François Legault has never lacked superlatives to describe the perils that threaten French on American soil. He who went so far as to brandish the sledgehammer argument of a “possible Louisianaization” of Quebec seems singularly to have reached the end of his own logic. After having made francization a national imperative, now his government is starting to put the brakes on, shaking up an environment already disrupted by the surge in a migratory flow that he and the federal government have allowed to spiral out of control.
Two weeks ago, in The Dutyteachers took to the keyboard to denounce the effects of a reduction in adult francization services ordered without notice by Quebec at the very moment when these services are experiencing growing popularity. These cuts, which they consider “savage, unjustifiable and incoherent”, affect all school service centres (CSS) in different ways. Some are brutal, forcing the cancellation of more than half of the services offered. At the CSS des Mille-Îles, up to 90% of the francization offer for adults must go by the wayside.
Francisation Québec will ensure that rejected students are directed to alternative solutions, the Legault government promised. It is not clear how it will be able to perform such a feat. Since its founding, a little over a year ago, the one-stop shop has had immense difficulty processing its files on time. In his first evaluation, the Commissioner of the French Language, Benoît Dubreuil, pointed out that nearly half of those registered had still not started their learning path last May.
As if that were not enough, the parliamentary correspondent of Duty In Quebec City, François Carabin informed us on Friday that the first major gesture of the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration in his new role will consist of wielding the axe. Tens of thousands of people enrolled in part-time francization courses will see the end of the financial assistance of $28 per day they received. The salary compensation paid to employees of companies with 100 or more employees is destined to meet a similar fate.
Minister Jean-François Roberge is betting that by redirecting these expenses to the Francisation Québec service offering, he will francize more people. About 15,000 more people in one year, according to his calculations. The amounts released are not insignificant. We are talking about about 65 million over a year, in theory.
In reality, these tectonic plate movements will take time to set in. Too much time. In the meantime, not only are we robbing Paul to pay Jacques, but we are leaving thousands of Pauls and Jacques on the sidelines, complains the francization community, which fears a “loss” of interest in learning French. They are right: the challenge is not so much to open more classes as to fill them with people willing to take the time it takes to learn Vigneault’s language.
What “costs the most in learning a language” is “the time you put into it. These are what we call opportunity costs,” Benoît Dubreuil rightly pointed out when he unveiled his report on temporary immigration in February. However, the incentives that we are now giving up on were precisely imagined and put in place to compensate for these opportunity costs, with great success, which suggests that a backlash is far from impossible.
In the same report, the independent watchdog for French in Quebec expressed alarm at the fact that “the number of people who do not know[ssent] not French is increasing much faster than the number of people being Frenchified.” He recommended that applicants who only know English be automatically sent to the rest of Canada. This is easier said than done with the Legault and Trudeau governments getting along like cats and dogs.
The commissioner also calculated that it would take between $10.6 billion and $12.9 billion to ensure that all temporary immigrants can learn to speak French fluently. That is a colossal sum, and there is no question of asking Quebec to foot the entire bill. The federal government must assume its fair share. The business and education communities must also pitch in. As must immigrants.
It is to bring all of this together that the Legault government should now be working, as it has an obligation to maintain an adequate francization offer under the Charter of the French Language. It is still too easy to plant one’s roots without having to learn French in Quebec. Each door that closes swells the ranks of those who are absent from francization. However, French is not strong enough here for us to allow ourselves the slightest renunciation.