Fined into bankruptcy: the small Montreal college at the forefront of the language battle

A student enters LaSalle College in Montreal, on Monday, August 25, 2025. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal GazetteArticle contentFor a panicked few days in early September, it looked like LaSalle College in downtown Montreal was going to close for good, forced into bankruptcy by the Quebec government for temporarily teaching too many students in English.

It was politically unusual. In the middle of any other provincial election, campaigning political parties would likely rally to support an institute of higher education that was dying, even indirectly, because of government punishment.

But Quebec, which goes to the polls Oct. 5, is determinedly unique.

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In 2022, Quebec strengthened the province’s language charter to make French the sole language for communication between the government and citizens, and what the province calls “a common denominator in the public sphere.”

For private Montreal colleges like LaSalle, and smaller ones like Marionopolis, it required their graduating students to have at least three courses taught in French, excluding courses in French language instruction. It also put a strict quota on the number of students taking courses in English, to keep that under a set proportion of all college students, specified in law and varying in different cases between 11.7 per cent and 18.7 per cent.

But it offered no transition period before financial penalties would be imposed on violators. And it allowed no adjustment based on an unanticipated pandemic relief education program that artificially boosted the number of students in the short term retraining and skills development programs that lead to “Attestation of College Studies,” a lesser degree than a full diploma.

This led to what LaSalle calls a temporary, two-year “administrative imbalance,” now resolved, by which it exceeded the 2023-24 quota by 716 students, and the next year’s by 1,066. In response, the government levied far more in fines than LaSalle could afford to pay, and with the academic year about to start, the bill was due.