In adult education centers, a course session to learn French lasts 10 weeks. The next session begins on November 4, in a little over three weeks.
Although hundreds of graduates will leave these Quebec schools the previous Friday, as many aspiring students will be systematically refused entry on the first Monday in November. Even if teachers and available premises are waiting for them.
While the Legault government repeats the importance of protecting French, its budget cuts swell the waiting list of newcomers unable to obtain a place in French class.
In Quebec, no registrations will be accepted for level 1 courses. At least two of the three centers will literally not accept any new registrations, regardless of the person’s level of French proficiency. Including the most important, the Louis-Jolliet center.
“I have been in francization in Quebec since 2001. A session without welcoming students, I have never seen that! And it’s clear that it’s not because demand has fallen.”
— a staff member of a francization program in Quebec, on condition of anonymity
The three adult education centers that give francization courses in Quebec are Louis-Jolliet, located in the Stadacona sector of Limoilou, the Saint-Louis center, on Racine Street in Loretteville, and Le Phénix, route de l’ Church in Sainte-Foy.
“We are afraid for the future of our students,” confides a teacher.
Louis-Jolliet is the largest of the three with 1,357 students currently registered.
Essentials for the economy
“It worries the team a lot. All these people are workers, temporary workers for the most part, but who keep the economy going. They work in CHSLDs, work for Quebec companies or for McDonald’s or do housework, it doesn’t matter! It’s not reassuring, with what the Prime Minister is saying at the moment,” says another teacher.
Like the handful of his colleagues questioned by The Sunhe wishes to protect his identity so as not to suffer the wrath of his school management or the school service center.
In April, Jean-François Roberge presented his plan for the protection of French. Already Minister of the French Language, he has since added the portfolio of Immigration, Francisation and Integration. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press Archives)
No one missed the public intervention of François Legault last week, according to whom 80,000 of the 160,000 asylum seekers present on Quebec territory must be moved to other provinces.
Not to mention that fewer students means fewer teachers, and therefore job losses.
Just for Louis-Jolliet, we are talking about at least a hundred fewer students and, therefore, the probable elimination of five full-time positions and 10 part-time positions.
New budgetary rules
From June, Duty sounded the alarm on the new budgetary rules imposed on francization of school service centers. There were already headlines that thousands of French courses were compromised.
From 2019 to 2024, the annual budget for francization in school service centers increased from $69 to $104 million. But as in many areas, the Legault government has since pulled the financial emergency brake.
Annual funding for francization programs is usually based on data from the previous two years. But for this year 2024-2025, the Legault government is instead relying on the figures from two others before, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, pandemic years where demand was less than currently.
Since then, we have learned that at the Mille-Îles school service center, in the northern suburbs of Montreal, 90% of adult francization classes have been canceled and around twenty teacher positions eliminated. The Eastern Townships school board’s francization program will close at the end of November.
As these budgetary rules are set for the year, there is no guarantee that the situation will not persist for the winter and spring sessions, until the end of the school year in June.
Stakeholders in the sector hope to convince the government to reverse its decision.
PQist Pascal Paradis sees this as another example of the CAQ government “which says one thing and does the opposite.” (Edouard Plante-Fréchette/Archives La Presse)
“It appears to me to be a budgetary trick by a government which says one thing and does the opposite, once again,” says Pascal Paradis, of the Parti Québécois.
The PQ deputy elected a year ago, whose Jean-Talon constituency covers a good part of the Sainte-Foy and Sillery sectors, tracked The Sun on the extent of the consequences for the Quebec region. The Le Phénix center is in his county.
Among other things, he received an email from an individual of South American origin who first immigrated to Ontario. The man spent six months in Quebec, waiting for a French course, before returning to Ontario because he was unable to speak the Quebec language and find work that matched his professional skills.
“What is the government’s intention?” asks PQ member Paradis.
“Is this a measure that aims to limit immigration, indirectly? Is this a budgetary austerity measure? Do they have a plan to replace existing courses with something else?”
— Pascal Paradis, member of the Parti Québécois in the riding of Jean-Talon, in Quebec
Francization courses are also given in community centers, CEGEPs and universities.
On September 17, the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration published on social networks a call for applications for “casual jobs for teachers of French as a common language with adults in various regions administrative offices of Quebec.
Another class of teachers
Teachers who give public francization courses elsewhere than in adult education centers are not attached to the Ministry of Education, like the vast majority of teachers in Quebec. Instead, they respond to the Ministry of Immigration, through Francisation Québec.
Vice-president of the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE), Annie-Christine Tardif believes that “even though CEGEPs and organizations have the budget, if they do not have the human and physical resources, they will not be able to Frenchify more.”
Teachers at the Louis-Jolliet and Saint-Louis centers are unionized with the FAE.
“Are community organizations or Francisation Québec able to welcome all these people? I’m 99.9% sure the answer is no. But in the school service centers, there are premises, there are staff, they are capable of welcoming them and they are not given the budget to do so.”
— the vice-president of the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE), Annie-Christine Tardif
The Capital School Service Center (CSS) says it is “currently receiving the same number of groups as we had last June”.
But “for the next session, it is impossible for us to welcome new students in order to respect the allocated budgets,” confirms the communications advisor of the CSS de la Capitale, Jade Thibodeau.
Ms. Thibodeau specifies that “students already enrolled in francization will be able to continue their course during the next session in November.” For the January and April sessions, there remains “a concern to support as many students as possible while respecting financial frameworks,” summarizes Ms. Thibodeau.
Currently, of the 1,622 students learning French at CSS de la Capitale, 1,357 are studying at Louis-Jolliet and 265 at the Saint-Louis center.
The Le Phénix center in Sainte-Foy is part of the Découvreurs school service center. Its teachers are unionized with the Federation of Education Unions (FSE).
