant that would have been used to expand this establishment already huge, the biggest in Quebec.
Discrimination is treatment that violates a right recognized by the charters of rights and freedoms. Is there, in Quebec, a right to benefit from a higher education financed by public funds in English? No. This right exists at the primary and secondary levels for those whose mother tongue is English, but it does not exist for anyone — not even Anglophones — at the higher levels. Quebec, of course, generously funds a vast network of English CEGEPs and universities, because collectively we want Anglophones to be able to study in their own language. But English CEGEPs have become machines for anglicizing Francophones and allophones, who have been in the majority there for years. No offense to the headmistress of Dawson, the proof of this has been made for a long time. 85% of students at Dawson, for example, will go to English university, and the majority of them are destined to work in English.
The government has decided not to add to this linguistic dynamic that is harmful to French. However, this decision does not affect any right. Anglophone CEGEPs are totally disproportionate to the demographic weight of Anglophones: in Montreal, for example, 52% of pre-university diplomas are awarded in English, while Anglophones constitute only 17.5% of its population. No right recognized in Canada or in Quebec imposes, nor even justifies, this state of affairs. It is in total contradiction with the spirit of the language policies of the Quebec state.
Because we let the situation rot, the return to coherence appears discriminatory to those who benefited from it. But they are simply wrong.
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