A public system of health and welfare was created in Canada following World War II. In 1940 the Liberal government of Quebec agreed to a national unemployment insurance program, funded by workers and employers and administered by Ottawa. A system of family allowances, the first universal social program, was introduced, funded, and administered by the Canadian government in 1946. This was followed by a pension program in 1951, a national hospital insurance program in 1957, and a provincial universal health insurance plan, which Quebec joined in 1971. Social assistance is available for the indigent, the elderly, dependent children, and others in need. Although sharing with the rest of Canada one of the world’s highest standards of living, Quebec continues to have a larger proportion of unemployed and persons on social security than the Canadian average. The cost of social aid is one of the highest among provincial governments in Canada. This situation is explained by the fact that age, health, level of education and training, and similar factors place a higher percentage of the population below the requirements of a modern industrialized society. While Quebec’s economy grew at the same rate as Ontario’s economy between 1870 and 1960, it had and continues to have an older, slightly less well-educated workforce and an industrial sector that relies more on cheap labour than on capital intensive technology.

The creation of the modern social welfare state caused considerable tension between Ottawa and the provinces, and Quebec’s traditional Francophone political and intellectual elites opposed the principle of a social service state, especially one designed and controlled by the Anglophone majority in Ottawa. A new generation of Francophone middle-class politicians and intellectuals in the 1950s, however, advocated and eventually put in place a social service state in Quebec. An expanded and modernized Quebec gained control over Ottawa’s grants for postsecondary education and most social service and health programs. It established its own parallel pension plan in 1964, which it administers and uses to fund state programs in virtually every sector of the economy.

Education

Quebec’s evolving educational system reflects the increasingly complex nature of its society. Originally organized along denominational lines, primary and secondary schools were funded and administered by the Roman Catholic and Protestant Committees of the Council of Public Instruction. The Ministry of Education was abolished in 1875 because the Roman Catholic Church feared that politicians would use it to intervene in education, a jurisdiction which church leaders considered their own. However, because the English-speaking Protestant community dominated Montreal’s economy, Protestant schools received ample revenues and provided a full range of primary and secondary educational facilities. Roman Catholic school boards received less per capita funding and were forced to rely heavily on religious personnel and facilities to meet the needs of their students. In 1943, following a half century of delay, a Liberal Quebec government implemented a public system of free and compulsory primary education for children between the ages of 6 and 16, a reform that raised school attendance in the province to the national level within a decade.

Major reforms, based on the recommendations of the 1964 Royal Commission Report on Education, involved the reestablishment of the Ministry of Education and the creation of a comprehensive system of publicly funded and administered primary and secondary Roman Catholic schools. The Quebec government also chose to partially subsidize some 300 private schools for French-speaking students. Enrollment in the new system of French-language regional high schools expanded dramatically, often exceeding the availability of facilities and teachers. By the 1970s enrollment in postsecondary education was growing rapidly. Quebec’s political leaders soon realized that the attainment of higher levels of education by Francophones would give them the opportunity to overcome their inferior economic status, thereby providing the basis for the renewal of their language and culture. Education became a battleground for the survival of Québécois culture and the French language.

The precipitous decline in the birth rate among Francophones meant that the community would have to find ways to integrate immigrants into its midst. Prior to the 1970s, the vast majority of Jewish, Italian, and other immigrant parents opted to send their children to the English-language schools so as to enhance their job opportunities. As a result, in Montreal, for example, almost all immigrants and their children eventually integrated into the English-speaking community. In response to this development, the government adopted language laws in the 1970s that streamed children of immigrants into French-language schools. (By the late 1980s, it also required all external commercial signs to be in French.) Thanks to the Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 101, both immigrant and Anglophone children and many of their parents have acquired a working knowledge of the French language; however, for cultural and social reasons, they and their families have not fully integrated into the Québécois society. Yet, marriage rates between Anglophones, Allophones, and Francophones throughout Greater Montreal are on the rise and promise, over time, to accentuate the integration of these communities. Moreover, in the hope of extending their job prospects throughout North America, most bilingual or multilingual immigrant children chose to pursue postsecondary education in English.

In 1998, following three decades of debate, the Quebec and Canadian governments passed a bilateral constitutional amendment abolishing the requirement for denominational schools in Quebec, a vestige of the church’s prominent role in the province’s government. Quebec’s primary and secondary schools are now structured entirely along linguistic lines, with the vast majority of students enrolled in French-speaking schools. Only a rapidly diminishing number of Anglophone children have a constitutional right to education in English. At the turn of the 21st century, an increasing number of Anglophone children were attending French-language-immersion schools to enhance their job prospects both inside and outside Quebec.

High school graduates may attend either a French- or English-language college of general and vocational education (college d’enseignement general et professionnel; CEGEP) in pursuit of a professional diploma or as a stepping-stone to a university. McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal and Bishop’s University in Lennoxville are publicly funded, autonomous English-language institutions. Publicly funded French-speaking universities in the province include the Universities of Montreal, Laval, and Sherbrooke. The University of Quebec, the only state-administered French-language university in Canada, has numerous campuses. These institutions attract students from every region of Canada as well as students from all over the world. Professors receive substantial grants from both the Quebec and Canadian governments to pursue research in the sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences.