This institution, whose creation had been retoquée in 2018 by the provincial government, will see the light of day through a funding agreement with the federal government.

For the franco-ontarian community, the announcement is simply “history”. The federal government and the provincial government have signed on the 22nd of January, a funding agreement for the creation of the University of Ontario French (UOF), the first French-language university “which is governed by and for francophones of Ontario”. The facility, which will be located in Toronto, will welcome its first students in September 2021.

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$ 126 million over eight years, have been made available for this project is dear to some 620 000 francophones in the province. The agreement provides that Ottawa will pay 50% of the investment, or $ 63 million over five years. Then, “beginning in 2023-2024,” the Ontario government should inject “at a minimum” an amount the same.

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“This is an unprecedented step that will have a positive impact in the lives of thousands of Canadians who will now have the ability to make post-secondary education in French, here in Ontario, and will bring together francophones from all regions of the country,” welcomed Mélanie Joly, the federal minister of economic Development and official Languages. “The University of Ontario French is a very important project and long-awaited, essential for future generations of francophones in Ontario,” said Caroline Mulroney, the minister of francophone Affairs of Ontario. As to the Assembly of the Ontario francophonie, it has also welcomed the decision, while paying tribute to the community “that was able to mobilize and who never lost hope in the folder”.

thousands of francophones in the street

It must be said that the road has been long for the defenders of the language of Molière in the province. This project of institution of higher francophone (whose genesis dates back to the 1960s) is embodied in effect in 2017 with the adoption, by the government of Kathleen Wynne, bill 177. But the construction is cancelled as soon as fall 2018. The new Prime minister and the provincial minister, Doug Ford, retoque, in effect, the project – just as it decides to delete the Commissioner of French language services – citing budgetary constraints.

The outcry is huge, both in Ontario, but also in all French-speaking Canada. On December 1, 2018, that is in the street that thousands of them express their dissatisfaction. “Today, we are all Franco-Ontarians,” declared Mélanie Joly, who took part in a demonstration in Ottawa. That same day, in an editorial written exceptionally in French, the daily newspaper of canada’s capital, Ottawa Citizen, had also considered that “the Franco-Ontarians deserve better” and that “the safeguard of the language and French culture in Ontario should never be questioned.” After several months of tensions between the two levels of government, of the negotiations around the creation of the university had finally resumed in the summer of 2019, prior to the holding of federal elections.

“Develop the skills of the 21st century”

“Franco-Ontarians have much to be proud of, writes the journalist québec Jean-Benoît Nadeau in a chronicle published in the daily Le Devoir. First, because they actually bend Doug Ford (…). But the Franco-Ontarians are also in the position, extremely rare, to create a university from a blank page.” Willing to propose an innovative approach, the UOF will thus, in a first time, four programs of transdisciplinary studies to the labels original : “plurality of people”, “global economy”, “urban environments” and “digital cultures”.

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The ambition of this new institution ? “Developing 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, communication, collaboration, etc” And ultimately “serve as an example for other universities in Ontario and elsewhere in the country and in the world.” Suffice to say that the bar is high…