With each economic news revealing that the unemployment rate in Quebec is the lowest in Canada or that the average income in Quebec is a little closer to the average income in Ontario, François Legault is proud.
The next day or often even the same day, he worries aloud about the decline of French and calls for more powers in immigration to curb it. He does not seem to realize that his objectives of reducing the economic gap between Ontario and Quebec and of curbing the decline of French are largely contradictory.
As long as we are part of Canada, we will never have control over interprovincial migration and over the right of the children of English Canadians and immigrants established in other provinces who move to Quebec to have their children educated in the English system.
However, the more the wealth gap between Ontario and Quebec decreases and the more Quebec’s labor deficits increase, the more residents of the rest of Canada will be attracted to Quebec and the more the French-speaking population of Quebec will be quickly drowned. Already, this is clearly being felt in the Outaouais region and on the island of Montreal.
If the CAQ never speaks about it and if the analysts rarely underline the thing, it is necessary to realize that the threat of minoritization of the French speakers in Quebec is undoubtedly less exogenous than endogenous in Canada, all the more so since English Canada officially set itself the goal of exploding the population of Canada in order to reach one hundred million inhabitants before the end of the century.
The more than probable scenario according to which, within 75 years, Canada will have 100 million inhabitants, the average income of Quebec will have equaled that of Ontario and English Canadians will have become the majority in the Outaouais, on the island of Montreal, on that of Laval, in the first and second crowns of Montreal, and, consequently, in the richest part of Quebec does not seem to come to the mind of the think tank caquiste.
But it comes to the mind of certain “entrepreneurs” of anglicization, such as the Centennial Academy which has occupied, since 2020, the building of the former Major Seminary of Montreal of the Sulpicians. This private establishment, whose website is bilingual, but whose courses are in English, has set itself the objective of preparing “native” and immigrant students from the French-speaking education sector to access English CEGEPs.
Fixating on the origin of immigrants accepted by Quebec is a serious mistake. The most serious danger comes from Canada itself as it is, that is, a country with a significant historical minority threatened throughout Canadian territory, in Ontario, New Brunswick, in the Outaouais, on the island and in the metropolitan area of Montreal, and everywhere else, in Estrie, in Quebec, etc., everywhere where there are English colleges and universities.
Any objective observer cannot conclude from this that within Canada, as it is constitutionally by the will of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Francophonie has no salvation.