Quebec’s language police published a report last week that gasp people are speaking English on the job in La Belle Province.
The Office of the French Language released the 75-page document, which they commissioned from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, on Aug. 11 and it immediately drew the attention of . . .
perpetually aggrieved linguistic hall monitors everywhere.
The scariest number trotted out by this chattering commentariate was that 63 per cent of businesses in the province’s Anglophone hotbed of Montreal made competency in English a “requirement or asset” for job applicants. That number drops to 32.2 per cent outside of the city for an average of just under 40 per cent across the province.
“Better to speak English to find work” screeched the headline in Le Devoir. The Parti Quebecois’ interim leader Pascal Bérubé said that Quebecers who spoke French were at risk of finding themselves strangers in their own nation. The CAQ government’s dead-eyed language czar, Simon Jolin-Barrette, said he was “very preoccupied” with the findings and added that it wasn’t “normal that a worker can’t work in French in Quebec.”
This hullabaloo stems from a collective delusion that seems to be pervasive among certain sections of this province, namely that simply by enshrining French as the official language of the “nation” of Quebec, Quebecers will never have to learn any English if they choose not to. Maybe it’s because this region is so bilingual or that the majority of decision-making in this province takes place in staunchly Francophone areas, but most Pontiacers will recognize this line of thinking as laughably childish.
This province has never existed in a bubble. Like it or not, it’s part of a continent where the overwhelming majority of people speak English or use it as the language of business. If you don’t want to learn English in Quebec you don’t have to, that is your right. But don’t turn around and blame the rest of the world because you’ve chosen to shoot yourself in the foot.
Bill 101, Quebec’s language charter already prevents businesses from requiring proficiency in any language other than French unless it is necessary to accomplish the tasks of the job. In border regions like ours or cosmopolitan centres like Montreal, that covers pretty much every public-facing job. It might come as a shock to Quebec City’s intelligentsia, but businesses want the dollars of English-speaking Quebeckers and tourists. It should also be pointed out that making English an “asset” on a job application doesn’t necessarily make it a deal breaker, just a skillset that the employer hopes to gain.
On top of the obvious benefits of bilingualism, the results of this report are actually not as shocking as these fear-mongers would have the public believe. As Don Macpherson pointed out in the Montreal Gazette, these findings are a snapshot in time and there is no historical data to compare them to. Are the numbers rising, falling or staying the same? No one has any idea.
The results also don’t provide an accurate picture of all job postings, as the report’s authors simply asked businesses about the last opening that they had filled. Not exactly a thorough assessment, but nonetheless, it had people frothing at the mouth.
In addition, Macpherson delved into the numbers of Francophones that have lost opportunities due to a lack of proficiency in English:
“The report says 34 per cent of businesses sought and evaluated language skills on the part of job candidates, and of those businesses, 26 per cent rejected a candidacy for a lack of English. That works out to only 9 per cent of all businesses. Among municipal bodies, the corresponding proportion is less than half of 1 per cent.”
What is it that has people so riled up? What terrible truth has this report uncovered? It’s almost as if these pundits and politicians have made their careers by stoking bigotry and selling fairy-tales to their nationalist base.
The CAQ in particular campaigned on promises of curtailing immigration and strengthening language laws, which resulted in an overwhelming majority mandate. This report provides a veneer of “evidence” that will justify whatever discriminatory legislation they dream up in response.
Politicians will always need a bogeyman and unfortunately, we English Quebecers have been thrust into the role yet again.
Caleb Nickerson
