Quebec will spend $603 million over five years to reverse what the province’s French language minister describes as the decline of French.
At a news conference Sunday, French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge said a total of 21 measures — some of which are already in place — would help improve the vitality of Quebec’s official language in the coming months.
The measures are based on nine government priorities, which include monitoring indicators of the linguistic situation in Quebec annually, attracting and retaining a greater number of French-speaking students and students who come from a culture or region with affinities to French. The government will be working to speed up the process for international students graduating from French-language programs to obtain permanent residency in Quebec.
Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry said in a statement published Sunday that the government took “strong action” by raising tuition fees for Canadian, out-of-province students attending Quebec English-language universities.
“This measure will have positive impacts on attendance at French-language universities, and I am very proud of it,” Déry said.
The government says it also plans to grow the percentage of people from economic immigration who know French and improve temporary foreign workers’ and asylum seekers’ knowledge of the language.
Other parts of the plan include extending the availability of French-language culture and products in the digital environment, improving the mastery of French among students and strengthening Quebecers’ attachment to French.
Use of French in public spaces stable: Quebec’s language watchdog
Despite Roberge saying in a statement Sunday that “all indicators point to an increasingly pronounced decline of French” in Quebec, the use of French in public spaces has remained stable in Quebec since 2007, according to a study by Quebec’s language watchdog, the Office Québécois de la langue française (OQLF), published in April.
About 79 per cent of Quebecers in 2022 used French most often in public spaces, the OQLF found.
The study is based on data from a survey of 7,171 Quebecers conducted between March and May 2022 and on focus groups to expand on the survey results.
But the latest plan from the Legault government takes into account five indicators which have had “the greatest impact on the vitality of French in Quebec in recent years,” said the French Language Ministry in a news release published Sunday.
They are the growth and linguistic profile of the immigrant population, the prominence of English-language digital platforms, attendance at English-language higher education institutions, the low level of mastery of French among students and how active people are at rallying around French.