There’s disbelief from Thunder Bay’s Francophone Culture Club at the Ford government’s claim it’s saving money by making changes to a French-language watchdog.
At a rally outside MPP Michael Gravelle’s office yesterday, Club culturel francophone de Thunder Bay President Audrey Debrueny didn’t have high hopes for how effective the commissioner will be when it’s moved into the Ombudsman’s office.
“It’s not free as it was before,” she argues, criticizing the PC’s cost-saving argument. “You are not saving some money because you are going back [to how it was] 20 years ago.”
The President feels the French language commissioner was more effective when it was an independent office.
The Assemblée de la francophonie de l’Ontario held similar protests in Dryden and Geraldton along with other communities across the province.
They spoke out against the Ford government’s changes to the French language commissioner and a move to axe a French-language university.
Debrueny questions the government’s claim that only 3% of the population speaks primarily French.
“I come from France, so I was very happy to know in Thunder Bay I would be able to meet a French community, to work in French, to socialize in French,” she points out. “French people are one of the first founders [of Canada].”
She claims the government cancelled the school because establishing it had been a Liberal plan.
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