Of chairs free at the school

Photo Dominic Scali

Mario Dumont

Saturday, march 3, 2018 05:00

UPDATE
Saturday, march 3, 2018 05:00

Look at this article

There will be a shortage of 1000 places in the secondary schools in the west of Montréal in the next two years. This information disseminated by The Newspaper earlier in the week goes in the direction of many other headlines. Montreal schools, primary and secondary, are overflowing.

This is not the rise in the birth rate which broke our school. Our birth rate remains very low. The flow of additional children is mainly due to immigration. The waves of migrants recently received have contributed to the needs of the space current.

Families arrive with children, or young immigrants start a family and give birth to children. So much the better : children, Quebec is in need of it. They are our future, they are the taxpayers who will pay when we get old.

However, the consequences of the spill are boring : young people eat in their classroom or in the corridor, others are studying in trailers and prefabricated parked in the school yard. Quickly, the pressure becomes high on the government to correct the situation.

Several million

So we will invest millions to build new schools and enlarge others. Gold, a few hundred kilometres from Montreal, in many schools in regions have empty premises. Areas where an exodus of population and low birth rates have reduced significantly the number of young people. Some schools are a lot less crowded today, hundreds of young people less than during the years 70 or 80. There are free parking spaces.

During my 15 years as a member of parliament, Rivière-du-Loup, I had more than one opportunity of work in folders of schools threatened with closure. In the rural areas, the number of children reached threshold levels so low that they no longer justify to keep the school open. A dilemma of an infinite sadness for a community.

The schools of Montreal are overflowing. In the region, there is a lack of young people. And if you régionalisait a little immigration ?

The State may not impose on the citizens a place to live in a free country. But to the extent that new residents are not yet established among us, it is possible to predict their arrival in a region other than the metropolis. Until today, these experiences of regionalization of immigration have resulted in failure.

Regionalize

The situation that I describe in the schools should it not at least restart the debate on our ability to lead immigrants to the regions. Quebec could do two birds with one stone. Reduce the pressure on the costs of the new constructions in the metropolis and help the demography of the regions.

Several arguments over the years have pushed for increased regionalization of immigration. The regions provide a cultural environment that facilitates the integration of newcomers. Learning French may also occur in accelerated Saguenay, relative to an arrival in the west of Montreal.

Quebec has tried experiments in the field of regionalization of immigration. Shy and relatively successful. The time has perhaps come to be more serious, from the process of recruitment and selection of newcomers.