Quebec's dangerous new language rules

Last month, in a wave of new regulations designed to preserve the French language, Quebec premier François Legault imposed a requirement that temporary foreign workers pass an intermediate French test after just three years living in the province. In a powerful essay for Maclean’s, migrant advocate Carlos Rojas says the move is purely political and not sincerely designed to help newcomers quickly learn French.

Rojas is the director of Conseil Migrant, a non-profit that helps migrants navigate life in Canada. He argues that Quebec has set unrealistic expectations. Foreign workers, he says, are working long hours, which leaves no time to squeeze in French lessons. They often live in cramped apartments, conditions that would make learning a language challenging. Many don’t have laptops, just smartphones, and some don’t have internet access.

Rojas says that if the government was serious about French education, it would help temporary foreign workers study and succeed, providing them with several hours a week of paid time to study and access to facilities to learn French. The real test of Quebec’s new rules, he says, will come in a few years. He predicts that if temporary foreign workers don’t meet the language requirement and lose their status, they won’t leave the country. Instead, they’ll start working under the table—an outcome that would hurt both the workers and Quebec itself.

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

When Leslie and Joseph Dort were approaching retirement age, they began to envision what their lives would look like long into the future. The couple wondered: would Joe develop arthritis? What if there was an accident and one of them needed a wheelchair to get around? So they decided to build a custom home in Calgary, designed to let them age in place.

“In the last few years, the soaring costs of groceries, gas and other basics have prevented me and so many of my contemporaries from living the lifestyles we want, unless we take on full-time work,” writes 80-year-old Bill Vangorder. He puts in 50 to 60 hours a week as an advocacy officer at the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. People of his generation—who hoped for full retirement at 65—weren’t prepared for this reality, he says.

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In January of 2022, Nathaniel Outram and his wife, Evelin, qualified for a mortgage on a $668,000 two-bedroom condo townhouse in downtown Toronto—their first home. The first sign of trouble came in late February, when their biweekly payments went up by $25. They saw further hikes in March and June, and by July, the couple had only $100 left in their joint account. “Unless we changed something dramatically, I was convinced we’d lose our home within two months,” Nathaniel says. He took on a second job—but they’re still scrambling to keep up with payments.

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