Quebec failed to teach immigrants French and now wants to bar them from English vocational schools — a plan that will backfire by driving skilled workers out of the workforce, the head of the province’s largest English school board says.
“The people who come here can’t just wait and do nothing because they’re on a waiting list and they’re not going to get these francization courses for two years,” Joe Ortona said Wednesday.
“Do we want them to be contributors to Quebec society — contributing in taxes, contributing in providing services — or do we want them to just not do that?”
“What the government doesn’t understand is that it is their failure that contributes to why more people find themselves in English vocational programs,” says English Montreal School Board chair Joe Ortona. “The solution would just be to do what they said they were going to do and keep their francization promises.” Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette files
Ortona, chair of the English Montreal School Board and president of the association of English boards, was reacting to the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s plan to extend Bill 101 to adult and vocational education.
French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge on Tuesday announced he will soon table a bill that would redirect as many as 27,000 students from English to French schools.
Ortona called the proposal “a political stunt” by a CAQ government desperate to shore up nationalist support ahead of the October election. He said Quebec has not consulted English boards.
“What the government doesn’t understand is that it is their failure that contributes to why more people find themselves in English vocational programs,” he said. “The solution would just be to do what they said they were going to do and keep their francization promises.”
Quebec’s French-language courses for immigrants have long been plagued by lengthy waiting lists. Last month, the government said the number of people waiting for a class had fallen to 6,000 from 33,000 a year earlier.
The Charter of the French Language, commonly known as Bill 101, already limits enrolment in English elementary and high schools, but does not include restrictions on adult or vocational training.
Speaking to a National Assembly committee on Tuesday, Roberge said his planned expansion of Bill 101 would reinforce the French language by advancing francization of the workplace.
The EMSB is Quebec’s largest English school board, with about 35,000 students.
Nearly 14,000 students are enrolled in adult education and vocational training — the sector the government is targeting. Ortona said about 70 per cent of them would not be eligible if Bill 101 applied to them.
Ortona said the adult ed and vocational sector has contributed as much as $15 million per year to the EMSB, helping finance the board’s youth sector.
A sharp drop in enrolment would mean cuts everywhere, he said. Ortona stopped short of specifying what would be cut, saying it would depend on how many students the board actually lost.
Ortona said the EMSB’s adult ed and vocational programs only remain open as long as they generate enough revenue to cover their costs. If enrolment drops below the threshold needed to run a class profitably, the class simply won’t open, or could shut down mid-program, he said.
But Ortona said the CAQ’s plan would also hurt Quebec’s economy.
Not all immigrants who suddenly found themselves unable to study in English would automatically switch to the French system, he said. That’s because many don’t have a strong grasp of Quebec’s majority language.
Ortona said fewer people completing vocational training means fewer qualified workers entering the workforce in jobs Quebec desperately needs to be filled amid a worker shortage.
He said adults in the workforce naturally improve their French on the job regardless of what language they trained in, so the government’s goal of francizing the workplace would not be advanced by the measure.
Premier Christine Fréchette promised to extend Bill 101 during the CAQ leadership campaign. At the time, she said it would affect 10,000 students, not the 27,000 cited by her minister. The government has not explained the discrepancy.
Quebec says there would be a transition period, but it has not detailed how it would implement the measure or whether there would be exemptions or a grandfather clause for existing students.
TALQ, a coalition of anglophone groups, also denounced the province’s plan, saying it would endanger the anglophone school system without benefiting the French language.
“Here we go again — it’s a continuation of the Coalition Avenir Québec’s divisive identity politics, which has been very harmful to the English-speaking community,” said TALQ president Eva Ludvig.
“It’s unfortunate that Fréchette, who has said she’s taking a fresh approach, has decided to continue” in the same vein as her predecessor, François Legault, Ludvig added.
TALQ’s president said the change will “have a very negative impact on the viability of our English school system.”
Before taking over as CAQ leader and premier in April, Fréchette reached out to English-speaking Quebecers who felt disenfranchised by CAQ policies.
“I intend to have a discussion, a dialogue with English people in Quebec,” she said. “They are part of Quebec.”
Since the CAQ took power in 2018, the anglophone community has clashed with the government over language legislation, secularism, policies affecting English universities and the future of English school boards.
Ludvig said CAQ policies have been detrimental to anglophones and have done nothing for the French language.
“We have seen absolutely no change, we have no data or anything to demonstrate that any of this is having a positive effect in the protection, promotion, in the viability of the French language, which we believe in very strongly,” she said.
Roberge has framed the issue as the closing of a loophole in Bill 101.
“There are 27,000 people who are in the network who do not have historic rights (to English schooling),” he said Tuesday.
“In reality, they would not be allowed to attend anglophone elementary and secondary school, but as there are no rules in adult and vocational education, they go into the anglophone system.
“These people are in the public network, thus paid for by our taxes. I think as a nationalist government, we have a duty to do something. Those 27,000 people would migrate to the francophone network, which would be a fabulous step forward for the francization of the workplace, too.”
But Ludvig said the CAQ’s proposed changes are “very hard to understand.”
She said the adult students in question choose to study in English “because it’s much easier to learn in the language that you’re more comfortable in and because it gives them skills they need for work.”
Ludvig said she does not agree with Roberge’s suggestion that adults should study in French so they can work in French later.
“Studying in English doesn’t mean they won’t work in French,” Ludvig said. Young people leaving English high schools “enter the workforce already able to work in French.”
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A Montreal native, Andy Riga has reported for The Gazette since 1991, covering technology, transport, business, and now politics, language and other Quebec issues.
Montréalais d’origine, Andy Riga est journaliste à la Gazette depuis 1991. Après avoir couvert la technologie, le transport et les affaires, il traite aujourd’hui de la politique, des enjeux linguistiques et d’autres sujets d’actualité au Québec.