(Halifax) Quebec views the federal government’s efforts to attract more and more French-speaking immigrants to other provinces favorably, but warns its provincial partners that they will also have to make efforts to welcome them well.
Ministers responsible for the Canadian Francophonie met Friday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to discuss ways to support the French fact from coast to coast, a major challenge if ever there was one.
At a press conference, the host of the meeting, Nova Scotia Minister of Acadian Affairs and La Francophonie, Colton LeBlanc, made no secret of the fact that this support had to come from outside: “In Nova Scotia, families are no longer as big as they used to be. That’s why Francophone immigration plays a key role in maintaining these populations. People forget that French is the second most spoken language here in the province,” he insisted.
Rising targets
Ottawa, which was struggling to recruit new French-speaking immigrants, finally reached the target of 4.1% of French-speaking immigrants, a result that the federal Minister of Official Languages, Randy Boissonnault, is not a little proud of: “At the time, civil servants said it was impossible to reach 4.1%. We pushed, we insisted that the department move. Last year, we reached the target of 4.1%. We will now increase by 50% to go to 6%, then 7%, then 8%,” he said. The federal target of 6% would mean the entry into the country, starting next year, of 30,000 French-speaking people while Ottawa plans to welcome 500,000 economic immigrants.
His Quebec counterpart, French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge, welcomed this effort. Although Quebec controls its economic immigration autonomously and now requires all economic immigrants to speak French, he argued that “Quebec is a partner, an ally of the Canadian Francophonie, of the Canadian Francophonie communities and of the Acadian Francophonie. In this capacity, we certainly wanted to see the Canadian government increase its target.”
More efforts on the ground
He warned his counterparts, however, that these “steps in the right direction” should be accompanied by an effort on the ground: “We must also ensure that people are welcomed; if we welcome French speakers and they cannot work in French, if they cannot send their children to a French-speaking school, or to a school or to a university, it does not work. There is also work to be done upstream.”
Minister Roberge nonetheless welcomes the intention and efforts made to date.
Teacher shortage
These efforts are made necessary by a need for French-speaking personnel in government services, health, justice, but especially in education, explained Ministers LeBlanc and Boissonnault. The issue of the shortage of French-speaking teachers, both for French schools and for teaching French as a second language, occupied a significant part of the discussions of the participants at this 30e Council of Ministers on Canadian Francophonie convened in the Maritime province.
Randy Boissonnault also places a lot of hope in the recent establishment of an “immigration corridor for French-speaking teachers.”
“British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and other jurisdictions have indicated that we are currently seeing a shortage of workers in thousands of positions and, with the upcoming retirement of a certain generation of teachers, it will get worse. So, for us, as a table of ministers responsible for the Francophonie, this is an issue to follow.”