In the video of Duty, Grace has been exposing for two minutes her drama as an immigrant still waiting for her permanent resident because of unacceptable French. Three times, she failed the oral comprehension and expression exams required in Quebec. However, the young woman from Cameroon who speaks in front of her audience could not be more eloquent: choice of relevant words, excellent grammatical structure, impeccable delivery. At most a charming accent that sings, reflecting the fact that at birth, she spoke English in Cameroon.
Grace’s story is a perfect illustration of the aberrations of our system. Let’s hope that they will be corrected by the new reform launched by the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette. Grace arrived in Quebec in 2019 with the status of temporary worker in agriculture. The Cameroonian, now 30, worked in the health sector during the pandemic, caring for the elderly. All of this, exclusively in French, a hiring requirement. “I speak French, but that was the biggest obstacle for me here in Quebec,” she says. You have to pinch yourself to believe it: while the labor shortage is hitting the Quebec job market hard, the absurdities of our system are putting us at risk of losing precious assets like Grace. She considered moving to Alberta, where access to permanent residence is not like an obstacle course, but she changed her mind.
The most absurd thing about this story is that the administration, production and evaluation of the tests that Grace failed three times are done from… Paris. With gentleness, Grace denounces the astonishing nature of it: “As I am in Quebec, I expected to listen to the Quebec accent. I was really surprised when I realized it was the French accent. His results are sent to him from Paris. To obtain statistics on the overall results of these assessments, our reporter had to contact the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris Île-de-France. We would like to invent this nonsense, denounced for ages, that we could not.
Quebec promises to modulate the expectations according to the jobs held and to lower the level of requirement for less specialized jobs such as that of Grace, orderly to the beneficiaries, which should allow him to pass his test the next time. If she hasn’t given up by then.