Francising all temporary immigrants, whose numbers have exploded on Quebec territory since 2016, would cost between $10.6 and $12.9 billion, reveals the second report of the Commissioner for the French Language. In order to avoid these astronomical sums, he proposes in particular to distribute asylum seekers across Canada according to the language they know best.
In the document entitled Temporary immigration: choosing French, Benoît Dubreuil notes that the number of temporary immigrants (workers, students and asylum seekers) increased from 86,065 immigrants in 2016 to 528,034 in 2023.
The commissioner notes that many of them eventually wish to stay in Quebec permanently, especially since the labor needs there are significant.
But as of 2021, a third of them “were unable to carry on a conversation in French, or 60,635 people aged 15 and over”.
By immigration status, these were 44.1% of study permit holders, 32.9% of work permit holders and 29.2% of asylum seekers.
Colossal sums
“Investments of $10.6 to 12.9 billion (G$) would be necessary for all temporary immigrants to complete intermediate-level training in French,” states the report.
The majority of this amount corresponds to “the employment income which these people would have to give up during the time they would devote to learning French”.
Currently, Quebec is far from Frenchifying the largest share of these newcomers. “In 2023, only a minority of people not proficient in French participated in courses offered by the Quebec government, i.e. an estimated proportion of 39.5% of work permit holders, 14.1% of work permit holders. “a study permit and 5.2% of people seeking asylum,” writes the commissioner.
Proposed measures
To remedy the situation, Benoît Dubreuil proposes various possible solutions to encourage the arrival of immigrants proficient in French, such as “developing upstream recruitment and training channels for French-speaking foreign labor in the sought-after professions.
Mr. Dubreuil also suggests “ensuring that the university funding formula promotes the knowledge and use of French in a coherent manner.”
As for asylum seekers, he suggests proposing to Ottawa “the creation of a mechanism for distributing asylum seekers across Canada in order to minimize the costs relating to linguistic integration.” “Thus, we propose to direct people who seek asylum towards the provinces where they know the main language,” writes Mr. Dubreuil.
Benoit Dubreuil also proposes to “make the right to work off campus for study permit holders conditional on reaching level 3 orally according to the Quebec scale”. Post-diploma work permits would be conditional on reaching level 7 oral and level 5 written on the Quebec scale.
More details will follow.