Quebec grants a grant of more than 1.5 million to relaunch a linguistic twinning program between university students and small Montreal merchants.
Paused at the start of the pandemic, this program aims to develop the language skills of small Anglophone and allophone entrepreneurs and to promote the use of French as a working language in businesses in Montreal, where there is a decline.
It consists of pairing up a linguistics student and a small tradesman in the workplace: owner of a convenience store, a hairdresser, manicure salon, etc.
Entitled “I’m learning French”, this project was created by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM) in 2016. The number of student-tradesman pairings increased from 30 in 2017 to 900 two years later.
“This made it possible to reach no less than 748 traders,” said Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
This program is complementary to the government’s offer of francization courses, the Minister pointed out. “It makes it possible to reach merchants who cannot be absent from their businesses to avail themselves of the services of the ministry. So that allows them to serve customers in French, while avoiding reducing their productivity. »
According to the President of the Chamber, Michel Leblanc, if many small merchants do not speak French, “it is not because they do not want to learn” this language, but because “these are people who often work very hard “.
Nearly 400 traders have already expressed interest in this program, which should start in September with a first session of 120 pairings.
“Our constraint is not to find merchants, it’s to pair up enough students to go into the field,” explained Mr. Leblanc.
Junko Katsuta, 40, is among the interested traders. Originally from Japan, she came to Canada 10 years ago to work in a hair salon in Toronto. Then, she decided to move to Quebec, where she found a job as a hairdresser in a salon on rue Saint-Mathieu, in the city center, which she ended up buying.
“It’s really hard to take French lessons while working full time,” she explained in English on the sidelines of the press conference.
The students recruited, paid $23 an hour, will act as guides for the participating merchants.
This initiative will be accompanied by a promotional campaign to encourage customers entering participating businesses to speak to employees in French.
The department intends to measure the success of this program before making it permanent, based on the number of participants, the progression of knowledge of French and the interest of participants in the offer of francization courses offered by the government.