Faced with growing criticism, the Legault government is giving $10 million to school service centres so they can restart French classes that they were forced to shut down due to a lack of funding, Radio-Canada has learned.
The French language minister, Jean-François Roberge, is expected to make the announcement later this morning.
According to Radio-Canada, the money will allow about 5,000 people to access French courses by the end of March.
In recent weeks, several school service centres were forced to shut down French classes due to a lack of funding.
Roberge said there were no cuts, that there was money being provided and that it should have been better managed. The school service centres said the budgets for language training were not keeping up with an exploding demand.
According to the province’s French language commissioner, the number of people enrolled in French courses essentially more than doubled in a year. In 2023, between June 1 and Sept. 30, there were 13,591 students enrolled in classes. For the same period in 2024, the number of students was 32,040.
The shutdown of classes sparked anger and frustration from students who were getting ready to learn French, with others saying the service cuts fly in the face of the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s stated goal of promoting the French language.
The sum of $10 million isn’t new money, according to Radio-Canada.
It comes from savings after the government scrapped its financial aid program for part-time French language students.
The money being injected into school service centres for French classes is expected to spread around based on the needs in different regions.