> Montreal is an Anglophone city. Last I checked 80% were English speakers
Would you be able to provide a source for that?
Even during it's Anglo heydays (pre-referenda), I don't think it was that high.
It is true that Montreal is highly Anglophone in the tech sector, but outside of enclaves like downtown, the west Island and a few neighborhoods like TMR and Ville St Laurent, Montreal is not very Anglophone at all.
>Unfortunately, I suspect that the renewed separatist movement is making a lot of people rethink potential futures in Quebec.
How about those Curfews and other insane covid responses?
>But looking at law 66, there's a certain cruelty to the details. As I understand it, new arrivals will be forbidden from receiving any government services in a language other than French after 6 months. Montreal's respected English-speaking universities will apparently be placed under strict language rules, with the obvious intention of weakening them. And there's talk, once again, about separation from Canada.
So lets say I go to Northsec in Montreal, awesome experience. Since I cannot prove I went to an english school. I would only be served in french if I ended up in hospital. Parles pas francais.
So what? I just die in the hospital? I've been to a quebec hospital before. I waited 16 hours in the waiting room because I didnt speak french.
Obviously I'm not going to Montreal anymore. Northsec is awesome but guess not anymore.
>An independent Québec without Canadian human rights guarantees, and with ever more desperate extensions to law 66, would likely weaken the robust international economy of Montreal. I suspect that even some bilingual professionals would start thinking about moving to Toronto?
What you are seeing as a negative the quebec separatists see as a positive.
>You might as well say that quebecoi [sic] don't want to learn the language of the rest of the country.
"Between 2006 and 2011, the number of persons who reported that they were able to conduct a conversation in both of Canada's official languages increased by 350,000 to 5.8 million. The English-French bilingualism rate within the overall population went from 17.4% to 17.5%."
"The growth of English-French bilingualism in Canada was mainly due to the increased number of Quebecers reporting that they were able to conduct a conversation in French and English. Quebec accounted for 90% of the net increase in the number of bilingual persons between 2006 and 2011. In fact, 71% of the net increase in English-French bilingualism in Canada is attributable to the population with French as a mother tongue in Quebec, in particular to the population aged 15 to 49."
"In Quebec, the English-French bilingualism rate increased from 40.6% in 2006 to 42.6% in 2011. In the other provinces, bilingualism declined slightly. The largest decreases were recorded in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia, where in each case, the bilingualism rate decreased by half a percentage point."
It was an exhibition on the top floor of the tallest building in the city. It was comparing Montreal to Quebec City trying to draw more people and business to Quebec City. One of the "selling" points was a statistic saying that:
1. Montreal has about 50/50 French/English split whereas in Quebec City it's something like 98/2 French/English. Yes, that was presented as an advantage.
2. There was a graph showing how the city is becoming more and more French-speaking over time. Again, proudly presenting that fact as a selling point.
I never said they are openly hostile but by hindering any English business and opressive language laws they drove whole communities of English speakers away. That's a fact.
> As to whether it's the standard Canadian culture, I'd say from personal experience and what I've seen with friends/family it is more common in the crown corps and tech oligopolies (i.e., Bell, Telus). So when you say Top 5, I'm not surprised the manager did this and got away with it.
I'm not sure I would label a state company or a telecom operator a "top" tech company. At least, here in the Valley it wouldn't get that label.
> That, and I know I'll be accused of Québec bashing, but when a company in Montreal is franco-dominated, there is a tendency to be, let's call it nepotistic, so that a member of the "family" calls the shots for the "outsiders", regardless of ability, understanding or basic competence. It's not always been my experience and the top companies don't do it but, it definitely happens more than it should.
We acquired a small company in Montreal a few years ago, and it's something the founders touched-on: they placed much a larger emphasis on French language skills when hiring than we initially assumed they would. In retrospect, the decision made sense; the founders and early employees were all native French speakers, so all the internal communications were in French. Ultimately it didn't matter in the long run: most of the key employees relocated to the Bay Area.
Post-acquisition we had to let go an employee for a weird attitude problem regarding language. One of the frequent arguments he had with everyone was that he insisted he didn't need to learn French to live in Montreal and was somehow hostile to the language. I honestly questioned why he immigrated there in the first place when there's 50 states and 9 other provinces he could go to and live exclusively in English? I get he probably couldn't pass the higher bar for US immigration but that still leaves 2/3rd of Canada to go to.
> Especially those doing work for the provincial government or directly with schools/healthcare facilities.
My understanding is that these contracts often have a clause that deliverables must be shipped in French. Especially for stuff that's customer-facing (like education or healthcare!).
Someone told me that, when dealing with the federal government for contracts, speaking French helps a lot. Since it's so much harder to offshore positions where French is required, you almost always get to speak with a real government employee and not a contractor. On a project he worked on only the manager 2 levels up was an actual government employee, because it was legally required for the contact point with contractors to be bilingual. Needless to say, he used his high school French to bypass two levels of IST time zoned "Project Solution Architect" and "Senior Project Analysts"...
> Breaking from Canada to underline these minor differences would come at a tremendous cost.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the renewed separatist movement is making a lot of people rethink potential futures in Quebec.
For example, my wife and I would easily meet the requirements to immigrate to Quebec. We have francophone family in Montreal, we speak French (one of us natively), and we have valuable professional skills. We would have no objections to sending our kids to francophone schools. And Montreal is one of my favorite cities on the planet, despite the horrible traffic and interminable road construction.
But looking at law 66, there's a certain cruelty to the details. As I understand it, new arrivals will be forbidden from receiving any government services in a language other than French after 6 months. Montreal's respected English-speaking universities will apparently be placed under strict language rules, with the obvious intention of weakening them. And there's talk, once again, about separation from Canada.
An independent Québec without Canadian human rights guarantees, and with ever more desperate extensions to law 66, would likely weaken the robust international economy of Montreal. I suspect that even some bilingual professionals would start thinking about moving to Toronto?
Citation needed? I'll concede that I haven't lived there so I could be wrong, but I've been to Quebec city twice, including once with people who spoke no French at all, and never felt any hostility. Again, I'm not disputing that it could be different for the local Anglo minority, but I'd need to see some sources before I believe that you're not exaggerating.
I lived in Montreal for 4 years in the early 2000s and although I had no trouble with day-to-day living, I felt that social life as an English speaker was limiting. I enjoyed the cultural and restaurant scenes (Mtl Jazz Festival, Just For Laughs), but meeting like-minded people was hard.
And although it's possible to get used to, there are tiny frictions everywhere -- e.g. signage is generally not bilingual (you learn how to guess from context and from the Latin roots of words). This is not a big deal in real life because there's usually small print in English available separately as printed materials. That said, most cities in Europe, South America and Asia (the ones I’ve visited) have far more bilingual public signage than Montreal.
Not everyone is bilingual (only downtown and certain suburbs like NDG/West Island) so exchanging little pleasantries becomes more difficult, and there's always a guessing game going on as to whether someone looks like Anglophone or Francophone, even just east of St Urbain in downtown MTL. STCUM announcements are French-only so if there's an emergency on the tracks or a train schedule change, you have to ask around to see if someone can translate.
The tech scene was very underdeveloped when I was there. Big events/conferences/exhibitions were always happening elsewhere, e.g. Toronto, even Vancouver, but no one was coming to Montreal -- the biggest conference I remember was the grassroots Perl's YAPC. (although PyCon would eventually come to be hosted there in 2014-2015). Things are different now with the existence of many more startups, but the ecosystem is still much smaller than in many cities in English Canada.
You also have to understand that English-language culture in Montreal is an afterthought due the English-language market being smaller -- most big international productions (say musicals/concerts/talks... in fact, almost anything) will often skip over Montreal but will have a show in Toronto, and even smaller cities like Ottawa. I felt I was constantly missing out on stuff that was happening in the U.S. and ROC (rest of Canada).
I could've tried to learn more French, and though it would have eased things significantly, I suspect I would still have not been able to sufficiently integrate into society -- there truly are two solitudes (as Hugh Maclennan once put it) in Quebec society.
There's also a certain feeling you get in Montreal: it's a little bohemian (so a little gritty in parts) and eschews change (lacks a forward momentum and go-getter spirit in terms of embracing new things -- infrastructure is not as well kept up as in other Canadian cities, heritage building laws are very strict which is good, but it also means new developments are very restricted). I went back to visit a little more than a year ago, and nothing has changed.
I don't mean dissuade anyone from considering Montreal -- everybody wants different things in life -- but just wanted to provide a data point from someone who tried to live there unhappily. YMMV.
> The rest of Canada bends over backwards to offer services in French which are seldom utilized.
Citation needed. Federal government offers services in French almost everywhere, as it offers services in English even in areas where almost no one speaks it.
But provincial services? There's just nothing. Ontario struggles to keep higher education and health services in French, and this is the province with the highest number of French speakers outside Quebec. There is a party in New Brunswick explicitly against providing services in French and they got 13% of the vote in the last election (reminder, New Brunswick is the only province to be officially bilingual).
So I am highly skeptical of your stance about the rest of Canada "bending over backward" to offer services in French...
"As for talented potential employees… that’s tougher"
No kidding. What Montreal has going is pretty impressive, but Quebec has an abnormally high personal income tax rate and the language issue is always going to hang like a cloud over it. I know everyone in Montreal speaks english, but the default is French and all public signs are too. While some Canadians will put up with that because our country is founded on playing lip service to bi-lingualism, I can see it as a massive barrier to importing American talent in.
Would you be able to provide a source for that?
Even during it's Anglo heydays (pre-referenda), I don't think it was that high.
It is true that Montreal is highly Anglophone in the tech sector, but outside of enclaves like downtown, the west Island and a few neighborhoods like TMR and Ville St Laurent, Montreal is not very Anglophone at all.
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