I believe not. In fact that’s a part of the Bill 96 concern. In Montreal there are two main hospitals - an English “superhospital” (resulting from a big amalgamation effort) and a French counterpart. There is also the Jewish General which I believe is exempt the language laws but I honestly don’t know for sure.
And this is the thing - in Montreal you can probably get along fine in either language regardless of where you are and most people will appreciate each others’ efforts, to the extent that under-40 people will often speak an interesting “Franglais” hybrid mix of both languages to each other. And the tragedy is that the provincial government would just love to kill that.
In my (non-Canadian) experience, I do not think working there permanently would be tenable without a command of the local language, for several reasons. However, if someone was visiting, even for several months, what do you think happened? Everyone did their best to make them feel welcome, include them in conversations by speaking English and/or translating if necessary, help them take care of things like renting a room, and so on. It was no big deal. There was no “language policing” that I saw.
Sure; it certainly depends how much “free” time you have. A Goethe-Institut intensive language course is 4 hours per day for 2–3 weeks, and let’s say you need 4 of them to achieve a certain level of functionality: that makes 320 hours of lessons. (And a non-intensive course means those hours will merely be spread out more.)
The thing is, this has changed over the decades. When I lived in Montreal in the 70s, it was perfectly possible to live a complete life there speaking only English. Absolutely every service was easily available in both languages. In some parts of the city, in fact, it would be harder to obtain services in French than in English. For my family, which immigrated to Montreal in the 50s, this had been the norm.
One other aspect that shows how confusing the language situation is in Quebec: One of the most prestigious universities in Canada, if not the world, is McGill University, located in downtown Montreal. Classes there are (mostly) in English.
In some ways yes and in others no. All criminal law is federal; most civil law in provincial. Although it is a federal law that all provinces have a medicare system it is up to the provinces to administer them, subject to certain minimum standards.
Actually this is completely dependent on the workplace and/or industry. I was told by a professional French language instructor who told me that I was at a strong intermediate level in French. Having said that, in my workplace it is functionally possible to work here without knowing a word of French. We have workers from all over the world who know no French and for whom English is their second (or third or fourth or whatever) language.
As I’ve mentioned upthread, almost all of our work is in English. But, as I also mentioned, I would never be able to work in retail or a restaurant with my level of French, and I’m fine with that.
Interestingly, a few hours ago I was picking up some pizzas from a local joint and, at a table near the cash, were three young women doing the Franglais thing and, as I described, it was impossible to tell who’s first language was French and who’s was English. This is something I also see at work. IMHO this is a really good thing.
I was thinking partly of administrative tasks, like having to write reports and evaluations in French; it’s not just filling in forms. Also giving presentations and lectures in French, or teaching classes. Maybe a “strong intermediate level” may be enough, and it would obviously improve over time, but I do not think you would be able to do it “without knowing a word of French”. I am talking about permanent or long-term employment, not a guest. Also, my experiences are in places like France, Germany, and Italy and may not apply to Canada or Belgium or Ireland. [ETA the USA, too, I think would be hard to work in professionally not knowing at least English!]
Certainly it depends on the workplace and/or industry, whether it is a private multinational or the state, etc. At some point, you may apply for citizenship, too; the interview would be awkward if you could not speak the language!
I’m not trying to convince you of some hypothetical situation; I’m describing the reality of large aviation and engineering companies that happen to be in Montreal.
There are lifers in my company who are longer term unilingual English speakers, imports from the US, Australia, and India, who will probably never need to speak French. And presentations? I give tons of them and write tons of technical documentation, all in English, because though some of my audience may be French speaking Montrealers, the end destination for the information and documents will be English speakers somewhere in the world. Despite this, however, the President and most VPs and directors are Francos, which demonstrates the undoing of the very unfair situation that existed until the 1960s.
You can probably find small convenience stores (depanneurs) and other small businesses squirreled away in different places where they somehow get away without having any French speakers present.
Well, FWIW, mumble-mumble years ago I ended up going to Tokyo to study a Ph.D. in robotics without speaking a word of Japanese (long story). When I arrived they put me in a 6-month intensive immersion course in Japanese (beginning from zero)… and immediately afterwards they dropped me into the Ph.D. classes and environment.
It was… … … intense. However, I must say that after those 6 months were over I ended up being able to do quite a bit more than ordering a big mac. And I can say that Japanese is quite harder than French (which I also speak).
I can agree with Dr. Drake that six months is not an unreasonable deadline to achieve basic functionality in a language if you really put yourself up to it.
Six months may not be an unreasonable time to achieve basic functionality in a language. What is completely unreasonable, however, is refusing public services to someone who fails to do so. What makes it particularly galling is that the rest of Canada has deferred to the French minority, which is overwhelmingly only in Quebec, by making the entire country officially bilingual, and guaranteeing all government services in both French and English. Ironically, Quebec itself has gone the other way, and increasingly become zealously unilingual and discriminating against the basic civil rights of its own English minority.
As for higher education, I don’t know how this legislation will affect McGill University, but McGill is an old established world-class university that attracts first-rate graduate students and scholars from all over the world. If it’s forced into a francophone transformation for stupid and discriminatory ideological reasons, that will be the end of it and I foresee a mass exodus of its most prominent scholars, much like the exodus of businesses and talent that has been abandoning Quebec for decades now. These zealots are nuttier than a fruitcake, and the treatment of the English minority is beginning to resemble the plight of Blacks in the Old South.
I actually know of a prof/instructor at one of Montreal’s colleges and he is an Anglo who loves teaching but, because of the new law’s three French course requirement, he expects to lose his job soon as he is not sufficiently bilingual to teach in French. He now plans on leaving Quebec.
And regarding the six month thing for immigrants, nobody should be fooled into thinking that there is a genuine desire to help people learn French. Anyone who has spent enough time in this province over the last decade knows that the intent is to drive out non “pur laine”.
You mean “pure laine” But that is interesting—you mean the whole language thing is a pretext for racism? Maybe there are parallels with the violent language riots in Louvain in the 1960s, which were accompanied by explicit racist slogans like “Walen Buiten” and took place over a deeper conflict than merely over language
Why shouldn’t the Académie Française coin new words? That kind of stuff is literally their job. Maybe someone actually wants to know how to say “big data” in French… Everyone can then completely ignore their suggestions, or not.
Many would say that and I would say that it is an actual possibility, combined with Bill 21, a law against religious symbolism (but is heavily focused on Muslims) in the provincial civil service. IMHO there really is a significant difference between the mindset of Montreal and the rest of the province.
I mostly agree with this. I consider that it’s quite acceptable to have laws in place to preserve and promote the use of French. But law #96 is a poorly-thought-out electoralist tool that contains some offensive aspects that seem to be designed only to inconvenience people rather than address larger issues.
This is from the same party which gave us Law #21 (the one banning religious displays by government employees) and which claims that a highway tunnel to expand the suburbs fits into its “green policy” because it includes reserved mass transit lanes – oh, never mind, we just deleted those. The only experts these people bother to consult are pollsters, and they have no concept of social consequences. However, their overall management of the pandemic wasn’t that bad, given the state of the health care system : there was certainly lots of incompetence at various levels, and many deaths that could have been prevented, but no deliberate suppression of statistics, and the public health experts did have significant weight. But the emergency has also been a convenient way to suspend parliamentary debates for two years.
I’m surprised nobody responded to this one. It’s complicated. The federal government, Crown corporations and the province of New Brunswick are officially bilingual. Products offered for sale in Canada are supposed to have bilingual labeling, but it’s hit-and-miss, especially on Amazon. Canada-wide companies, such as banks, retail chains or cell phone providers, offer services and documents and websites in both languages (or more) if they want to get any business from French speakers; but there’s no requirement to do so (except if they have actual physical shops in Québec), and no guarantee you’ll find someone to help you in French in a Wal-Mart in Toronto or Edmonton, or in English at a Best Buy in Saguenay.
The changes that law #96 makes to the 1867 Constitution seem to have been carefully worded to fit section 45 of the 1982 Constitution concerning amendments, without triggering sections 41 or 43.
Amendments by provincial legislatures
45 Subject to section 41, the legislature of each province may exclusively make laws amending the constitution of the province.
Please read this article and search for the word “notwithstanding”. Note that I disagree with its indiscriminate use in this particular case.
I believe your point is that my claim that the “notwithstanding” clause was introduced at the sole behest of Quebec is false. I agree, and I stand corrected. But the fact remains that in the use of this clause, just as with virtually all other conflicts with the federal government, Quebec is the perennial problem child. Quebec is the one always wanting – and getting – federal aid and federal projects, but never acceding to federal compliance. Quebec is the only province to have introduced and enacted bills using the “notwithstanding” clause no less than four times (the fourth and current one, the subject of this thread, is technically still not enacted, but will be). Saskatchewan and Ontario have used it in enacted legislation only once each, and each over relatively minor matters, not hugely intrusive and discriminatory questions of what language you’re “allowed” to speak.
I don’t either, but they will not change the fact that classes are taught in English. And it violates current law (though it is never enforced) for me to go into the department and speak anything but French to the office staff or even my colleagues. Many of whom really cannot communicate in French very well.
I am not clear on whether the notwithstanding clause can be used to ignore basic constitutional rights (like bilingulaism, unreasonable search and seizure) or only those specifically enumerated in the mis-called Bill of Rights. I strongly suspect that when this is fought to the Supreme Court, they will rule that it cannot be used for basic rights.
Someone suggested above that the notwithstanding clause has been used only a few times in Quebec. Not so. When Jacques Parizeau was premier he added it to every bill that went through the National Assembly, even though most of them had nothing to do with rights. He did it, I assume, so that its use would become normalized. The clause wasn’t inserted there at Quebec’s insistence (there was no conceivable way The Parti Quebec government would ever sign the new constitution) but for some other province. Manitoba, IIRC.
