The Quebec government is proposing an increase in tuition fees for international and out-of-province students attending English-language universities as a way to protect the French language.
I’m curious to see how this could possibly slow the decline of French. France has the highest number of international students going to McGill compared to any other country, and this would make them reconsider moving to Quebec.
It will do absolutely nothing to support their stated goal, but it will be great for the bottom line of universities.
The money will be taken away from the universities. It’s unclear whether the QC government will just keep it or redistribute it to French universities.
My question is how does this make economic sense.
In Ontario my undergrad degree costs about 6k a year now. It cost 4k a year when I took it.
How can the Province justify doubling the fees? Won’t that make people not want to go there and select somewhere else instead causing a reduction in the student population?
I don’t understand how this isolationism thing will play out long term unless they encourage French-speaking Quebecois to have more babies (and they already do this) or unless they accept a lot more immigration from French speaking countries. Maybe they are doing this? I don’t know happy to be informed.
I don’t understand how Quebec looks at other extremely isolationist cultures where the population is declining and there’s going to be some sort of crisis and goes “oh yeah, that’s what we want.”
Won’t that make people not want to go there and select somewhere else instead causing a reduction in the student population?
Having English-preferring students go somewhere else seems to be aligned with their goal.
they encourage French-speaking Quebecois to have more babies (and they already do this)
It’s understandable that this is not enough, they’ll grow up speaking more English than French. Most yougsters in Montreal seem to be fluent in English, so it becomes a matter of diminishing the forces that give younger generations more reasons to speak English day to day. One of those forces is having a bunch of student colleagues that only speak English and attend English classes.
And no matter what they do they well go online after school and be bombarded with English. I wonder when the great firewall of Quebec well come into play.
Fair. Maybe all efforts will be in vain and sooner or later French is going to disappear from Quebec. I can’t fault them for resisting, though. Sometimes they go overboard and cross the xenophobic line, but this time… meh, ineffective at worst.
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Quebec really seems to want to be its own country rather than melding culture and language like the rest of Canada
Yeah, it’s like a country within a country. The culture is quite different.
We do want to meld, but that implies that the ROC needs to meld as well, otherwise it’s an erasure and not a union.
I think the issue is disagreement over that mixing. The (as you put it)RoC sees “province-sized Chinatown but french” and Quebec sees “we will not be diluted one iota”.
As an immigrant, something I like about Canada is how regardless of where we came from we all make an effort to speak to each other in the common language so that we can learn and understand each other. And then there is Quebec sulking because we don’t speak their language, instead of following everybody else.
I didn’t lose my culture just because I use English as a vehicular language. I gained all sorts of stuff from other people, which I wouldn’t have if I or they refused to speak the common language. So, please, Quebecois, do share your beautiful culture with us – in the language we all understand.
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If your native language is not English, it shouldn’t be hard to empathize with francophones living in Montreal aren’t happy that their children speak more English than French in a French speaking city because this means that a few generations later French is just going to disappear
My children speak my native language, but my grandchildren won’t. That’s how it works. Somehow millions of immigrants are expected to understand and accept this, but Francophones somehow feel special?
Quececois aren’t resisting the sharing their culture, they just want to keep it alive. You asking them to share their culture in the language you understand is just glossing over the fact that the language is a part of the culture
It really isn’t. My culture, my traditions, my way of thinking doesn’t automatically change when I switch to English or any other language. A language is nothing but a tool to communicate ideas, and a multiplicity of languages only serves as a barrier that stops people from understanding each other. I’m all for a universal language to facilitate the free interchange of ideas.
That’s a shit take
That rudeness is uncalled for. You can do better.
Somehow millions of immigrants are expected to understand and accept this, but Francophones somehow feel special?
Yes, because they didn’t go anywhere[1]. They’re not immigrants[1]. How is that difference not obvious?
It really isn’t.
K, that’s just ignorance at this point.
[1] PS. Obviously they immigrated as colonizers at some point, but the language they’re being assimilated into isn’t First Nations. If it were, that’d would be a different story.
Yes, because they didn’t go anywhere
Neither did First Nations people, and I don’t see the majority of Quebecois speaking any of those languages either. And thank goodness we don’t have each municipality speaking their indigenous tongues – it would be impossible to talk to each other!
So let’s all be practical and discuss our differences and our commonalities in a common language, rather than constructing language ghettos around us out of fear.
The problem is its lopsided the ROC gets nothing out of knowing French but Quebecois get to participate in the international community by knowing English. Only way this well change is if America falls since they are the 1000lb gorilla in the global community.
I’d argue French is more useful in Europe than English.
English is not a ROC thing though, it’s a global thing, in an online world. So sure, you can create your French-Canadian pockets on Reddit, Lemmy, QC guilds in MMO’s, etc, but you constantly have to step outside of those areas to interact with the rest of the English speaking world.
And French is not a Quebec thing either.
The most spoken language in the world in Mandarin.
You have a very anglocentric view of the world.
Actually, the most spoken language in the world is English.
That’s “mother tongue”, not total speakers.
I don’t really see much evidence of the “rest of Canada” wanting to meld culture and language. Other than french immersion schools and the occasional food truck serving up poutine there’s not much of Quebec culture or French language that you’ll find outside of Quebec.
If they don’t protect what they have, a hundred years from now Canada will be solely an English speaking country and poutine will be covered in nacho cheese.
I mean, I don’t have any stake in it one way or the other coming from BC but I understand why they feel protective.
Doesn’t it seem like the stronghold mentality is somewhat self defeating, though? I’m also in BC and there’s not much evidence of French culture around here, it’s true. I’m more likely to encounter Tagalog or Mandarin than French, and would have more opportunity to speak those if learned, but not because those languages are indigenous to the area.
Just Quebecois things