English, future working language?
The Journal really loves throwing fuel on this fire. Here’s L’anglais, future langue du travail à Montréal ? which ignores actual facts, like that more people are working here in French than at any time in the 20th century, but certainly will cause some sputtering over Sunday brunch.
Marc R 22:31 on 2022-12-04 Permalink
In my experience English is the de facto language of work in companies whose products are software and services and whose clients are businesses (as opposed to individuals). There is no meaningful barrier to delivering software or services to clients based elsewhere in North America, and those fields are dependent on communication skills; where your client is anglophone, those communication skills are necessarily utilized in English. Folks whose communication skills are highly developed in English are mostly (but not exclusively) folks who speak English at home and who grew up speaking English. There’s a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating dynamic here.
At the same time, what percentage of Montreal business depends on B2B SaaS or management consulting sales? I suppose you could group tourism in here too (as it also depends on English-language communication skills) but there’s a whole world of industry where that skill is not a critical success factor. You could equally read this article as a lament that Montreal’s industry is declining– if my Montreal business is manufacturing (say) Tylenol it doesn’t matter if my employees speak no English, but if my business is implementing (say) Salesforce for PMEs in the ROC or US I need folks who can talk to clients in English (and/or are sufficiently bilingual to translate to devs whose first language is neither English or French).
Certainly if you want to scale your software company you need your sales team to speak English, your implementation team to speak at least English, and your devs to understand client documentation in English.
I get that this comment is a big complicated mess, but so is this Journal article…
shawn 12:28 on 2022-12-05 Permalink
Also a Radio-Canada article today about a marked in increase in francophone African student visas. If what this is really about is the strengthening of the French language, presumably they’ll be welcomed with open arms by the Quebec nationalist base? I certainly hope that’s the case. We’ll see.
Joey 15:10 on 2022-12-05 Permalink
If you’re producing Tylenol, you probably need English speakers on your procurement/manufacturing side in order to order the necessary ingredients that are only produced in other countries… Basically, if you want to do any kind of business beyond the strict Quebec borders, you need some English-speaking capacity. I am sure Francois Legault spoke lots of English when he ran Air Transat.
Meezly 17:37 on 2022-12-05 Permalink
What a narrow-minded, fear-mongering article that refuses to look at the big picture. The author compared Montreal with Quebec city in terms of immigration and language, and if I’m reading between the lines correctly, is postulating that there are too many English-speaking immigrants that are diluting the francophones of French ancestry cuz how can we explain that the increase in English as a working language is not observed in Quebec City??
Um, maybe if you used some basic observation skills, he’d know that Montreal is the province’s financial and business epicentre, while Quebec City is not? Quebec City may be able to operate in an island of francophones but there are still many international companies with hq’s or branches in Montreal, y’know who employ people, inject $$ into the local economny, etc.
Montreal also has two large English universities that draw tons of international students, a good portion which end up staying in Montreal after they graduate, esp. as Marc R pointed out, in the tech industry. Quite a few talented Concordia computer science graduates work or worked at my Montreal-based US-owned software company.
It really makes me wonder how bad the talent pool/brain-drain could be if the Legault and the QC media keeps up its anti-English rhetoric.
From my own experience, when a long-term developer in my software team left, we had to search far and wide for a suitable replacement, as his field of expertise was very specialized. We finally lucked out and found one, a recent immigrant who studied his specialized field overseas in his home country and did his masters in Concordia. He was pretty psyched to find a job that would utilize his skills, and he and his wife had even bought a house, planning to settle here long-term.
But Bill 95 may change all that, as his wife teaches at Dawson college. If her job is cut because of Bill 95, they’re gonna have to move to Ontario, cuz really, this guy can work anywhere and we’re hoping that he’ll still want to work for us remotely, if it came to that. It’d really suck if he decided to find a job in ON.