Appointed at the beginning of February to this brand new post of Commissioner of the French language, Benoit Dubreuil has just made public his 2022-2023 report which, in fact, covers only one month, from 1er as of March 31, 2023. Never mind, the report, which includes the most recent data on the evolution of the linguistic situation in Quebec, does not content itself with regurgitating rehashed figures, but pushes the analyzes further in a clear manner, relevant and straightforward.
You probably shouldn’t have expected anything different from the co-author of The imaginary remedy: why immigration will not save Quebecan iconoclastic but rigorous work, published in 2011, which debunked certain myths on the subject, myths which persist, moreover, since they inspire the bloated immigration policy of the Trudeau government.
The French Language Commissioner is appointed for a seven-year term by the National Assembly. He joins the five other people designated by a two-thirds vote of parliamentarians, including the Auditor General or the Public Protector. It thus benefits from an independence that the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) did not have to draw up an objective portrait of the situation of French. Under the Liberals, the studies commissioned by the organization had been hidden for years before being released in bulk without analysis or interpretation. With this independent commissioner, we can believe that this will not happen again.
The report highlights certain facts that emerge from the latest data from the 2021 Canadian census and subsequent analyzes by the OQLF. The Commissioner is interested in the phenomenon of non-permanent residents (temporary foreign workers, foreign students and asylum seekers). He notes that there were 100,000 non-permanent residents ten years ago while there are approximately 346,000 at present, or 4% of the population, “an absolutely unprecedented situation”, writes Benoit Dubreuil. This represents the equivalent of the entire immigrant population admitted to Quebec for the entire decade 2010-2019.
It is undeniable that this contribution is to the detriment of French in the workplace: it is in a high proportion that non-permanent residents, even more than landed immigrants, use English most often at work. More than a third of them work in English. Some of these foreign workers or students become landed immigrants. However, in the case of foreign workers, only 56% use French most often at work. This percentage drops to 51% for immigrants who have gone through education. Slightly less than half of these international students attended English-language CEGEPs or universities.
The fact of having lived in Quebec before being admitted as an immigrant is considered a guarantee of integration into Quebec society. This is the very foundation of the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ). Admittedly, these graduates are integrating into the economy, to the delight of the business community, which is always asking for more, but the data “raises doubts as to the effectiveness of the program” in encouraging these graduates to use predominant use of French at work, underlines the commissioner.
The same goes for these temporary foreign workers recruited by companies through the federal international mobility program (PMI) over which the Quebec government has no control. Some 40% of PMI workers do not speak French. Although labeled temporary, they often hold permanent jobs. If they have children, they are not subject to the requirements of the Charter of the French language and can therefore send their offspring to an English school.
At the National Assembly last week, the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, affirmed that limiting the influx of temporary immigrants, “that would mean a planned economy”, as in the former USSR, one might say. For the time being, since this temporary immigration is governed by Ottawa, it must be understood that it is up to the Trudeau government to plan our economy by continuing to support the development of English as a working language.
Among his findings, the Commissioner points out that English remains much more present among the immigrant population than among the non-immigrant population. In addition, the fact of having completed their post-secondary studies in English, for allophones but also for Francophones, is undeniably linked to the predominant use of English at work and in the public space.
In light of this first report, the French language commissioner, although in its infancy, is already proving its usefulness as an independent institution.