“Anglo” institutions would be vastly transformed under proposals put forth by language commissioner Benoît Dubreuil.
Amid concerns that too many immigrants and even francophones are living and working in English, Dubreuil suggests more should be done to discourage people from becoming immersed in English-speaking culture. His report does not go so far as to extend the education provisions of Bill 101 to colleges and universities; instead, it proposes the government ensure that at least 85 per cent of all post-secondary students study in French.
Currently, about 22 per cent of post-secondary students are choosing to study in English — a proportion that “seems too high,” the report states.
This goal could be achieved by cutting funding destined for English-language universities — or, as the report puts it, “a better distribution of the number of subsidized places between French and English universities” — thereby making it harder for them to grow and thus reducing their relative weight.
Or, English-language universities could offer more courses in French to help attain the 85-per-cent threshold that all post-secondary education be delivered in French.
Under this plan, then, McGill — recognized as one of the world’s top universities — would have to either accept that it would become a diminished institution or transform itself into what effectively would be a bilingual university in order to retain its funding.
And that would seem to be the best-case scenario. Should that 85 per cent benchmark ever be raised — by an even more hawkish Parti Québécois government, say — then perhaps 50 or 60 per cent of the courses at McGill would have to be offered in French, at which point it would be well on its way to becoming a bilingual or even French-language university.
One might expect the English-language universities to speak out forcefully against this report, but their track record suggests they won’t.
English-language institutions — and anglophones in general — should be speaking out against this report. And so should francophones.
Now, if Dubreuil’s plan is implemented, young francophones will no longer have the opportunity to widen their knowledge and experience by immersing themselves in a traditional English-language institution. At least, not in the Quebec that the Dubreuil report imagines.
Instead, these francophones might find it necessary to follow many young anglophones out of the province in search of the opportunities being denied them by their government.
Jeffery Vacante is an assistant professor of history at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec.