'Surely, the budget cuts can come from somewhere else and not against the francophone population that has long been educating and learning in Ontario'

Over 100 people packed the parking lot in front of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MPP Doug Downey’s Bell Farm Road constituency office, Saturday afternoon, to show their disdain for the provincial government's cuts to some French-language services.

Organized by the Francophone Assembly of Ontario, which represents the 740,000 Franco-Ontarians living in the province, today’s Barrie event was one of more than 40 similar rallies across Ontario held in response to the cancelled funding by the Doug Ford government for a planned French-language university in the Toronto area.

Harold Robert, former principal at École Secondaire Roméo-Dallaire in south-end Barrie, says he's upset that the students he oversaw are being told they will not have the opportunity to go to a French university in Ontario.

“I had the privilege of opening Romeo-Dallaire in 2009 and I see many of my students here today,” said Robert. “We represent over 700,000 people in the province, so of course it pissed off a lot of people and we had to take some kind of action.

"There are 39,000 students in the south-west part of Ontario, from Toronto to London to Windsor, who don’t have a French language university to go to," he added.

Robert says that while dialogue with Downey's office has been decent, the same narrative keeps coming up, which is that it is all finances.

“We keep hearing it, finances, finances. We know,” said Robert. “But outside of Quebec, we are the largest francophone population and we don’t have the universities that three other provinces have.

"There are bilingual universities, absolutely, and they are fine institutions, but it is not the same. When we hear things from the provincial government that it's only three per cent of the population; no, it is 4.2 per cent and that equals over 700,000 people," he added.

"Surely, the budget cuts can come from somewhere else and not against the francophone population that has long been educating and learning in Ontario.”

While music from Franco-Ontarian musicians played loudly to the singing of the equally loud protesters, the organizers had the over 100 strong people walk the parking lot, chanting and making noise.

No one was answering the doors at Downey’s office, which seemed empty on Saturday afternoon.

Cloe Abernot, 17, was one of the many Barrie French school students protesting the budget cuts. She says she can't allow her school life to be all for naught once she finishes high school.

“I see that a lot of people my age are going to English schools for university and I don’t understand why they do that, because I have been 14 years in French schools, so it’s really important to me to keep going that route,” said Abernot.

“French is obviously a very important language and gives you so many opportunities in life," she added. "If some people don’t see that than it is very unfortunate.”