We’ll learn French eventually: immigrants
Coalition Avenir Québec proposes a test after three years
MONTREAL — Along Montreal’s Saint-Laurent Boulevard are rows of greystone and redbricked buildings dating from the early 20th century, many of which used to house businesses owned by first-generation Jewish immigrants who didn’t speak French very well.
Steve Schreter’s clothing store — opened by a relative in 1928 — is one of the few from that period remaining on the city’s famous strip.
Schreter and his family, particularly the youngest among them, can all speak French, Quebec’s only official language.
“People’s education was disrupted by WW2,” said Schreter, whose father, a Jew from Romania, moved to Montreal in 1948 and eventually bought the store 10 years later from his first cousin, Joseph.
“They weren’t educated — in that sense. They had street smarts, they had entrepreneurial skills. They managed to learn French well enough to do their business.
“But, they probably could never have passed a (French) test.”
A French-language test, however, is what newcomers to the province will have to pass if they want to remain in Quebec, according to a controversial election promise by the party leading opinion polls.
François Legault says his Coalition Avenir Québec, if elected Oct. 1, will reduce annual immigration by 20 per cent and expel newcomers who fail a French-language exam after three years in the province.
Legault is armed with a series of statistics he says reveal how the “integration” of immigrants in Quebec has been a “failure” under the Liberals.
If Quebec’s official language isn’t protected from the threat of non-Francophone immigration, Legault says he worries “our grandchildren won’t speak French.”
But the Schreter family, along with leaders of many of Quebec’s prominent immigrant communities, are urging Legault to be patient.
First-generation immigrants might not speak French well, but their children will, they say — because their experience proves it.
Moreover, these communities are asking how many of their members would be around today if their grandparents had to pass a French exam when they arrived following the Second World War.
“I would not be here,” said Antonio Sciascia, 71, if his parents — who came to Canada from Italy with him in 1958 — had to pass a French test to stay in the country.
The head of the Quebec branch of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians said in an interview his parents never really learned the language — but he certainly did, as did his siblings and his five children.
“(This policy) is an insult to immigrants,” said Sciascia, a commercial lawyer. “We have proven how integrated our community has become.
“We built this country — literally. The major buildings you see today, the roads, it was Italian builders.”
Nicholas Pagonis, president of the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal, who opened his own accountancy company, said few Greek immigrants in the 1950s would have passed a
French test.
Subsequent generations, however, are mostly fluent in English, French as well as Greek, said Pagonis, 72.
“I cannot imagine Montreal today, how it would look like, if the thousands of immigrants who came here in the 1950s and 1960s were thrown out after a couple of years,” he said in an interview.
Parti Québécois Leader Jean-François Lisée in May promised to reduce the annual number of immigrants to the province, stating like Legault that the “integration” of newcomers to Quebec has been a “failure.”
Now, he refuses to give a specific number of annual immigrants his government would welcome.