Ontario plans to introduce legislation to create its first French-language university ¡°in the coming months¡± to give French-speaking students more opportunities to study in the language.

The provincial government said that the new university would be ¡°governed for and by francophones¡± and would welcome its first cohort of students by 2020.

It added that Ontario was home to 611,500 francophones ¨C the largest population in Canada outside Quebec ¨C and that central and south-western Ontario had the country¡¯s fastest growing francophone population.

The government said that the university would be the first of its kind in the province, but there are currently two publicly funded French-language colleges and nine universities at which students can study in French.

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The move has come under fire, with some claiming that the francophone community is already well served by the province¡¯s education system.

Writing for the , Josh Dehaas, former online education editor for ²Ñ²¹³¦±ô±ð²¹²Ô¡¯²õ, said that there was already a ¡°struggle to fill post-secondary seats¡± in the region.

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¡°The estimated C$83.5-million [?52.2 million] ¡®startup cost¡¯ of the newly proposed waterfront campus in Toronto ¨C which its proponents believe federal taxpayers will fund half of ¨C would be better spent on fixing broken classrooms in existing institutes, or giving raises to underpaid contract professors. This new university is really the last thing Ontario needs,¡± he wrote.

Meanwhile, the president of the French students¡¯ association at Laurentian University told the that the proposals would sap students and funds from Laurentian.

¡°There hasn¡¯t been enough research done to support a free-standing university,¡± said Jessica Findlay.

¡°And on multiple occasions, in all of the limited research that they¡¯ve done, they have repeated that a lot of the students would be coming from existing French education institutions.¡±

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ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com?