Francophone students won’t be required to attend French CEGEPs, Couillard insists

QUEBEC Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said he would not force francophone students to attend French CEGEPs, as proposed by some Parti Québécois members.

In Saguenay—Lac-St-Jean on Friday, Couillard was asked about a proposal by a group of PQ activists to restrict access to Englishlanguage CEGEPs in order to better protect French in the province.

“There is no question,” Couillard said. “I want to be clear; we will not do that.”

He added that the PQ should “solve their internal problems.”

“Stop the Parti Québécois’s linguistic panic,” he said.

Couillard went on to argue that it is an advantage for young Quebecers to be bilingual. He said he believes it reflects “a good deal of opinion” shared by parents who want more English for their children.

“Most francophone parents in Quebec, and I ... have spoken to them in all regions of Quebec, would really like to give their children, at the college level, the opportunity to do some schooling to become bilingual,” he said.

A week away from the PQ congress, the head of the party Jean-François Lisée said he was open to strengthening the protection of French.

Lisée suggested that the list of new measures to defend the French language that could be proposed by the militants to the congress “is not closed.”

“I leave you in suspense,” he told a press conference on Thursday afternoon in St-Eustache, after a meeting of his deputies preparing for the parliamentary session.

But Lisée said he was confident that two of the main components of his program would be validated by members of the National Assembly: the refusal to extend Bill 101 to CEGEPs, and the postponement of a referendum in a second term of a PQ government.

A PQ government would thus refrain from forcing francophones to attend French CEGEPs, while maintaining the status quo, which is free choice.

Lisée said three-quarters of party executives in the constituencies have already supported the proposal to exclude the possibility of extending the French Language Charter to CEGEPs, as has 75 per cent of the party’s regional congresses.

So a resolution arguing to extend the provisions of Bill 101 to CEGEPs would be beaten in congress, he continued.

He also recalled the linguistic commitments he has already made.

This includes requiring knowledge of French before immigration to Quebec, with the exception of refugees; and imposing Bill 101 on federally chartered companies with between 25 and 50 employees.