The federal Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, presented Tuesday a series of measures aimed at achieving new targets for welcoming new French-speaking arrivals outside Quebec, saying he wanted to create a “corridor of attraction”.
“It takes an attraction, jobsintegration at the school level,” said the minister during a press briefing in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in Canada.
During his stay in Caraquet, he also insisted on the “complicity” he believes is necessary from the provinces, as well as “the involvement of municipal councils (and) people in the community”.
“But it also takes money,” he continued, presenting a series of ways in which he plans to invest the $137 million provided for in the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028.
Ottawa notably announced on Tuesday that it wanted to launch a new program to support French-speaking immigration as well as measures for the arrival of new arrivals admitted for economic purposes. The initiative “will finance innovative projects aimed at eliminating barriers to French-speaking immigration,” it was specified in a press release.
The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada (FCFA) indicated in a press release that it had long requested the creation of such a program.
“It’s important because the government recognizes that we need tailor-made programs for our communities,” responded the president of the organization, Liane Roy.
The FCFA, however, issued caveats “in terms of the timetables for achieving certain key results, such as restoring the demographic weight of the French-speaking and Acadian communities.”
“It remains to be seen how adding a French-speaking lens to the department’s general immigration programs will translate into precise numbers in terms of French-speaking immigrant admissions,” he said. we added.
Mr. Miller insisted on the resilience of Acadians to ensure the vitality and evolution of their language.
“As Minister of Immigration, welcoming French-speaking newcomers is a fundamental element of this evolution,” he declared.
Don’t be a “moron”
This fall, the minister announced the French-speaking immigration targets for the new year and beyond. This target, which until now was 4.4%, must reach 6% in 2024.
The target must then gradually increase to 7% in 2025 and 8% in 2026.
Asked when he was aiming for the 12%, the level demanded by the FCFA, Mr. Miller said he wanted to be realistic.
“I didn’t have that confidence, setting the levels, […] that we were going to be able to go to 10%, 13%, so I simply didn’t want to be an idiot,” he said.
The minister reiterated that he was open to revising his targets upwards at a later date, depending on the evolution of the situation.
“What I have always said to the FCFA and to all those who advocate more ambitious thresholds is that I am not going to act like a politician who makes any promise, but who cannot (reach) the thresholds,” argued Mr. Miller.
For years, Ottawa has failed to reach its target of 4% French-speaking immigration outside Quebec. The Ministry of Immigration finally managed to respect this commitment in 2022, “with difficulty and misery”, underlined the minister.
In the opinion of the Bloc Québécois, it is “necessary” to raise the target. “In order for the weight of Francophones to be maintained and progressed in the rest of Canada, we are talking about a target of 12%. So no, 6%, that’s not enough,” said the spokesperson for the political party on official languages, Mario Beaulieu.
Among the other measures announced Tuesday is the expansion of a program called the “welcoming francophone communities initiative.”
The objective is to help the integration of French-speaking immigrants and from now on, 24 communities will be able to benefit from it rather than 14.