On Campus

Students slam PQ over language proposal

Quebec opposition would prevent francophones from attending English CEGEPs

Students are slamming a Parti Quebecois proposal to prevent francophone and allophone students from attending English-language CEGEPs.

Michaël Lessard, a student union executive at Montreal’s Dawson College says the plan would unfairly punish students who already speak French, by preventing them from honing their English skills. Without English, students would find it difficult to pursue careers in “anything that touches politics or law or business or academics,” he told Canadian University Press. “That’s why I don’t understand the arguments, even from the nationalist point of view, you want Quebec to be able to talk with the rest of Canada or America.”

Currently, Quebec’s language laws, also known as bill 101, mandate that francophone and allophone students cannot attend English language primary and secondary schools. Evidently responding to a report released last month that showed nearly half of all students in English CEGEPS were either francophone or allophone, the PQ has proposed extending bill 101 to the CEGEP system.

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