The outgoing Prime Minister, François Legault, has promised to limit non-French-speaking immigration, while the province is short of arms.
The decline of the French language, immigration: the Quebec legislative campaign has once again placed identity issues at the heart of the debates, with sensational declarations from the party in power, given favorite for the ballot on Monday.
Isolated in the heart of a mainly English-speaking North America, Quebec has always defended tooth and nail its French-speaking identity. A fight taken up by the party in power since its election four years ago, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), a heterogeneous nationalist party located on the right. Non-French-speaking immigration, if it is not limited in number, could constitute a threat to the social cohesion of the province, thus launched the outgoing Prime Minister, François Legault, at the start of the campaign. It would be “a bit suicidal” to accept more newcomers given the decline of French, he said again this week.
During a debate, his Minister of Immigration Jean Boulet told him that “80% of immigrants do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society”. An unfounded exit that caused an uproar and could earn him his job. Especially since with the glaring labor shortage faced by the province of nearly 8.5 million inhabitants, the issue of immigration is a real economic issue. Between graying demographics and historically low unemployment rates, the French-speaking province is currently looking for more than 250,000 workers. And the government anticipates 1.4 million jobs to be filled in the province by 2030.
A French in decline
If re-elected, François Legault, a 65-year-old multi-millionaire businessman, plans to keep the thresholds at 50,000 immigrants a year. “We tend to put all the responsibility (of the decline of the French language, editor’s note) on the backs of immigrants”underlines with concern the sociologist Jean-Pierre Corbeil. “And that’s where it’s dangerous, there is a discourse of exclusion that is taking shape. I find it extremely… I would almost say, unhealthy”comments for his part Richard Marcoux, also a sociologist and expert of the French-speaking world, adding that he “We will really have to resume the discussion after the elections to be able to approach immigration issues in another way.”
Among the major parties in the running, although opinions on the question of immigration diverge, all agree on the need to preserve a French in decline. “We are in a critical situation. There is a real linguistic emergency in Quebec”, launched the campaign of the leader of the Parti Québécois (sovereignist), Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. Politicians base these concerns in particular on the latest census figures, according to which “the proportion of the population that speaks French most often at home has been decreasing since 2001 in Quebec”. This proportion has increased from 81.1% in 2001 to 77.5% in 2021.
“English is progressing but languages are not disappearing”
But the situation “is not so catastrophic”, tempers Jean-Pierre Corbeil, who is also the former head of the government’s language statistics program. He denounces the vision “very reductive” institutions in their definition of a francophone person, which only counts those who speak the majority of French at home. “Are we interested in the evolution of the number of French speakers – and we have to agree on a definition – or should the objective not be to discuss the situation of French”he asks himself, evoking all these citizens “multiple affiliations” who speak French, but whose mother tongue is not.
This “multilingualism” is not sufficiently taken into consideration in Quebec, also believes Richard Marcoux. “When we are told about indicators based on the mother tongue, for me that does not take into account the vitality and the place of French within populations”, explains the one who is director of the Demographic and Statistical Observatory of the French-speaking world. For the researcher, “English is progressing, here as everywhere else on the planet, whether in Italy, Poland, Romania, France, but at the same time, languages are not disappearing”.