Almost three years to the day after its creation was scrapped by the Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford, the University of French Ontario officially opened in downtown Toronto on Friday. A “historic” moment, according to the Minister of Official Languages of Canada, Ginette Petitpas-Taylor, and the Minister of Colleges and Universities of Ontario, Jill Dunlop, for this project which had a rocky start.
Present at the inauguration with her two counterparts, the Minister of Francophone Affairs, Caroline Mulroney, thanked on behalf of the province Dyane Adam, instigator of the project, for having navigated such a period.
A historian by training, Rector Pierre Ouellette weighed his words by also describing the historic moment. “The challenge of advancing French Ontario must occupy us on a daily basis,” he said. The university’s presence is all the more important given the provincial government’s objective of increasing the Francophone workforce in Ontario.
By enshrining the active offer last week – the notion that services in French should be offered proactively – as part of the reform of the French Language Services Act, the province will have to recruit more bilingual and qualified Ontarians.
“I wish the university great success in training a bilingual workforce,” French Language Services Commissioner Kelly Burke noted in a video. “Employers face challenges when it comes to recruiting skilled people who speak French,” said Minister Dunlop.
The cultural mission of the Franco-Ontarian community to obtain a post-secondary institution by and for Francophones and the province’s economic mission go “hand in hand”, thinks Carol Jolin, president of the Assembly of the Francophonie in Ontario. Soon, four out of ten Francophones in Ontario will live in the center and southwest of the province: other Francophones will have to be there to meet the demand for services. But the university does not only want to offer programs that meet specific economic needs, explained to the To have to Pierre Ouellette, who highlighted the contribution of Laurentian University graduates to the Francophone cultural community of Sudbury.
Three years after the protests
At the end of November 2018, thousands of Franco-Ontarians took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the province’s decision to cancel the university’s project. “If only 200 or 300 people had gone out, it would be over,” suggests Carol Jolin. The popular movement will have had an impact, he says. “In November 2018, our government made a promise to be on your side until the project saw the light of day,” said Minister Petitpas-Taylor in her speech.
The university’s training itself is directly linked to the agreement signed by the federal and provincial governments in September 2019. The federal government then agreed to finance up to 50% of the total cost of carrying out the project. Ottawa then pledged to fund the first four years, to the tune of $ 63 million. The Minister of Official Languages praised the work of her predecessor, Mélanie Joly, during an interview with The duty. The latter, says the new minister, has worked “hard” to achieve the project. “We did not want to give the province an excuse not to collaborate,” said Minister Petitpas-Taylor.
More recruiting
For the moment, it is thanks to a group of mainly foreign students that the university is promoting the Francophonie. Almost three out of four students are international at the start of the school year. “I would like to salute your courage and your confidence,” said Dyane Adam, president of the university’s governance board.
Rosy Toutsop, originally from Cameroon, is one of them. A bachelor’s student in urban environment studies, she wants to be one of the people who will find solutions to the major issues of the time, such as climate change. His classmate, Vital Kasongo, had been waiting for a French-speaking university in Toronto since his arrival in the Queen City 20 years ago. His studies will allow him to make professional advancements, he says.
The university is already thinking about next year. Its recruiters are present in ten schools, described Pierre Ouellette. The establishment could even potentially offer an education program as early as September 2022, an area where Francophone needs are important.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.