| > 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? |
First, a correction: Discussion around the web suggests that this won't affect McGill much.
The text of the new law is available here: http://m.assnat.qc.ca/fr/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/...
One interesting part is that government offices are generally forbidden to provide English versions of written texts in most situations. There are quite a few exceptions, including tourism, communicating with foreign governments, dealing with First Nations, etc. The most important of these is a health, public security and "natural justice" exception:
> «22.3. Un organisme de l’Administration peut déroger au paragraphe 1° de l’article 13.2 en utilisant, en plus du français, une autre langue lorsqu’il écrit, dans les cas suivants:
> 1° lorsque la santé, la sécurité publique ou les principes de justice naturelle l’exigent;
When dealing with new arrivals to Quebec, government offices may provide written materials in other languages for the first six months. After that, apparently all communications must be solely in French?
Quebec actually has a system for helping immigrants learn French and adapt to life in Quebec. For example, see https://www.quebec.ca/education/apprendre-le-francais/cours-.... From what I've heard, it's not great, but it's better than what's available in some countries. But cutting off all access to bilingual written materials after 6 months (which is my understanding of this text) is obviously going to make it harder to help people assimilate.
One of the industries that will be hardest-hit by this law is Montreal's software industry: https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/chroniques/2022-06-15/proje...
> Selon le regroupement d’entreprises technos, la nouvelle loi 96 « impose un délai irréaliste, car les nouveaux arrivants doivent jongler avec de multiples défis reliés à leur intégration au sein d’une nouvelle culture et à un changement de vie professionnelle »
Basically: You can't move house, start a demanding new job, adapt to a new culture and reach a high level of French in 6 months. This puts Quebec software companies in a tough place, in terms of recruitment. Probably they'll end up recruiting in other locations.