Posted at 10:51 a.m.
Mr. Fillion, you find it hard to contain your anger at the loss of the $100 million grant for the expansion of Dawson, the centerpiece of your legacy. It’s understandable. However, we regret that you take advantage of this to spread inaccuracies on the competitive dynamics of the two networks, French and English, financed by the money of Quebecers.
This dynamic systematically weakens the French network. For decades. While the English network is having a blast cashing in surpluses corresponding to more than double the weight of the English-speaking community, the French CEGEPs in the greater Montreal region are crying out for starvation. These communicating vessels also act powerfully to the benefit of English in all the other provinces of Canada, including in the yet bilingual New Brunswick.
There, what happens quite naturally by the force of attraction of English, here, our geolinguistic situation requires us to do so by law.
It’s obvious: in Quebec and Canada, putting the two languages on the same footing means putting both feet on the same language.
You must stop pretending that the defenders of the French network want to “bring the odiousness of the decline of French” to young people. They are simply following the trend towards which not only the rest of North America is pushing them, but even more so our already heavily anglicized elites.
You must also stop claiming that the French network is incapable of teaching English properly. On the contrary, it succeeds so effectively that Quebecers are the most bilingual Canadians today! It’s been a long time since the entire Quebec school curriculum, from primary to CEGEP, has integrated more and more numerous, demanding and serious English courses, including at the college level.
You must stop pretending that our concerns are based on “so-called experts” whom you reduce to “commentators and political actors” with “smells of resentment” who have rallied behind a fictional “narrative of facts”. Let’s ignore the fact that dictionaries associate the term “smells” with racism, and focus on the credibility of our sources.
Linguists or seasoned researchers of the caliber of Marc Termote, Charles Castonguay and Frédéric Lacroix do not write novels and above all do not tell us stories. No more than the majority of those who marched in parliamentary committee on Bill 96. In their documented writings, their arid and tight prose concentrates on figures, graphs, statistics as cold as rational, and which can be read bitterly, as the observations they bring to light are harsh. Read them: you will learn that the network of French CEGEPs began to decline in 1995 in favor of its dual English, and is now downgraded on the island of Montreal, where we now graduate more in English than in French in pre-university.
You must stop accusing us of calling English CEGEPs “naughty”, since they only do what the law and the natural attractiveness of English allow them to do. If you are looking for “villains”, see them rather on the side of our elected officials who for too long thought they were doing the right thing by letting English CEGEPs serve as magnets for allophones on a continent where French is fighting with unequal weapons to keep its small place. under the sun.
Ghettos on the wrong side
Also, you need to stop pretending that extending Bill 101 to college would “create ghettos” on both sides of the language barrier. One of your mistakes is to attribute only to English CEGEPs the role of building bridges with francophones. We have a better idea for you… For fear of ghettos, invite Anglo-Quebecers instead to make “the best choice” for their future: enroll en masse in French CEGEPs. Because right now, they are the ones who are “creating a ghetto” on the French side, which they visit very little. This demonstrates that they do not believe, like you, that it is essential to change network to learn a minority language. So why should a French speaker study two or three full years in English to master the hegemonic and majority language of our continent? Here, you are thinking one way.
Thus, partly gathered on the French bank of the river, the two solitudes would build lots of amazing little bridges. As a bonus, the French network would stop losing its vital forces in favor of its English duplicate.
Openness to diversity and the Tower of Babel must converge on French CEGEPs, and not the other way around.
We sense that your remarks hide an attempt to join the camp that best embodies openness. Excellent idea ! Join us on the French side: it contributes very well to maintaining a diversity based on a unique and original base on our continent, that of an assertive French-speaking society, which creates and innovates in a language other than that of the empire.
Finally, use your influence to explain to Anglophones why they should be more open to our differences, and that a strong and proud French-speaking Quebec is good for them as much as it is for us. The French network needs oxygen, not to continue to empty itself from the top.
*Co-signatories, from the Regroupement pour le cégep français: Stéphane Beauregard, Frédéric Belzile, Georges-Rémy Fortin, Caroline Hébert, Sébastien Mussi, Richard Vaillancourt, Alexis Vaillancourt-Chartrand, Jean-François Vallée