The French watchdog comes out of its silence and says it is “concerned” about the short-term repercussions of disruptions in francization services in several regions of Quebec.
Posted at 2:59 p.m.
The French language commissioner, Benoît Dubreuil, urges the government to “quickly replace students whose classes have ended suddenly”.
Their number now stands at 11,171 students, according to a review by the Francization Collective reported Wednesday by Duty, and continues to grow. The subject regularly made the headlines this fall and came up numerous times in the National Assembly.
But Benoît Dubreuil had stayed away from this controversy until now. At the end of October, during the presentation of one of his reports, he explained this decision by the fact that he had received a request from a parliamentary group to investigate the matter and therefore had his hands tied.
The government comes out of this review damaged, the results of which are published on Wednesday.
Bad management
Given the closure of francization classes in certain regions where only school service centers offered this service, Quebec’s capacity to offer francization courses in all regions could be compromised, underlines Benoît Dubreuil.
The Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, justified these cuts by poor management by school service centers of their budgets dedicated to francization.
PHOTO GRAHAM HUGHES, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Jean-François Roberge, Minister of the French Language
Indeed, the closure of these classes is due to “budgetary and administrative constraints” which limits the capacity of the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) “to react quickly and open groups”, Judge Benoît Dubreuil.
However, “MIFI officials explained to us the efforts they were making to quickly replace students whose classes had been canceled [et] despite these efforts, we note that several students remain waiting for a new place in francization,” underlines the commissioner.
A follow-up will be made
He therefore intends to “follow up” on his recommendations to the ministry and will report on the progress he observes in the file.
Furthermore, the commissioner emphasizes that the closure of francization classes results from an imbalance between “the supply of francization services and the demand for these services” while the number of permanent and temporary immigrants has exploded in recent years in Quebec.
The next consultations carried out by the government to establish future immigration thresholds “should be an opportunity to reflect on how to sustainably re-establish the balance between the number of people who wish to take French courses and the capacity to FQ to respond to their request,” he wrote.
