Oppositions stunned by underfunding in francisation

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge (left) insisted again that it was not a question of “compression” or “cuts.”

Sarah R. Champagne

Posted at 1:05 PM Updated at 1:16 PM

• Québec

Following the teachers’ cry from the heart, the opposition parties are urging Minister Jean-François Roberge to put an end to the cancellation of francization courses in the school system. They accuse the CAQ of acting contrary to its own political discourse on the importance of French.

On Monday, it was in Rouyn-Noranda that the bad news was announced: all groups will be closed on December 5. On Tuesday, Longueuil students learned the same: there will be no more francization after level 6 and a dozen teachers will lose their jobs as of November 8. Breaking their usual reserve, several French professionals spoke out in Le DevoirWednesday morning.

“I never thought that under a CAQ government we would be throwing out French teachers in Quebec,” Liberal MNA André Fortin said at a press briefing. He called on the government to “do better” for these people “who want to integrate into Quebec, who are dedicated to it, who put in hours and hours.”

“Yesterday I heard ministers say 'we want better ways to integrate immigrants into Quebec,'” he continued, in reference to the debates surrounding the Bedford school. There is no better way than to have francization classes.”

“The government must stop doing what the CAQ has become a master at doing: saying one thing and doing the opposite,” said Pascal Paradis, a member of the Parti Québécois. He deplores the fact that immigrants are “sent on waiting lists” to Francisation Québec, a centralized portal created in June 2023, which according to him only creates “new paperwork, administration.”

Read also

• French language teachers have a lot on their minds
• “Financial issues” explain the closure of French language classes, Roberge agrees
• Ever-longer waiting times at Francisation Québec
• Why are we witnessing the disappearance of francization schools ?

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

“It's astonishing,” he responded to the closing of classes, using the word “flabbergasting” to answer a question in English. The PQ accuses the party in power of poor immigration planning and of “subjecting to federal thresholds.”

Ruba Ghazal, MNA and Solidarity spokesperson for education, denounced the inconsistency of these decisions. “The reality on the ground is that we are preventing people from becoming French-speaking. “That's not very strong for people who want to defend French in Quebec,” she said at a press briefing in Quebec City on Wednesday.

She also called on Mr. Roberge to “take responsibility” and admit that “we are making budget cuts.”

Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge has indeed insisted once again that this is not about “compression” or “cuts.” An additional $40 million has been invested in francization, he hammered home in a press scrum, saying in the same breath that he is in the process of collecting information on this thorny issue.

Mechanics of closures

Nearly 200 teachers will lose their jobs, according to the two main unions in francization. This figure is a partial picture, insisted the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE), which signed an open letter on Wednesday.

The Fédération des syndicats de l’enseignement (FSE-CSQ) has launched an advertising campaign to denounce “an incoherent decision.” “The Ministry of Education has chosen to make cuts, on the sly, completely ignoring the teachers who will be cavalierly laid off during the year,” its president, Richard Bergevin, said in an interview with Le Devoir Tuesday.

He said he found the government’s speech stating that there are no “cuts” “distressing”: “We’re playing with words. » Francization not only allows people to learn the common language, but also “the codes of life of Quebec society,” he explained.

A story of fine print

Minister Roberge highlighted on Tuesday the increase in the number of people who were francized this year. He said that 32,040 students took francization courses in the school network between June 1 and September 30, 2024: that’s almost two and a half times more than during the same period in 2023, or 13,591.

The overall francization budget has in fact increased considerably since the CAQ came to power: the budget tabled last March indicated $218 million for the 2023-2024 fiscal year and $291 million for 2024-2025.

Mr. Roberge instead criticized school service centres (CSS) on Wednesday for having already spent all of their budget envelopes for this year, finding themselves with the next few months overdrawn.

It is in the fine print of the CSS allocation parameters that we can glimpse a path to reconciling all these different versions. According to the document consulted by Le Devoir, it expressly requests to return to the state of affairs that prevailed in 2020-2021: “Exceptionally for the 2024-2025 school year, the number of FTEs declared [full-time equivalency students] must be limited to the FTEs declared in the 2020-2021 school year.”

The CSS should therefore limit themselves to francizing the same number of students as during this pandemic year, with a historically low level of immigration. “Let’s just remove that line,” suggests Mr. Bergevin, to allow the CSS to distribute courses “according to current real needs.”

With Dave Noël and François Carabin in Quebec City