CEGEP students protest Bill 96: ‘It’s going to damage our futures’

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Hundreds of CEGEP students at English colleges around Quebec left class in a co-ordinated action Thursday morning to denounce Bill 96 — the proposed law to overhaul the province’s French-language charter.

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In Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, roughly 500 students, parents and faculty members marched on the John Abbott College campus on a crisp sunny morning chanting: “My CEGEP, my future.”

Similar actions were held at Marianopolis, Dawson, Vanier, as well as Champlain College in Lennoxville and St-Lambert.

They were protesting against the law that would, among other measures, cap the proportion of students in English-language CEGEPs to 17.5 per cent of the overall student population — the same level as the last school year.

“It’s an important law to fight against,” said Abigail Stokes, a first-year student in arts, literature and communication who grew up in Wakefield, near Ottawa.

“I’m upset about the bill, and the more I read, the more upset I get because it’s not giving people the choice of something that should be their choice.”

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Stokes said she’s concerned the bill will limit the number of francophones who will be able to attend the college.

“Anyone who wants to come here, should be able to get here, because it’s a great school.”

The John Abbott College student union organized the event and set up information booths to inform students about the issues, said its president, Ivana Riveros Areteaga.

“A lot of people are against it; it’s going to damage our futures,” she said.

While the law isn’t expected to come into effect until after she leaves John Abbott, she said it’s important to take action now.

“If we don’t stop it now, it will be very difficult to change it in the future,” said Riveros Areteaga, whose 11-year-old sister Rebecca also attended the protest.

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Bill 96 has undergone a number of revisions in committee hearings, and it is now expected to be passed by the end of the legislative session.

Under the most recent amendments, francophones and allophones attending English CEGEPs would be required to take three of their core courses in French and pass a French proficiency exam to graduate — the same exam taken by students in francophone CEGEPs.

Anglophone students in English CEGEPs, meanwhile, would have the option of taking three core courses in French or a total of five French-language instruction courses.

Riveros Areteaga said both scenarios would compromise students’ grades and their prospects of getting into a university program of their choice.

The changes would require a major overhaul of the curriculum in the province’s eight English-language CEGEPs, and administrators and teachers have raised the alarm about staffing requirements to meet these new obligations.

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Education aside, Riveros Areteaga said she’s concerned about other provisions in Bill 96, such as those affecting access to judicial and health care services in English. For example, the legislation does away with requirements for judges to be bilingual.

Meanwhile, leaders of Indigenous communities — where for many members French is their third language — have described Bill 96 as a form of cultural genocide.

“Many people in my community and especially in rural communities are not that proficient in French, and we would be highly affected if Bill 96 goes through,” said Gracie Diabo, who grew up in Kahnawake and is a vice-president of John Abbott’s student Union.

“So it would hinder our potential success in education, in addition to the barriers that already exist. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not acceptable.”

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At Dawson College, roughly 100 students and teachers attended a protest in the building’s basement.

“From a student point of view, it divides us,” said Arwen Low, a vice-president of the student union at Dawson. “This divides allophone students from anglophone students from francophone students from Indigenous students from international students. It’s a mess.

“And it doesn’t have a clear plan for implementation. So students are lost, they’re confused. They’re scared that it’s going to affect their grades and their educational success.”

Several teachers also spoke out against Bill 96. Dónal Gill, a professor of political science at Dawson, called it “incoherent as a piece of social engineering” and “pedagogically very damaging.”

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“Students who come here will end up in separate streams depending on whether they have historical rights to study in English or not,” Gill noted.

“A big problem with all of that is that neither the Ministry of Higher Education nor any pedagogical experts nor any teachers nor any administrators at the CEGEPs were consulted in the drawing up of these provisions. It’s ad hoc, very slapdash.”

Gill said the new French-language provisions would lead to an overhaul of the CEGEP curriculum and could require layoffs among teachers.

English professor Amanda Cockburn added: “It’s a devastating thing for the English CEGEP system and I think it’s a devastating thing for democracy in Quebec society.”

In Quebec City, Premier François Legault called the new requirements “reasonable.”

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“I think all Anglophones whose parents went to an English school in Canada will have a place in English CEGEPs,” Legault said. “It’s too bad to see that some people would like to see a bilingual Quebec, because in practice it would mean that it’s just a matter of time before we lose the use of French in Quebec.”

The students were urged to attend a May 14 rally at Dawson College, from where protesters are to march to the premier’s downtown office.

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