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<h1 class="entry-title">Ignore the alarmists, there is no language crisis in Quebec, economists say</h1>
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Analyzing the supply and demand of English and French over the 40
years since Bill 101 was introduced, a study finds the law and other
measures have done their job </p>
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<span class="gmail-name">Graeme Hamilton</span> </div>
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Updated: June 24, 2018 </div>
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Pro-Bill 101 protestors chanting "Montreal Francaise," march along
St. Laurent Boulevard in Chinatown, Montreal, Sunday April 11, 2010. </span>
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<span>THE MONTREAL GAZETTE/Phil Carpenter</span> </span>
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<p>MONTREAL — Quebec’s June 24 Fête nationale is a celebration rooted
in an impulse for preservation. Behind the parades, concerts and
bonfires across the province this weekend lays a reminder of the
ever-present need to defend the French language.</p><p>It is a message regularly reinforced by the media and politicians, from <a href="http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/pq-leader-calls-for-new-quebec-language-law-in-reaction-to-2016-census-data" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports highlighting a decline</a> in the proportion of Quebecers with French as their mother tongue to dismay over Montreal merchants embracing English with a <a href="http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/quebec-politicians-ask-montreal-to-say-goodbye-to-bonjour-hi-greeting?video_autoplay=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Bonjour-Hi’ greeting</a>.</p><p>In
fact, it is hard to imagine a Quebec without a serious language issue.
But according to the author of a new economic study for a Montreal think
tank, that Quebec already exists.</p><p>Analyzing the supply and demand
of English and French in Quebec over the 40 years since the language
law known as Bill 101 was introduced, the study by Université de
Montréal economics professor François Vaillancourt finds the law and
other measures have done their job.</p><div id="gmail-fsk_splitbox_1712_onscreen" class="gmail-fsk_splitbox_1712_onscreen gmail-sb-opened"><div id="gmail-fsk_splitbox_1712" class="gmail-fsk_splitbox_1712 gmail-sb-opened" style="height:369px;text-align:center;width:620px"></div></div><p>Knowledge
of French has increased despite a drop in the share of French
mother-tongue speakers. Francophone employers dominate the Quebec
economy. And speaking only French is no longer a brake on earning power.</p><p>“Quebec
language policy will always face challenges, since Quebec is surrounded
by anglophones,” the study for the CIRANO research group concludes.
“But considering the picture presented in this paper, we must set aside
language policies that regard English as the language of conquest and
not the language of international openness.”</p><p>He is an economist,
but Vaillancourt is intimately familiar with Quebec language law. In
1977 he was recruited to work as a consultant to Parti Québécois
cultural development minister Camille Laurin in the drafting of Bill
101.</p><p>Forty years later, he decided it was time to assess the impact, and his paper published last month is the result.</p><figure id="gmail-attachment_" style="width:2595px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-post-img gmail-size_this_image_test gmail-align-center"><img src="https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/que_bill_101_anniversary_20170825.jpg?quality=55&strip=all"><figcaption class="gmail-wp-caption-text gmail-wp-caption">
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<span class="gmail-img-caption">
Quebec Premier Rene Levesque tries to hush supporters at a Parti
Quebecois rally in Montreal, Nov.15, 1976, following his party’s victory
in the provincial election. The PQ victory led to the landmark Charter
of the French Language, more commonly known as Bill 101, which became
law on Aug. 26, 1977.</span>
<span class="gmail-img-author">
<span>THE CANADIAN PRESS</span></span>
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</figure><p>“Essentially, we are told two things,” Vaillancourt says in
an interview. “There are fewer Quebecers with French as a mother tongue,
and at the same time Montreal is becoming more English. That is true,
but it is not the whole story. There are other things going on.”</p><p>For
one thing, the percentage of the Quebec population able to speak French
rose to 94.5 per cent in 2016 from 88.5 per cent in 1971, before Bill
101 was adopted. Because of the province’s selection criteria, more than
half of immigrants to Quebec today already speak French, and Bill 101’s
requirement that their children attend French school has ensured future
generations become fluent.</p><p>To an economist’s eye, this is an
increase in the supply of French speakers, and it has coincided with an
increased demand, as francophones took control of the Quebec economy and
