By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
On Dec. 5, Minister for the French Language Jean-François Roberge announced an investment of $10 million in provincial funding to reopen French-as-a-second-language classes for adults known as francisation, offered by school boards and service centres in underserved regions, in January 2025. However, the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) and Centre de services scolaire Val-des-Cerfs (CSSVDC) won’t receive any of the money.
Both the ETSB and CSSVDC were forced to suspend francisation courses in November because of a mismatch between high demand for the courses and insufficient funding. They were among many school boards and service centres around the province that invested heavily in adult francisation because of rising demand and were forced to close or drastically cut course offerings, laying off teachers and sparking weeks of protest by immigrants’ rights groups, unions and students and teachers. Ten service centres were funded.
“We were expecting to be on the list [to receive funding], but neither we nor Val-des-Cerfs are on it,” ETSB board chair Michael Murray told the BCN. “We were hoping to get funding for 50 or 60 students who depend on French to find employment.”
Roberge surprised many when he told reporters at the National Assembly that the funding top-up had been planned since September, using money the government saved after ending a financial incentive program for part-time francisation students. “It’s too little, too late – they’ve disrupted the lives of educators and students for no particular reason,” said Murray. “To say $10 million solves the problem [provincewide] is a joke.” He added that only “a fraction” of the students and teachers affected by cuts to the ETSB francisation program had been reassigned.
There are no plans to revive the school board’s adult francisation program, which was enthusiastically launched ahead of the 2024-2025 school year despite funding uncertainty, in the short term. “We were forging ahead thinking we would receive the money, and it turns out we won’t,” Murray said. “We are closing the book on a program we thought was a great success.”
Roberge said other courses offered by community organizations in partnership with the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) would become available in the coming months. He said he hoped to offer more “predictability” to French language learners in 2025, although he couldn’t promise that everyone who asked for a place in a classroom would get one. “There are way, way, way too many people in Quebec, mainly temporary workers, who don’t speak French, and our capacity to [teach French] isn’t bottomless, Quebecers’ capacity to pay isn’t bottomless,” he said. “We’re going to do the best we can with the money we have.”
Since the closure of the ETSB program, there are no longer any full-time, in-person subsidized French courses available in Brome-Missisquoi, according to the MRC of Brome-Missisquoi.