“I’m tired of the poor care we take of our immigrants. […] Take less to take care of it? We don’t take care of it!
This cry from the heart was that of Bernard Drainville, in November 2021. On the microphone of Paul Arcand, the one who was then a columnist denounced the “immigration mammoth” of the CAQ government, which he considered “particularly over-bureaucratized and ineffective” in terms of francization.1.
“Get out the Christie checks!” he said, reacting to reported failures in the sending of French language allowances that forced new arrivals to resort to food banks or to completely abandon their French classes.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville
“We want newcomers to learn French. We want them to love French, to become Francophones, Quebecers, and it seems like the machine is doing everything to discourage them!” the columnist said in an indignant tone.
Six months later, Bernard Drainville put his microphone and his indignation in a closet to join the ranks of the CAQ. By changing hats, the man who is now Minister of Education has also changed his speech.
In 2021, Drainville the columnist said he was tired of our immigrants being poorly taken care of. In 2024, Drainville the minister is no longer tired of the well-known CAQ refrain “It’s the immigrants’ fault” (even when they have absolutely nothing to do with it, as we saw with the delay in 4-year-old kindergartens2).
Yet, the criticisms of columnist Drainville are just as relevant today. Despite the official speech of the Legault government making the francization of immigrants a priority, the bureaucratic machine that discourages them is still at its worst by sending them a paradoxical message. French in Quebec is your future and ours. But it is not important enough for us to devote the necessary resources to it.
Due to an absurd budget impasse at the Ministry of Education, hundreds of immigrants enrolled in French language courses for adults have seen their return to school cancelled without fanfare.3.
This is particularly the case for 222 immigrants registered in francization at the Centre de services scolaire des Mille-Îles (CSSMI). While there is an immigration boom in the northern suburbs of Montreal, the demand for francization is increasing and we have been working very hard for several years to meet it, the budgets allocated by the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Immigration (MIFI) to the Ministère de l’Éducation have not been adjusted accordingly.4.
It was the French language teacher Dany Rousseau who, with a troubled soul, drew my attention to his students’ return to Absurdistan.
Dany Rousseau loved his work with new arrivals at the Centre de formation continue des Patriotes in Deux-Montagnes. He regretfully speaks of it in the past tense as an extraordinary human and professional experience.
“In our classes, our students were not only learning French, they were also learning about our culture, our way of life and everything else. It may sound cliché, but these classes became real families.”
People from all over the world, searching for landmarks and anchors to start their new lives, developed bonds and friendships between a lesson on the present imperative and personal pronouns.
Dany Rousseau, French language teacher, about the courses he gave
Every birthday or new milestone in her students’ lives was an excuse for a party. “I can tell you, madam, that I ate a lot of cake and little treats that came from everywhere. Teaching French is not good for your figure!”
Not good for the waistline, but certainly good for the soul. Whether they were from Ukraine, Afghanistan or Colombia, his students were all consumed by the same motivation to learn French, to work and to offer a better future to their children. “What touched me the most was to see many of them, after their classes at 3:30 p.m., return to the factory at 4 p.m., leave at midnight, go to bed at 1:30 a.m. And the next morning at 8 a.m., they were sitting in class, in a good mood and smiling. Those exhausted smiles always touched my heart.”
If the teacher speaks of his work in the past tense, it is because, a few days before the start of the school year, he received a call from his director announcing to him on the verge of tears that his contract, like that of about twenty of his colleagues in adult francization at the CSSMI, had been cancelled. Instead of the 16 groups planned for the start of the school year, there were ultimately only 3, due to lack of budget.
A week before the start of the school year, in order to comply with the budgetary rules of the Ministry of Education, which no longer tolerates overruns, the administration sent an email to students to tell them not to show up for class on August 26, even if they had received a registration confirmation. Some still showed up for their classes… only to realize that there were no more classes.
“We didn’t know what to tell them…”
Indeed, how can they explain to them that the same government that keeps telling them that Frenchification is the key to their integration is slamming the door in their face and throwing away the keys right in the middle of the school year? What should they do now? Anglicize? Make do with impersonal online courses?
“I’m very stressed. I don’t know what I should do,” Chandni, 20, who wanted to improve her French to enroll in CEGEP, told me. After a year and a half of francization, the young immigrant of Indian origin who lives in Saint-Eustache was almost there. Now she’s slowed down in her tracks, forced to wait on a waiting list at Francisation Québec where thousands of people are already waiting.
In Quebec, the finger is being pointed at Ottawa and the excessively large influx of temporary immigrants, which is leading to too great a demand for francisation.
“We can have whatever opinion we want on immigration,” Dany Rousseau told me. “But the immigrants who are here, they are here! Why don’t we take care of them? That’s what shocks me! I see them motivated. They work. They struggle. They want to integrate and we treat them like that?”
It reminds me of the cry from the heart of a certain columnist from 98.5, “fed up with the poor care we take of our immigrants” and dreaming of a more humane management of immigration.
1. Listen to the column “Checks aren’t coming in; I’m tired of our immigrants being poorly taken care of”
2. Read “Fewer French-language classes despite strong demand”
3. Read “No 4-year-old kindergartens closed because of French language classes, according to schools”
4. Read “Cancellations of French language courses are increasing in the northern suburbs due to lack of budget”