Quebec puts support for immigrant and Indigenous students on hold

A teacher helps an elementary school student learn their letters in this undated stock image. (RDNE Stock project/Pexels.com)

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

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

In all, some 15 measures appear on the list that the ministry sent to the directors general of the school service centres mid-December.

Other measures “withdrawn from the budget rules from 2024-2025″ include “youth climate change projects” and “introducing secondary school students to parliamentary democracy.”

In an interview, Nicolas Prévost, President of the Fédération québécoise des directions d'établissement d’enseignement (FQDE), highly objected to this decision which directly affects students.

“There are schools that had projects to promote Quebec culture (...) and all that is going to be put on hold this year. There won’t be any,” he said. “In Laval, for example, we often organized trips to Quebec City, the National Assembly and certain museums.”

“We’re always talking about making it easier for our new students to integrate ... For us, it was a way of welcoming them and integrating them into the Quebec community,” he added.

Prévost also said that scrapping the support measure for Indigenous students, which provided funding for activities to promote cohabitation, would particularly affect Abitibi and the Côte-Nord.

Bryan St-Louis, spokesperson for the ministry, told The Canadian Press that all expenditure approved before Dec. 13, 2024 will be honoured.

The rest will be “temporarily put on hold,” he said.

$200 million in budget cuts to education

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

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

However, Corina Borri-Anadon, a professor in the department of education at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, is surprised that these two measures have been put on hold.

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

“These students are going to have to live in a world where we have to continue our efforts to reconcile with First Nations, manage the climate crisis and find a way of living in a society together. I don’t see how we can cope,” she added.

Last November, the Auditor General of Quebec, Guylaine Leclerc, deplored the lack of support offered to 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 view, Indigenous students do not receive support adapted to their needs when they make the transition from a school in their community to a school in the Quebec school system. Nor do they receive enough help in French.

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

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

Last week, Premier François Legault denied that he wanted to make cuts in education.

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

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

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

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French Jan. 27, 2025.