Like driving without a GPS, bilingualism is becoming a lost skill in Canada.
What happened: Ottawa will launch a pilot this month to provide a path for French-speaking international students to study and stay in Canada, as part of a push to boost the country’s Francophone population. This year, 2,300 students will be accepted as part of the program.
- The pilot is an exception to the feds’ move to cut down on the number of international students coming to Canada, which includes a 35% reduction in student visa approvals.
Why it matters: Experts have long pleaded for study permits to take into account the economic and cultural needs of the country, a box this program could tick as French-speaking international students have been disproportionately rejected for study permits.
- Since 1971, the French-speaking population in provinces outside of Québec has dropped from 6.1% to just 3.5%.
- Even in Québec, French is on the decline, particularly among young folks and in the province's biggest city, Montréal.
Zoom out: To try and correct the course, Québec recently increased tuition for students attending English-language universities in the province and added a requirement for those schools to teach 80% of their non-Québécois students to speak French before they graduate.—LA