Pascal Bérubé drew a blank on Wednesday in the Salon rouge of the Hôtel du Parlement. The PQ MP tried to convince Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette to amend Bill 96 to apply the Charter of the French language to college education, but to no avail.
“I accuse this government of non-assistance to a language in danger, nothing less”, launched Pascal Bérubé in parliamentary committee.
The elected official tabled an amendment to Bill 96 on Wednesday stipulating that “college education must be given in French, except for those entitled to it”, i.e. children whose father or mother received primary education in English at the Canada.
According to him, the decline of French in Quebec means closing the doors of English-speaking CEGEPs to Francophones and allophones. “This government, which has asked us to listen to science, which has told us that it always listens to science, would choose not to look frankly at the figures by saying: ‘The most structuring measures, we are not going to go from there. before, because there may be a political cost to pay,” lamented the MNA for Matane-Matapédia.
MPs from the Coalition avenir Québec, the Liberal Party of Québec and Québec solidaire have alternately opposed the idea of subjecting CEGEPs to Bill 101.
Pascal Bérubé said he regretted seeing the minister responsible for the French language, Simon Jolin-Barrette — whom he suspects of belonging to the “increasingly stunted wing of the CAQ which practices homeopathic nationalism” —[r] next to the story” with his “not beefy” bill. He sees it as a “shameful capitulation” on the part of the “nationalists” of François Legault’s team.
Minister Jolin-Barrette said “acted[r] to reinforce the presence of the French language. He recalled that he wanted, by means of Bill 96, to impose a uniform French test on students in the Anglophone college network, except for those declared eligible for instruction in English in elementary and secondary school, in addition to limiting the possibility of increasing places in English CEGEPs. “What we are proposing will truly change the face of education at the college level,” he argued before the Committee on Culture and Education.