After outcry over funding, Quebec puts up $10M to reopen French classes for newcomers

Faced with growing criticism, the Legault government is giving $10 million to school service centres so they can restart French classes that they were forced to shut down due to a lack of funding. 

The French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge made the announcement on Thursday morning.

According to Radio-Canada, the money will allow about 5,000 people to access French courses by the end of March.

In recent weeks, several school service centres and school boards were forced to shut down French classes due to a lack of funding. Roberge has insisted that there were no cuts, that the province had set aside money for the classes and that it should have been better managed.

He reiterated that on Thursday, saying it's not normal to begin a school year with the intention of going over budget to provide a service, which he said was the case for several school centres.

As far as the service centres were concerned, the province's budget for language training were not keeping up with an exploding demand.

Asked if the government bears at least some of the blame for the classes being shut down, he said the Quebec government is working on a plan to stop this from happening again, with the funding being more predictable. 

According to data provided to Radio-Canada by the province's French language commissioner, the number of people enrolled in French courses essentially more than doubled in a year. In 2023, between June 1 and Sept. 30, there were 13,591 students enrolled in classes. For the same period in 2024, the number of students was 32,040.

The shutdown of classes sparked anger and frustration from students who were getting ready to learn French, with others saying the service cuts fly in the face of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government's stated goal of promoting the French language.

There have been several protests in the province calling for the classes to be reopened.

On Wednesday, when word about the province's plan to set aside $10 million for the classes began spreading, the immigration critic for opposition Québec Solidaire welcomed the news while throwing a jab at the CAQ.

"After months of denying the problem, finally the CAQ is being reasonable and increases the budgets for francisation," Guillaume Cliche-Rivard wrote on X.

The sum of $10 million isn't new money.

It comes from savings after the government scrapped its financial aid program for part-time French language students. 

The money being injected into school service centres for French classes is expected to spread around based on the needs in different regions. 

In October, the Quebec Liberal Party asked the French language commissioner to look into what was happening with the French classes.

On Wednesday, the commissioner, Benoît Dubreuil, said he would not open an investigation.

However, he did say he was worried about the effects of the class shutdowns, and said the students that were affected need to be assigned to a course as soon as possible.