Frustrated Anglophones are considering founding a new political party rallying Anglophone voters who oppose the reform of Bill 96 on the French language at the post-secondary level, the media told us last week.
This bill was recently amended by the Liberal Party of Quebec to force all English-speaking college students to take at least three courses in French to obtain their diploma.
During the detailed study of Bill 96, on March 22, 2022, David Birnbaum, Liberal MP for D’Arcy-McGee, indicated that all English school boards go “beyond the requirements of the basic school regulations, the curriculum prescribed, in all that relates to French as a second language”. If that is his conviction, I invite the hon. His surprise will surely be immense when he finds that most are unable to do so.
Having myself gone to college in such an English-speaking institution, I have seen on a daily basis the flagrant inability of many of our peers, as well as our teachers, to express themselves in French. I am not trying to make the actors in the network feel guilty, but it is clear that very little effort is made to encourage and promote the learning of French in the English school community.
What was my astonishment, therefore, to hear the concerns of the president of the Fédération des cégeps, Bernard Tremblay, at the announcement of this potential obligation to take a minimum of three courses in French at the cégep. He said, in all seriousness: “This amendment has a catastrophic effect and, obviously, a discriminatory effect. »
He is particularly worried about the repercussions of this obligation: “There are thousands of students who will be unable to graduate,” he adds.
By way of justification, the president recalls that more than 35% of the approximately 29,000 students enrolled in English-speaking CEGEPs have too little knowledge of French to take these courses. Ironically, Dominique Anglade seems to share her point of view, she who announced on Tuesday that she wanted to back down from the amendment passed by her own party. It would seem that an internal pressure made him renounce his nationalist values.
However, the requirements proposed by the amendment are not very high.
Isn’t the fact that a third of CEGEP students are unable to take these courses clear proof that it is urgent to impose measures to correct the situation? I would invite Mr. Tremblay and Mr.me Anglade to wonder how it is possible, in 2022, in Quebec, to obtain a college diploma without having minimum skills in French.
Without this initiative, the professional careers of these future unilingual Anglophone graduates will, of course, take place in English only and will in their own way undermine the place of the French language in Quebec, and more particularly in the metropolis. Why not question the validity of such a measure?
The president of the Fédération des cégeps is unworthy of the high responsibility incumbent on him: to ensure the educational progress of young Quebecers.
We deduce from this that the Quebec college network prefers to be complicit in the decline of French in Quebec by refusing firmer commitments in terms of promoting our language in schools. Mr. Tremblay and others continue to bury themselves in the flowers of the carpet rather than trying to find solutions to this societal problem.
By waiting years before taking action, as the main interested party evokes, are we neglecting, once again, a complete generation of English speakers who could have expressed themselves skillfully in French?
Is it so crazy to dream of a Quebec where everyone can express themselves with ease in the language of Tremblay?