Fight heats up over Universite du Quebec business course

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 Friday  February 9  2007

Fight heats up over Universite du Quebec business course Administration
accused of numbers manipulation, rights violations

DAVE ROGERS Ottawa Citizen

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

The debate over the future of English business courses at the Universite du
Quebec en Outaouais is heating up, with professors accusing the university
of manipulating enrolment statistics and language rights activists
complaining that scrapping the programs would violate Quebecs human rights
charter. The universitys administration is consulting the public and the
university community until Feb. 16 about a plan to phase out its
English-language MBA and project administration programs. The
administration is to decide in April whether the graduate programs should
be scrapped. The head of the English and French MBA program, Jan
Saint-Macary, says the Gatineau universitys administration and some
professors have mistakenly claimed that English-language business programs
include a large proportion of francophones who are being assimilated. Mr.
Saint-Macary said a 2003 study by the universitys vice-rector claims that
up to 58 per cent of students in the MBA and project administration
programs are French-speaking when the real number is less than 16 per
cent. Mr. Saint-Macary said the study classified many Chinese, Middle
Eastern and Pakistani students as francophone even though they never use
French. When Mr. Saint-Macary examined the admission records of 50
students he discovered that nine of 17 Chinese students were classified as
francophones. None of the Chinese students spoke French. Twelve others
born in Pakistan and Iraq were also classified as francophones.

University spokesman Yves Melanson said foreign students may have been
counted as francophones when they said on their application forms that
they used French at home or preferred to receive correspondence from the
university in French. Meanwhile, Brian Gibb, head of the Regional
Association of West Quebecers, said Wednesday the universitys plan to
eliminate English-language business courses discriminates against
non-francophones and violates Canadas UNESCO commitment to protect a
variety of cultures. Mr. Gibb said scrapping the two programs would be
discriminatory and a step back to the 1970's when the Parti Quebecois
government restricted access to English-language education. Eliminating
the university's only English-language courses would deny 50,000 Outaouais
anglophones equitable access to a university education even though their
taxes support Quebec universities, Mr. Gibb said.

Canada was one of the first nations to sign the UNESCO Convention on the
Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions on Nov.
23, 2005. The treaty requires Canada to support equitable access and
respect for a variety of cultures. Damian Londynski, a former student, now
a senior policy analyst with the federal government, has filed a complaint
about the university's handling of language policy with Quebec's
Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, the
provinces human and youth rights commission. Mr. Londynski said the
proposed language policy and the consultation violate Quebecs charter of
rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and prevents discrimination
based on language. The commission has acknowledged the complaint, but has
not set a date for a hearing. Mr. Gibb said the universitys proposed
linguistic policy shows its administration is out of touch with modern
Quebec and wants society to stay frozen in the past. Things have changed
since the 1970's and English is unquestionably the language of business,
Mr. Gibb said. The plan to make the Universite du Quebec en Outaouais a
French-only university would be appropriate only at a small
French-language university outside Quebec. The plan to eliminate English
at the university is inappropriate because the French language is secure
and flourishing. The presence of anglophones is not threatening because
the English-speaking population in the Outaouais has decreased by 35 per
cent since 1971.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=3db537ac-a0dc-4311-a18a-f8218d636335&k=0
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