Quebec puts support for immigrant and Indigenous students on hold

Quebec has stopped funding support measures for immigrant and Indigenous students, according to The Canadian Press.

Measures promoting “the integration and success of immigrants” and “the educational success of Indigenous” have been put on hold, the Ministry of Education confirmed on Monday.

In all, some 15 measures are on the list the ministry sent to the general managers of school service centers in mid-December.

Other measures “withdrawn from the budget rules as of 2024-2025” include “youth climate change projects” and “introducing high school students to parliamentary democracy”.

This decision directly affects students, deplores Nicolas Prévost, President of the Fédération québécoise des directions d’établissement d’enseignement (FQDE), in an interview.

“There are schools that had projects to promote Quebec culture, (…) and all that is going to be put on ice this year. There won’t be any,” he complained.

In Laval, for example, we often organized trips to Quebec City, the National Assembly and certain museums,” illustrates the president of the FQDE.

“We’re always talking about facilitating the integration of our new students. (…) For us, it was a way of welcoming them, of integrating them into the Quebec community.”

In addition, the scrapping of the support measure for Indigenous, which notably enabled the funding of “vivre-ensemble” activities, will particularly affect Abitibi and Côte-Nord, according to Prévost.

A spokesman for the ministry, Bryan St-Louis, made it clear in an exchange with The Canadian Press that all expenditures approved before December 13, 2024, will be honored.

The rest will be “temporarily paused”, he said.

According to his figures, as of December 13, $19.9 million had already been approved for Indigenous success; by comparison, $18.9 million had been spent in 2023-2024.

The immigrant student support measure had been funded to the tune of $2.1 million in 2023-2024. As of December 13, 2024, $2.3 million had been invested.

However, Corina Borri-Anadon, a professor in UQTR’s Department of Educational Sciences, finds it surprising that these two measures have been put on hold.

“When we look around us, these are issues of the utmost importance,” she stressed in an interview.

“These students are going to have to live in a world where we have to continue our efforts to reconcile with the first peoples, manage the climate crisis, find a way to live in a society together. I don’t see how we can get out of this,” she added.

Last November, Quebec Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc deplored the lack of support for Indigenous students.

In her report, she pointed out that the Ministry of Education “is still doing little to promote the success” of these students.

In her opinion, Indigenous students do not receive support adapted to their needs when they make the transition from a school in their community to one in the Quebec school network. Nor do they receive enough help in French.

The Legault government, grappling with a record $11 billion deficit, asked the education network in December to make a $200 million budgetary effort.

Some school service centers have opted to cut food aid, book purchases and cultural outings, reported Le Journal de Québec.

During an announcement at a school in Prévost last week, Premier François Legault denied that he wanted to make cuts in education.

He said that budgets have continued to increase under his government, and that it was up to school service centers to manage them rigorously.

“It’s hard to believe that there are no cuts when you have concrete examples of the opposite,” Nicolas Prévost reacted on Monday.

“(…) It’s a shame to (…) take two steps forward, then two steps back, it’s difficult for schools,” he added.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews