Money talks

In Quebec, only wealthly francophones can afford English education

DON MACPHERSON

Montreal Gazette Tuesday, March 12, 2002

In social-democratic Quebec, the only francophones who are conscripted into the war to defend their language are the poor ones.

They are the only ones who have no choice but to make the only sacrifice asked of francophones in the name of the defence of their language. Only the poor ones are forced to give up the freedom to send their children to English school to acquire the economic and cultural advantages of personal bilingualism.

The rich are draft exempt. Not only can they afford to send their children away to English schools outside the province, they can even send them to private ones close to home. And it is perfectly legal for them to do so.

Quebec's rules on eligibility for English school generally restrict admission to the children of people educated in English in Canada and pupils who have started their schooling in English in this country, and their brothers and sisters. But the restrictions don't apply to completely private schools - that is, ones that do not take any subsidies from the Quebec government.

In fact, there's a loophole in the eligibility rules that allows the rich and even the middle class, anybody who can afford a single year's tuition for one child at a non-subsidized English school, to get all of their children into English public or subsidized "private" schools.

That's because pupils can acquire the right to attend such schools, not only for themselves but also for their brothers and sisters, after spending as little as one year in a completely private English school.

Apparently, increasing numbers of parents are taking advantage of the loophole, and many of them are francophones dissatisfied with the notoriously poor teaching of English in French schools; as reported in yesterday's Gazette, completely private English schools are springing up in almost exclusively francophone regions.

TheEducation Department says enrolment in non-subsidized English schools nearly doubled in five years, from 481 in 1995-96 to 906 in 2000-01.

The Larose estates-general language commission, in its report last year, attributed this increase mainly to "the fact that parents enroll their children there for one, two or three years so they can then go to English public school." It said 50 per cent of pupils enrolled in non-subsidized English schools leave after only one year of elementary school, 84 per cent are gone after two years and 94 per cent after three years.

"As far as social ethics are concerned," the commission commented, "the principle of the equality of citizens before the law is clearly violated. Access to English school becomes a question of money."

The commission recommended that the government take measures to prevent parents from "buying for their children and their descendants" the right to attend English school. And the Landry government, urged on by Parti Québécois language hawks, has declared its intention to apply the recommendation in legislation to be introduced at the National Assembly's spring sitting, which starts today.

It appears as though, as with so many other questions related to language, the last word on the subject will belong to the courts. The English-rights organization Alliance Quebec has already announced it will mount a legal challenge to the legislation.

But if the government succeeds in closing the loophole, it might anger middle-class francophones who hope to take advantage of it because they haven't been convinced by the government's promise to improve the teaching of English in French schools.

Those parents would still be able to send their children to completely private English schools, since the government apparently has no intention of extending the eligibility restrictions to them. But the parents would not then be able to transfer their children to public or subsidized English schools. If they want their children taught in English, they would have to pay the non-subsidized schools' higher tuition fees, for all their children, year after year.

So the government wouldn't be preventing parents from buying an English education for their otherwise ineligible children. It would merely be raising the price, so that only the wealthiest could afford it. This is social democracy?