The Ford government’s cuts to services for Franco-Ontarians are more than just a profound disservice to the province’s 620,000 francophones. They are an attack on our Canadian commitment to official languages and the hundreds of thousands of English-speaking families who have embraced French in immersion and other programs in Ontario and across Canada.

Throughout our country, anglophone kids are learning French in unprecedented numbers. According to the most recent numbers from the government of Ontario, on any given day there are more than 280,000 Ontario students doing more French than is required in English school boards – everything from after-school learning to full French immersion. Across the country, add in another 200,000 plus.

That’s half a million English kids intensively learning Canada’s other official language – every weekday.

But there is a lot more at play than that. These kids and their families are also expressing a strong commitment to the fabric our country. They have to make an active choice. It’s often inconvenient and challenging — especially given the many additional demands we often place on students today.

In many parts of the province and country, students and their families have to overcome significant structural barriers to get the amount of French second-language education they want and need. But year after year these students and their parent sign up in record numbers.

The growing interest in French immersion from newcomers to Canada shows us that our willingness to share and to compromise and to support our francophone minorities is known far and wide. Across Ontario, one of the most popular areas for French immersion is Peel Region – where immigrants account for 80 per cent of the population growth. And in Premier Doug Ford’s own community, Etobicoke, new opportunities for French immersion was a major issue in this fall’s school trustee elections.

These families know there’s something a lot more important than language learning or credit accumulation going on. Something called nation building.

And it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The support for French learning is directly tied to the health and growth of Canada’s French-speaking population — including the million-plus francophones who live outside Quebec. It’s a sensitive eco-system. That’s why the cuts to minority language services in Ontario are so wrong-headed and destructive.

The prevailing attitude towards Franco-Ontarians contributes to our national identity and our international credibility. It impacts our unity as a nation. It enhances our reputation as a good place to live and a good place to do business. It is who we are and what we aspire to be.

Official languages are supported by 80 per cent of Ontarians. But we anglos can be complacent. We are rather used to our provincial government acting for us, supporting, promoting and protecting French as a first and as a second language.

The willingness to cut the French Language Services Commissioner who intervenes when we are offside in supporting our French minority is bit of a shock. Just five years ago, the position was made an Officer of the Legislature with the unanimous support of Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and NDP.

The innovative plans for 21st-century learning in French at the Université de l’Ontario français are another blow, not only to Franco-Ontarians but also to our French immersion grads and the City of Toronto. It is another affront to investment in post-secondary opportunities in the GTA. And it reduces post-secondary to just a cost without the benefit analysis that a solid business employs.

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In 2017 the legislation was adopted with the PCs declaring their “long-standing” support for the French university in both official languages while also asking that the project be expanded to include more programs. The quibble was not with cost but with scope. Clearly that support was not strong enough to ward off this new assault on reasonable services for Franco-Ontarians.

The legislation to do this disservice is called “Taking action to put Ontario’s fiscal house in order.” It should be known as “Making Ontario penny-wise and pound-foolish while also alienating French-Canadians coast-to-coast-to coast, causing an unnecessary language crisis, ignoring the anglophone majority in Ontario that supports official language bilingualism, and threatening Canadian unity.”

Mary Cruden is a volunteer member of the French as a Second Language Advisory Committee of the Toronto District School Board and a recipient of the Ontario Prix de la Francophonie.

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