Josh Freed: A easy answer to Quebec's English scholar drawback

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Pricey Premier Legault:

Your authorities has introduced controversial plans to double English college tuition for Canadian college students from exterior Quebec.

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You nakedly admit you need to deter these college students from coming to McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s as a result of “too many categorical themselves in English … each day,” to cite your Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge.

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You assume elevating McGill’s tuition particularly will cut back the English menace downtown — and “rebalance” the language combine. However maintain off in your plans, Mr. Premier.

I’ve a greater answer to rid downtown of “too many” English college students, with out out-pricing poorer non-Quebecers and ravenous our universities.

As an alternative, let’s simply transfer McGill someplace much less bothersome, by having it commerce locations with a French college. Let’s flip the places of McGill and the Université de Montreal!

Right here’s my modest proposal:

A lot of the issue, Mr. Legault, is that your individual “premier’s workplace” in Montreal is correct by McGill. So that you most likely hear annoying English dialog by way of your window all day and each time you go for a sizzling canine.

Different locations (and Quebec premiers) may have fun these tens of hundreds of out-of-province college students who dwell close to downtown and spend a lot cash, serving to companies keep alive.

To not point out many proficient graduates who settle right here, grasp French, develop much-needed specialties, pay taxes and assist make our metropolis one of the crucial attention-grabbing on the continent.

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But to your authorities, they’re simply “a risk to French”. If that’s the case, why cease at half measures?

The true drawback isn’t the variety of English college students themselves, it’s the location of McGill: proper downtown!

Université de Montréal’s scholar inhabitants is almost twice McGill’s and just about all francophone, however its campuses are hidden away in Outremont. So that you barely see or hear these armies of francophones downtown, as a result of they dangle within the Plateau.

The answer is clear. We merely want to maneuver McGill’s 35,000 college students to U de M’s campus, then transfer U de M’s francophone college students to McGill.

Think about! In a flash, the downtown core could be flooded with 65,000 French-speaking college students. This could shift the language “stability” in a single day, filling the streets, bars and retailers close to your workplace with French.

Concurrently, we’d rid downtown of 40,000 largely English-speaking McGill-ers, transferring them far sufficient away that downtown’s air wouldn’t be tainted by all that English chatter.

Many of the two faculties’ schools can trade services simply — regulation, drugs, arts and science in each are world class. Even most profs received’t discover the distinction.

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Certain, the day of the transfer may very well be considerably traumatic as tens of hundreds of scholars trade locations, buildings and college lockers concurrently.

However Quebec has an amazing Shifting Day custom, so why can’t we deal with a Shifting McGill Day?

As soon as we full this large linguistic transplant, different exchanges may enhance downtown’s “stability.” As an illustration, Concordia’s downtown campus can commerce locations with UQAM, making room for a few of their 30,000 francophone college students downtown.

Equally, downtown Montreal’s McCord historical past museum can change locations with the Château Ramezay on Notre-Dame Avenue, whereas Atwater Library trades locations with the Grande Bibliothèque on Berri.

Bishop’s College can transfer from Sherbrooke to someplace with fewer francophones, like Stowe, Vermont. In the meantime, Hurley’s Irish pub on Crescent Avenue can relocate the place it actually belongs: Eire.

This nonetheless leaves one main English air pollutant: the massive variety of American vacationers filling downtown half the yr. These hordes worsen Montreal’s language combine much more than our universities, asking bothersome English-language vacationer questions like:

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“The place’s the mountain?” … “The place can I purchase a beaver in a Mountie outfit keychain?” and “Is there anyplace downtown you’re allowed to park?”

However your authorities already has a attainable answer to this English-speaking vacationer invasion, Mr. Legault. You’re already doubling scholar tuition for out-of-towners, whereas preserving the cash to “improve funding for French universities.”

So why not create the same penalty for U.S. guests — a form of English vacationer “congestion” tax?

It might drive downtown motels and eating places to double their charges for English-speaking vacationers, with a particular new tax often known as the EST (English providers tax).

The additional cash from these American vacationers who do nonetheless come right here may subsidize resort charges for extra French-from-France vacationers.

Voila! In a single stroke the downtown problème anglais would vanish!

My plan would additionally additional your authorities’s different unstated intention: to beat nationalist drums and defend endangered Coalition Avenir Québec seats in Quebec Metropolis from the Parti Québécois, come subsequent election.

Certain, there’s at all times a hazard my plan may harm Montreal greater than assist. It’d dissuade many individuals from coming right here, with out really attracting extra French-from-France (or-anywhere) college students or vacationers — crippling universities and costing downtown companies over $100 million.

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However that’s already the large hazard along with your plan to over-price English college tuitions. Even the chief of a serious French college scholar union attacked the tutoring improve as “staggering” and “unacceptable.”

The opposite draw back is that if you happen to ever handle to show downtown Montreal into the French-only zone you appear to dream of, nobody will acknowledge the fantastic, welcoming, distinctive, French-but-cosmopolitan metropolis we dwell in and love as we speak.

Yours really,

Jacques Freed

[email protected]

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