During the presentation of the Mercuriades awards from the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Quebec, one thing struck me: several of the nominated companies had numerous clients outside Quebec, in the rest of Canada, in the United States, in Europe, in Asia.
Thus, we learn that “most customers [de Crakmedia, experte en marketing Web] are in North America and Europe. » For its part, the company Direct Impact, specialist in the creation of tailor-made software, is “established in English Canada, the United States and France [et] leads an expansion in Italy. Finally, Michel Corriveau, researcher at MPB Communications, a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, confides that “our market is very international. Our latest customers, for example, were in Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Mexico, India and the Middle East.”
Quebec businesses, even small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), now have the world as their market. This fact, too often ignored, allows us to put the most recent data on the language of work in Quebec into perspective. According to the Office québécois de la langue française, from 2010 to 2023, the proportion of Quebecers using French exclusively at work decreased by 7.9 percentage points, from 46.7% to 38.8%. The proportion of people sometimes using a language other than French – it is certainly English in the vast majority of cases – has therefore increased over the last decade.
According to the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, these statistics demonstrate “that there is still a lot of work to be done for French to regain its rightful place”.
However, when we know that more and more Quebec companies have international clients, and that English is the lingua franca of business on the planet, it is not surprising that this language is spoken more in the workplace today than 13 years ago. This is the result of a Quebec economy that is becoming more and more international, because local companies are succeeding in making their mark all over the world.
In other words, behind these worrying figures lies good news, which is also part of the export assistance strategy implemented by the government of which Mr. Roberge is a member. According to his colleague from the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, this is “one of the main objectives of our economic vision, namely to increase the presence of Quebec companies on export markets and to reduce the deficit of Quebec’s trade balance.
Today, 10% of Quebec SMEs export, or nearly 16,000 companies with fewer than 500 employees.
By emphasizing this fact, I am certainly not trying to minimize the challenges facing the French language in workplaces in Quebec. It is true that English benefits from a powerful fashion effect these days, among other things in the business world. This is why it is not uncommon to hear French-speaking Quebecers speaking English among themselves, as if English were proof of modernity or success.
This fashion effect must be countered by initiatives launched by the Quebec state, of course, but above all by business people themselves. To deal with this cultural phenomenon, restrictive measures (imposing Law 101 on companies with 25 to 49 employees, for example) will be of little use. Rather, we need people to set an example, to serve as models for young and old, particularly those who aspire to a career or who are already active in business. In this regard, we must highlight the efforts made by the Conseil du patronat du Québec to increase the use of French at work.
The fact remains that, for the foreseeable future, Quebec companies that win contracts outside Quebec’s borders will have no other choice than to communicate with their customers in the international language par excellence. This is why statistics on language of work in Quebec must be interpreted with caution.
What many see as proof of a “decline of French” is, in part at least, a demonstration of the audacity of Quebec entrepreneurs.