The Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, was certainly not the only one to be surprised when he saw Mayor Valérie Plante qualify as an “attack on Montreal” the increase in tuition fees imposed on Canadian students outside Quebec who want to enroll in Anglo-Montreal universities.
At the invitation of the mayor, the former Minister of State for Municipal Affairs Louise Harel, uncompromising on the linguistic question, became the first president of the Committee of the City of Montreal on the French language, created in 2022. Mme Harel has probably never been a big reader of The Gazettebut the “ No thanks » that Mme Plante said in an interview certainly did not escape him.
This must not have escaped his ex-colleague and friend Louise Beaudoin, also a member of the French language committee. At the time when she was Minister responsible for the French Language in the Bouchard government, she did not hesitate to call the French to order when they judged that their Anglophilia was crossing the line.
Mme Plante has never been seen as a great defender of French, quite the contrary. The record of service of these two women in this regard may have given some credibility to its Action Plan for the promotion of the French language 2021-2024, but it does nothing to simplify their task.
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The current Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, declared Thursday that the mayor of Montreal could not be considered an “ally”, contrary to what she herself claimed to be in 2021, which does not had not stopped expressing serious reservations about Bill 96 on language. If we trust the words of Mme Plante, the promotion of French as she sees it should not constitute an obstacle to the anglicization of the metropolis.
It was astonishing to hear him say that there should be no difference between the treatment reserved for Bishop’s University, a tiny establishment located in an environment where French is in no way threatened, and that reserved for the two giants that are McGill and Concordia, whose English-speaking clientele imposes their language in the city center.
It was predictable that the increase in tuition fees decreed by the Legault government would lead to a drop in registrations. Last November, McGill spoke of a drop of 20% to 80% of Canadian students outside Quebec which would threaten the existence of some of its faculties and its sports teams. The latest news is that the figure is 22%. At Concordia, 27%.
Tuition fees will not increase from $9,000 to $17,000 as initially planned, but rather to $12,000. On the other hand, Quebec wants to impose a summary francization of 80% of new non-Quebec registrants. One might wonder whether it is the cost or the obligation to learn French that bothers you the most.
It is undeniable that this will cause inconvenience to McGill and Concordia. This will undoubtedly reduce the attractiveness of Montreal as a university city, with the resulting negative economic effect, but it is the price to pay to ensure the sustainability of a predominantly French society. We can continue to play ostrich, as M doesme Plant, but it is no longer possible to spare both the goat and the cabbage.
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While misfortune continues to befall the Legault government, the defense of French remains a sure value for the Coalition Avenir Québec and fits well with the role of “Captain Quebec inside Canada” that it intends to play. the Prime Minister.
CAQ deputies whom we had almost never heard of went to the front. Valérie Schmaltz (Vimont) accused Mme Plants of wanting to erect a wall around Montreal to better anglicize it. On behalf of the regions, her colleague Stéphanie Lachance (Bellechasse) asked that French be protected “from one end to the other” of Quebec.
If Mayor Plante is not an “ally”, we can also wonder about Denis Coderre. If there is one thing these irreducible enemies have in common, it is their weakness on the question of language.
During Denis Coderre’s visit to Duty, during the 2021 municipal campaign, he was asked what he planned to do to promote the promotion of French and the integration of immigrants if he became mayor again. He had nothing to say about it, except that the “English reality” constituted added value for Montreal, that we should not have a “reductive vision” of the metropolis and, above all, that we should not succumb to the “provincialism syndrome”.
The English-speaking clientele of the Quebec Liberal Party will certainly applaud this approach, but the leadership aspirant should perhaps qualify it somewhat if he wants to reconnect his party with the French-speaking electorate.