Lack of French service “costs $1B annually”
The Journal cites a study that claims that failing to provide service in French is costing Montreal merchants more than a billion dollars a year.
I simply can’t believe this. Who can get hired for a public‑facing job if they can’t speak French?
Maclean’s has a current piece about the CAQ and language.
Blork 21:47 on 2024-03-22 Permalink
OMG. The article begins with “Les commerçants montréalais pourraient profiter d’un potentiel de ventes supplémentaires de 1,1 milliard de dollars chaque année s’ils récupéraient les clients qui évitent de magasiner dans la métropole à cause du manque de service en français.” But it provides zero evidence that this lack of service in French exists. What does exist is a PERCEPTION that there is a lack of service in French, and that perception comes from bullshit articles like this.
Notably not asked: how much would these merchants lose if they were to be openly hostile to English speakers? I suspect it wouldn’t just be local Anglos who would be perturbed (at the hostility; not the lack of English). All those visitors (tourists, business travellers, family visitors, etc.) might find themselves shopping less too.
Kevin 00:10 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
30% of customers don’t go to places where they are afraid they might not be able to speak French.
One of my former colleagues once said “Je suis content de jaser en français but my money speaks English.”
As I’ve said before, Parizeau should have gone to a therapist, not a dentist.
Kate 10:34 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
The Gazette echoes Kevin’s statement: “Thirty per cent of francophone respondents […] say they avoid certain Montreal boroughs because they expect to be unable to get service in French.” But that doesn’t mean they can’t! This story seems to be a structure based on preconceptions.
Even if I were hiring for a store in Westmount or Beaconsfield I’d damn well make sure the hire could manage in French, even if it wasn’t their first language. Wouldn’t anyone?
Daniel 11:52 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
What I don’t understand: “L’étude a été menée du 9 au 21 mai 2023 auprès de 3012 répondants anglophones et francophones”… And they spoke to anglophones why exactly?
MarcG 11:52 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
It could be that businesses currently can’t even be so picky as to demand bilingualism, so it wouldn’t surprise me to get served by unilingual Anglo at a gas station in Beaconsfield, but yeah this “study” sounds bogus.
Nicholas 11:58 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
So what they’re saying is if all businesses had adequate French, then areas around Montreal, particularly places that voted CAQ and that the Journal writes for, would lose $1.1 billion in business? Is that…their goal?
Kate 15:25 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
I think that what they’d like to be able to do is enforce French only in all retail settings. You can’t really frame a law that would actively ban other languages, and it would be impossible to police anyway, but you can claim that if everyone agreed to speak French – and only French – then francophones would feel “safe” everywhere in expecting to be served in French only, everywhere in town, and we’d all make an extra billion dollars and be happy.
But it’s a fact everywhere on the planet that someone serving in a shop or restaurant will naturally switch to the language of the customer if they can. In addition, you can’t claim to be promoting tourism if you insist that a salesperson on Ste‑Catherine Street should only speak in French to visitors from elsewhere in North America and others. But this study is going to be used to support that kind of idea, just watch.
Blork 18:26 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
Folks, the study says nothing about the ability or inability to receive service in French. Nothing.
The study is about people’s PERCEPTIONS that in some neighborhoods they won’t receive service in French. It’s about what people THINK, not about what really happens.
The Gazette puts it this way: “Thirty per cent of francophone respondents in a Léger and Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton poll released Friday say they avoid certain Montreal boroughs — such as Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce — because they expect to be unable to get service in French.”
EXPECT is the operative word. What they EXPECT, not what they actually get.
And bear in mind that the poll was done for Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, which is an accounting firm. The whole point is that from an accounting point of view, some businesses are losing money because of consumers’ expectations.
(That said, there are likely family run businesses in CDN and NDG that are run by recent immigrants and primarily serve the South Asian or Latino communities, and if the kids manning the till are recent immigrants then maybe they don’t speak perfect French yet. It happens. You can’t compare downtown shops to shops in highly immigrant neighborhoods in terms of expectations for employees.)
You can download a PDF of the study here: https://asdcm.com/upload/ressources/ASDCM-Etude-sur-limpact-socioeconomique-du-commerce-en-francais-a-Montreal-RAPPORT-FINAL.pdf
Kevin 23:39 on 2024-03-23 Permalink
Like Blork said, this is a survey of perception, not reality.
We’d be in a better world if people went into therapy instead of politics or commentating…
Uatu 10:17 on 2024-03-24 Permalink
This JDM article deserves its proper place: lining the bottom of a birdcage.
qatzelok 12:16 on 2024-03-24 Permalink
@ Blork: “Folks, the study says nothing about the ability or inability to receive service in French. Nothing.
The study is about people’s PERCEPTIONS that in some neighborhoods they won’t receive service in French. It’s about what people THINK, not about what really happens.”
Yes, but a lot of our behavior is determined by perceptions. And if francophones have the perception that they will be asked to speak English at shops in the Eaton Center, they will go to the Dix3o instead.
As someone who lives and shops downtown, this perception is correct. A lot of service-industry workers at the malls downtown don’t speak French, and even go so far as to insist that customers speak to them (the service workers) in English. If I have experienced this, so have many francophones.
Tee Owe 14:37 on 2024-03-24 Permalink
Kind of with qatzelok on this – we don’t live in Montreal (used to), visited last summer, we were struck by how much English there was downtown – ok, we speak English to each other so maybe shop assistants picked up on that, but I have to say, it felt more ‘English’ than before. Our perception.
Kate 15:31 on 2024-03-24 Permalink
qatzelok, have you complained to management or to the OQLF about this? Jean‑François Roberge says you should.
Tee Owe, do you think I should insist on being served in French?
Tee Owe 17:16 on 2024-03-24 Permalink
No, not that, just that the ‘perception’ of english was more than we had experienced before – not that we were pushed to use english, opposite, our (lousy) french was well-received when used – so I am not entirely with quatzelok, but he is making a valid point
Kevin 09:57 on 2024-03-25 Permalink
As someone who is frequently downtown, my perception is that the perception of francophones is highly influenced by the phenomenon of Confirmation Bias.
azrhey 12:25 on 2024-03-25 Permalink
The availability of French speaking staff downtown has really gone down in the last 5-10 years. I don’t care either way but when I shop around with my dad, who doesn’t speak English at all, I find it tiresome. I, nor he, mind being approached in English but the number who staff that cannot understand when dad speakings in French has really gone through the roof is a lot of places and some fast food. With the problems of actually finding ANY staff to work on this stores these days we don;t complain much about it, but it used to be that nearly everyone woudl swtich to French when needed, even if broken french, but these days I’d say 90% of staff will speak english to us ( which we do not mind ) and of those a good 30-40% are unable to switch to French when asked. ( which bothers me when I’m with dad ).
Kate 19:23 on 2024-03-25 Permalink
OK, I believe it, even though I still can’t quite credit that people can get hired here for public‑facing jobs if they can’t speak or understand French.
Ian 08:21 on 2024-03-28 Permalink
Yeah I’m with Kevin on this.
According to my personal experience over the last year about half the people in Montreal speak Yiddish as their first language, and of those, roughly 6 out of every 8 are children.
Could that just be my neighbourhood and my own interactions leading me to false overgeneralizations? Of course not, my experience is obviously universal.
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