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The Legault government will inject $603 million over the next five years into measures designed to shore up the French language, which it says is in a state of decline.
More than half the money — $320 million — is destined to help immigrants learn and live in French. The government will boost the financial support of the new Francisation Québec agency, French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge said Sunday as he released a long-awaited action plan on French at a Montreal news conference.
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The money for Francisation Québec was included in last month’s provincial budget.
Roberge told reporters that even though Quebec has acted already to protect French via the adoption of Bill 96, overhauling the Charter of the French Language, in May 2022, “more had to be done.”
He mentioned a Statistics Canada report from August 2023 showing a slip in French as the language spoken by Quebecers in the workplace.
“We saw we need an overall vision, one that is integrated,” Roberge said. “We had to go further. We are taking action to reverse the decline of French.”
Among the measures, Quebec is creating another new digital “dashboard” to follow the evolution of language data on a yearly basis without having to wait for the information provided by Statistics Canada. That initiative will cost $18 million.
The action plan is the result of months of work by a task force of CAQ cabinet ministers, including those responsible for education, higher education, culture, immigration and the francophonie. The task force started its work in January 2023, but the report’s publication was delayed numerous times.
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