workplaces became more French.</p><blockquote class="gmail-pn_pullquote"><p>Quebec language policy will always face challenges, since Quebec is surrounded by anglophones</p><div></div></blockquote><p>Vaillancourt
has found that French is more common in the workplace when the
ownership is francophone, and he notes that between 1961 and 2003 — the
last year for which data is available — francophone-owned companies went
from employing 47 per cent of workers to 67 per cent.</p><p>Using
census data, Vaillancourt documents a steady increase in the income of
unilingual francophones in comparison to their unilingual anglophone
counterparts. For example, in 1970, a unilingual anglophone man earned
on average 10 per cent more than a unilingual francophone man with
comparable education. By 2010, the advantage had flipped to the
unilingual francophone, who was earning 10 per cent more than a
unilingual anglophone — and eight per cent more than a bilingual
anglophone.</p><p>Economists Vincent Geloso and Alex Arsenault Morin have also <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2875788" target="_blank" rel="noopener">written a paper</a> challenging the commonly held view that French is in decline in Quebec.</p><p>The
reality, they say, is that language-usage patterns have become much
more complex as a result of immigration and “inter-linguistic
marriages.” Their 2016 paper says that while census data shows a slight
decline between 2001 and 2011 in the proportion of people speaking
French at home, it is compensated for by an increase in those using
French at work.</p><figure id="gmail-attachment_" style="width:2734px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-post-img gmail-size_this_image_test gmail-align-center"><img src="https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/rally_20130630.jpg?quality=55&strip=all"><figcaption class="gmail-wp-caption-text gmail-wp-caption">
<p>
<span class="gmail-img-caption">
Norma O’Donnell holds up a sign calling for anglo rights in Quebec as
she attends an “I am Canadian Rally” in Montreal, Sunday, June 30, 2013.</span>
<span class="gmail-img-author">
<span>Graham Hughes/THE MONTREAL GAZETTE</span></span>
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</figure><p>“In other words, 88 per cent of the population of Quebec
have French as their most often used language at home, at work or in
both spaces. The apparent decline of French in Quebec is then a
consequence of a rise in multilingualism,” they write.</p><p>Statisticians
struggle to keep up with evolving behavior that muddies once reliable
measures such as mother tongue and language spoken at home.</p><p>“Before,
if you were a French speaker, you married a French speaker, you worked
in a French job and that was it,” Geloso, an assistant professor at
Bates College in Maine, says in an interview.</p><p>“Now you may be a
French speaker who marries an English person and works a French job. …
It’s not because somebody uses English 30 per cent of his life instead
of zero per cent that French is in a crisis, especially if some English
speakers in the process start speaking more French on a daily basis.”</p><p>Vaillancourt
says language has practically become a matter of faith in Quebec, with
people worshipping at the altar of Bill 101 instead of the Catholic
Church. But he thinks it is time to challenge the language-law
orthodoxy.</p><blockquote class="gmail-pn_pullquote"><p>I don't think having a common language necessarily implies depriving ourselves of understanding another language</p><div></div></blockquote><p>He
notes that the majority of people affected by Bill 101’s schooling
restrictions are francophones, because they are prevented from sending
their children to English school.</p><p>“That’s fine, but I don’t think
having a common language necessarily implies depriving ourselves of
understanding another language,” he says.</p><p>In 2011, just 38 per
cent of Quebec francophones were bilingual, according to census results,
compared with 61 per cent of Quebec anglophones. Vaillancourt proposes a
mandatory one-year English immersion program for all students in French
schools. He acknowledges there could be an increased “risk of
assimilation” but says Quebecers’ economic potential would grow.</p><p>In
parallel, with a view to ensuring all employees are able to provide
service in French, he recommends that anglophones should be obliged to
have part of their schooling in French, either in an immersion program
or in French schools.</p><p>Quebec should draw inspiration from the
Netherlands, where 90 per cent of the population speaks English, 71 per
cent speaks German, and no one worries about he disappearance of the
Dutch language, Vaillancourt says.</p><p>And if ever a widespread
knowledge of English in Quebec led to the disappearance of francophone
Quebec hundreds of years from now, “it would have to be understood that
this is the result of the choice of francophones themselves and not a
forced assimilation,” he concludes.</p></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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