CAQ releases $603M action plan to reverse decline of French

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The Legault government will inject $603 million over the next five years into measures designed to shore up the French language, which it says is in a state of decline.

More than half the money — $320 million — is destined to help temporary immigrant workers and asylum seekers learn French. Quebec will do this by boosting the financial support of the Francisation Québec agency, French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge said Sunday as he released an action plan on French at a Montreal news conference.

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The money to boost the teaching of French was included in last month’s provincial budget. Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette, on hand for Sunday’s announcement, said it will allow Francisation Québec to increase the number of teachers from 500 to 750 and reduce waiting lists for individuals and companies making use of the service.

The agency — which was created with the adoption of Bill 96, overhauling the Charter of the French Language, in 2022 — has assisted a total of 70,000 new arrivals in learning French. In 2017, the total via other services was 28,000.

The immigration money is the largest chunk of new spending in the 17-page French action plan Roberge made public Sunday. In all, he announced 21 new measures. Some, such as increasing tuition for out-of-province and international students and requiring them to study more in French, have already been put in place.

So have the new French requirements for temporary immigrants and economic immigration, which Quebec controls.

Roberge told reporters that even though the Coalition Avenir Québec government acted to protect French via the adoption of Bill 96, it realized “more had to be done.”

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While the issue of whether French is in decline or not in Quebec is a hot topic of debate, Roberge said the proof of the need for his measures rests in 2021 Statistics Canada data.

That research showed the percentage of people using mainly French in the workplace slipped from 81.8 per cent in 2001 to 79.9 per cent in 2021. The level was lower in the Montreal region, at 70 per cent.

The data also showed the percentage of people speaking mainly French at home slipped from 82.9 per cent in 2001 to 78.9 per cent. For the first time, the number of Quebecers who said English was their mother tongue broke the one-million mark, going from 12 per cent of the total population in 2016 to 13 per cent in 2021, according to Roberge’s action plan.

“We are going on the offensive,” Roberge said. “Not because we are against anyone whatsoever, but to regain lost ground.”

He was flanked Sunday by five other ministers who helped draw up the plan: Fréchette, Culture and Communications Minister Mathieu Lacombe, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry, Education Minister Bernard Drainville and International Affairs and Francophonie Minister Martine Biron.

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Among the most potentially controversial elements of the plan is a shift in the way Quebec wants to determine the state of the French language. Roberge said the current practice of waiting five years for Statistics Canada census data is no longer acceptable because Quebec wants to monitor the situation much more closely.

Quebec will create a parallel system — a new digital report card, or “dashboard” — to monitor the evolution of language data on a yearly basis. That initiative will cost $18 million.

The data will be collected by the Institut de la statistique du Québec, which already consults about 70,000 Quebecers a year to produce a dozen language indicators. Details of the arrangement are to come, Roberge said.

Asked repeatedly by reporters when the government will be able to say Quebec has reversed the decline of French, as it has promised, Roberge was vague. He noted the full effects of Bill 96 have not been felt yet.

“The changes have started,” he said. “We will be measuring year by year. I think we will reverse this decline very rapidly, but maybe not equally and in the same order for each indicator.”

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The second major spending item in the plan — $187 million — is for increasing the proportion of francophone cultural products. Lacombe has already announced plans to table a bill in the National Assembly raising the percentage of French content on such streaming sites as Netflix.

Quebec will spend $64.9 million on improving the teaching of French to elementary and high school students, and $13 million reinforcing Quebecers’ attachment to the language.

“We have to make a significant effort in our schools,” Drainville said. “We must stimulate the desire of our children to speak French.”

Reaction to the plan was cautious.

Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, an umbrella group of English-speaking organizations, said Roberge’s plan lacks a clear yardstick on how the government intends to measure the health of French.

She disputed the use of language spoken at home as a barometer because it does not reflect the use of French in public, which remains stable.

Ludvig said she suspects the government is acting this way to discover further perceived weaknesses in the protection of French so “it will have more reason to constrain rights and services for 1.3 million English-speaking Quebecers.”

“The government’s modus operandi on language has been simple, consistent and divisive,” she said. “Find statistics to show French is imperilled, identify appropriate scapegoats — English-speaking university students, asylum seekers, merchants trying to be courteous to customers — and then bravely bring in punitive legislation.”

Québec solidaire language critic Ruba Ghazal welcomed the government’s efforts to reinforce francophone content on digital platforms, but said she is very disappointed the plan did not go further to reinforce the use of French in the workplace.

She called on the government to put in place a program of obligatory French courses during work hours.

pauthier@postmedia.com

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