Francophone community dismayed

Ontario’s scrapping of French-language university foils plans for local campus

As French-language schools and enrolment grew across Essex County, so did a sense of excitement over plans to launch Ontario’s first-ever French-language university, possibly with a satellite campus in Windsor.

The new campus — at a cost of around $80 million — was scheduled to open in downtown Toronto in September 2020 with an initial enrolment of up to 400 students. A president and board of governors for the post-secondary institution were already named and in place. Windsor — thanks to its French heritage and volume of students studying in the language — was at the top of the list for expansion of a satellite campus in coming years.

But last week the provincial government pulled the plug on the plan through a single-line statement within its economic plan. “It was one phrase and read quickly, but it did not go unobserved,” said Jacques Kenny, chairman of the southwest region’s French Catholic School board which includes 10,100 students from Windsor, north to Owen Sound and east to London. “The reaction was ‘here we go again.’ Once again, we will have to keep fighting for what we believe in.”

Having a French-language university would be the final link for those within the francophone community, who have spent decades pushing to first increase the number of French-language schools across the province, independent French school boards and French-language community colleges.

College Boreal, which in 1995 opened in Windsor, presently has seven French-language campuses across the province.

Given today’s global economy and how Canada is a bilingual nation, it makes sense to offer students who have spent their early years entirely in French-based classrooms an opportunity to continue learning in Ontario at a university, Kenny said. “Throughout the world you see a demand for employees who speak two or three languages,” he said. “You see a great demand for students who are bilingual.”

A few universities in Ontario offer a French campus within their institution, but it’s not the same, Kenny said. “This would be the first university (in Ontario) that would be solely a French-language university,” he said.

The university plan was finally approved by the provincial government a few years ago after 20 years of lobbying, plus several committees and reports, Kenny said. The new post-secondary institution was going to have a focus on technology, business and health sciences, he said.

“You have a great number of French language students graduating across the province,” Kenny said. “Some of the programs were going to be quite innovative and geared toward the 21st century.” Students often choose a university close to where they live so most students coming out of the local French Catholic school system end up heading to the University of Windsor or the University of Western Ontario and are largely forced to leave the language behind, he said.

“We lose students from the French-language system because of location,” Kenny said. “If there was something closer like Toronto — and it was going to have a student residence — it would have made it affordable and desirable for our students to continue their education in the French language.” Jean Lemay, chairman of the French Catholic School Board Association which represents all eight boards in Ontario, described being “shocked and angry” over the sudden decision.

Just last week he was in conversation with the government’s parliamentary secretary for education who gave no indication any changes under Premier Doug Ford were planned for the university. In the French Catholic school system alone, there are 78,000 students enrolled this year across Ontario inside 258 elementary schools and 67 high schools, Lemay said. Having a francophone university launched in Ontario just makes sense given that French schools and enrolment are the fastest-growing sector in education, he said. “This has come down really hard on us,” Lemay said.

“We are going to fight back on this one. You are going to see a lot of students, parents and administrators fight back.

“It doesn’t make sense at all. The total ($80 million) is just peanuts in the overall picture.”