He appeared in the public debate in 2011, co-authoring a shocking work. The miscreant used convincing figures to puncture a dogma. The book was titled The imaginary cure (Boreal). The dogma he destroyed was that of immigration as a solution to the labor shortage and the aging of the population and as a lever for enrichment. Existing studies, he dared to assert against the unanimous opinion of governments, employers and left-wing associations, demonstrate that this is simply not the case. Immigration can have other virtues, but not these.
Thirteen years later, the findings of authors Benoît Dubreuil and Guillaume Marois have ended up percolating into public debate, even if areas of resistance persist. Economist Pierre Fortin has updated the scientific consensus in his own publications, including in a 2022 report for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government. He has just outbid. Analyzing the latest available data from G9 countries and four Canadian provinces, he concludes in this study that “immigration mainly contributes to modifying the distribution of the shortage between sectors of the economy, but that it does not produce a reduction significant global increase in labor scarcity. In the cases studied, it appears on the contrary to have made it worse.” Ouch!
Benoît Dubreuil is a repeat offender. Now Quebec commissioner for the French language, he used the same tool – his mastery of figures – to deflate another misconception: the effectiveness of francization in reversing the decline of French. “We have accumulated a liability,” he explained, “in the sense that the people who arrived in recent years, even if we wanted to have French classes for everyone, we would not succeed. And even if we had francization classes, we would need to have much stronger financial incentives to get people to register and to get people to put in a significant number of hours. »
We may double, triple, quintuple francization budgets, but the target is simply unattainable. It’s like wanting to bottle Lake Saint-Jean. We can, as the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, does, proclaim that we are making considerable progress, the level of the lake is not moving, and the rivers continue to rise there. pour out.
“A majority of temporary immigrants [ne parlant pas français] do not enroll in Francisation Québec courses, and those who obtain a place do not devote enough time to go beyond the beginner level,” says Dubreuil. The CAQ government has the impression of having struck two major blows by requiring the obtaining of a level 4 (out of 12) to renew work permits after three years and a level 5 for students at the end of undergraduate students from McGill and Concordia coming from outside Quebec.
“Me,” Dubreuil told reporters on Wednesday, “a graduate who has a level 5, I don’t hire him, OK? Then again, I know quite a bit about language learning. You can’t take the person and then put them in a work meeting, you can’t put them here in the room and then think that the person will understand what’s going on. » We can’t invite him to dinner either. Level 8, for him, should be targeted “in general to ensure social integration”.
We are far from the mark, because the influx of temporary workers, he calculates, has a major impact on the increase in the use of English at work. Between 2011 and 2023, the number of employees primarily using English jumped by 40%. It’s unprecedented, he explains (but he seems to forget the Conquest, then the influx of loyalists fleeing the American Revolution). The fact remains that his assessment falls short of reality, because he does not have the data for arrivals in 2024. And it is obviously concentrated in Montreal, where the English-speaking gain is the strongest and creates a spiral of anglicization of immigration.
“Most people who don’t speak French in Quebec are in English immersion. So, if you arrive, you know English well, you are in full-time English immersion and you study French three, four, five hours a week. If I come back to see you a year, two years, three years later, what will your strong language be? Which one will you favor in an environment like that of Montreal where, in fact, there are not many constraints on the use of one language rather than the other? » The language of Shakespeare, obviously.
It is therefore, I suppose, to shake decision-makers out of their torpor that he assessed the amount that all stakeholders — government, businesses, immigrants — should invest to properly Frenchify temporary immigrants arriving before the end of 2023: almost of 13 billion dollars. However, this sum does not include the cost of francizing permanent residents who do not speak French, nor that of the 32% of Anglo-Quebecers who still do not speak it nearly half a century after the adoption of law 101, nor that of the 25% of allophones who do not speak it either, nor even that of temporary immigrants who arrived after December 31, 2023.
We can certainly better Frenchize immigrants who have made the effort, before coming here, to acquire the basics. But otherwise, francization as a solution to linguistic decline is a mirage. An inaccessible star. A fantasy whose ritual reiteration by employers, as well as by liberal and supportive elected officials, screens reality and leaves room for the deterioration of the situation.
I do not doubt for a moment the desire of François Legault and several members of his team to leave a legacy of ending the decline. And there is no doubt that several of the measures announced over the past six years are courageous, unprecedented and structuring. I am hopeful that the plan that the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, will soon table will include positive elements.
But it is the tragedy of this government to have simultaneously presided over, first through recklessness – it did not see the increase in temporary immigrants coming -, then through laxity – it was informed of the loss of control in 2021 – , to this great phenomenon of anglicization of the modern era. Reacting Thursday to the tabling of the report, Minister Fréchette invited Ottawa to “come out of its bubble” regarding the unequal geographic distribution of asylum seekers. GOOD. But on the subject of the Anglicizing impact of temporary immigrants, she seemed comfortably stuck in her own.