While Quebec's language hardliners are busily opening a new front in the war against English, the province's young people are moving ahead with their lives.




Those who decide their career or educational prospects would be improved by learning English are switching out of the French school system and into English at the first legal opportunity available, the CEGEP system.
Unhappy hardliners want to put a stop to this freedom of choice. Last fall, the Parti Quebecois brought in a proposal calling for Bill 101 to be extended to CEGEPs. The proposal is to be debated at the party's policy convention in April.
In preparation for the convention, the province's biggest teachers' union, the Centrale des syndicats du Quebec, commissioned a study on why francophone and allophone youths are choosing English CEGEPs.
While warning of impending doom for French as the "common language of Quebec society," the study more usefully acknowledged that the students who switched were making a conscious, motivated choice to learn English to get better jobs. They believe that English is the language of increased social mobility, a belief they share with young people around the world. From Russia to Argentina, young people are crowding into English classes, determined to master what has become the language of business and science.
But in Quebec, the movement of students after high school has long been a concern for language hardliners. By 1997, fewer than half the students enrolled in English CEGEPs were anglophones who had come through the English-language school system in Quebec. This might seem high, but despite a recent increase, overall the numbers have remained stable.
Among allophone students, in fact, more have been staying in the French system even when they got to CEGEP and could choose. In 2002, 43 per cent of allophones who had done their schooling in French switched over to English CEGEPs; in 2007, that percentage was down to 40 per cent.
Whatever their background, young people have the right to take the steps they think are necessary to make the most of their talents, abilities, ambition and opportunities. No state has the right to restrict arbitrarily students' ability to equip themselves with the skills, including languages, that they think they need.
The province's language law has proven its worth in maintaining a French-first Quebec. At this point 80 per cent of allophones do 12 years of schooling in French, from kindergarten to Grade 11. If that's not enough to make them fully functional in French, then there's something wrong with the school system.
Language hardliners have been shamefully slow to recognize that knowledge of French is not enough to guarantee access to the province's job market for non-francophones. Unemployment among Quebec's immigrant population is twice as high as in the general population: That is a problem that should be addressed with as much urgency as the language issue.