Open Letter to The Premier: Law 14

The directors of five English CEGEPs say exemptions to Bill 96 made by the Quebec government for Indigenous students are insufficient, inaccessible and that the law is causing students to leave the province for their higher education. In an open letter penned to Premier François Legault, the directors said the adoption of now Law 14, is making it more difficult for Indigenous students to learn their ancestral languages.  Kim Tekakwitha Martin is the Dean of Indigenous education at John Abbott College:

“Even with the minimal attempts at the exemptions that have been put in-place, like with the forms to request an exemption from the French exit exam, this doesn’t help indigenous students to, 1: take the chance on coming to post-secondary education, but 2: successfully completing that education once they get here.”

Tiawenti:non Canadian, the coordinator of the First Peoples’ Centre at Dawson College, said the open letter is a result of advocacy by students who were not feeling heard. In terms of what she would say to future students from the community before they applied to a CEGEP in the province:

“What I’m able to tell them right now is that they have a really strong support system at the college. We have people there who are willing to fight to get them exempted from the French language requirements because we feel that this bill is unfair. We have a whole team who is willing to help, to support students who do want to study French, so students who decide to come to Dawson, will not be alone they will have a large support system. There’s more and more Onkwehón:we who are working there, I myself am a graduate from the Kahnawàke Survival School.”

The law will soon require students at English CEGEPs to take three core courses in French or to take a total of five second-language French courses instead of the current two. Those provisions, the directors wrote, “are creating multiple systemic and discriminatory barriers” to the roughly 300 Indigenous students studying at their schools.