French suffers at the federal level. He is hardly better off in the private sector. A brief portrait of bilingualism in the private sector.

The Commissioner for Official Languages ​​of Canada, Raymond Théberge, presented its annual report 2022-2023 in Parliament at the end of May. It contains the same allegations that have been repeated many times in the past, particularly disregard for the speaking rights of federal officials and the traveling public (specifically affecting Air Canada and airport authorities).

In the 2022-2023 period, the Commissioner accepted a total of 1,788 admissible complaints – 276 of which were unique to Air Canada. Of this first number, 810 concerned communication with the public and the provision of services, including 497 services to the traveling public and 207 working language. In 79% of the cases, the complaints related to an incident related to the use of the French language.

The Commissioner’s observation: “2022-2023 has shown once again that the future of the official languages ​​in all provinces and territories of Canada is far from certain.” »

This observation prompts us to examine the state of the French language in private sector companies. Of course, the official language law does not apply to everyone.

According to Statistics Canada, federal civil service (department and agency) employment accounted for just under 2% of total employment last May. Regarding the status of access to bilingual services in the private sector in Canada, in 2022, 23.3% of businesses offered at least one type of bilingual service or conducted at least one business activity in French and English. (This is the case for 53.6% of Quebec-based companies.)

In fact, based on geographic distribution, just over half (51.6%) of Canadian businesses offering at least one type of bilingual service or conducting at least one business activity in French and English were located in Quebec in 2022. tell us Statistics Canada’s Canadian Business Condition Survey was released in early June.

Monolingualism and other combinations

In Quebec, 85.2% of businesses that did not offer at least one bilingual service offered service only in French and 1.9% only in English. The others relied on a combination of French or English and an unofficial language, or even answered “not applicable” or “don’t know,” Statistics Canada said in an email in response to a question asked.

In other words, if we exclude Quebec and New Brunswick, the proportion of private companies offering at least one service in both official languages ​​rises to 14.6% in the rest of Canada. Here we can talk about customer service, internal or external communication, signage or just a website in French and English.

In more detail, more than four in ten companies offered bilingual services to customers in Quebec (43.2%) and New Brunswick (40.8%). More than a third of the companies based in these two provinces (37.2% in Quebec and 34.2% in New Brunswick) had sales activities in both official languages ​​and more than a quarter had a bilingual website (31.8% and 25. 3%). In the rest of Canada, this is the case for less than one in ten companies for each of these three types of service or business activity, adds the Federal Statistical Office.

This all needs to be put into perspective as in 2021 almost 16 million of Canada’s 21 million workers will be employed spoke English at work. Looked at another way, 4 million had French as their working language, including 3.8 million in Quebec.

Bilingual positions…

Respondents estimated approximately 1 million or 7.9% of corporate positions in Canada last year required French-English bilingualism. “The largest contingent of these jobs requiring bilingualism in the private sector was in Quebec, where there were nearly 750,000 bilingual jobs in 2022, representing just over a quarter (25.6%) of the jobs in that province,” adds Statistics Canada.

More than two-thirds of businesses offering certain bilingual services in Quebec and more than half of businesses in New Brunswick required bilingualism for some of their positions in 2022, compared with less than a quarter in the rest of Canada.

… and labor shortages

In addition, bilingualism can be seen as an advantage in the private sector, but without being an employment requirement, particularly in the context of a labor shortage, the federal agency adds. Across Canada, 46.3% of companies that reported providing bilingual services required bilingualism for some of their positions. This proportion was higher in Quebec (69.5%) and New Brunswick (56.1%) than in the rest of Canada (22.8%).

Therefore, difficulties in recruitment are felt. Against the backdrop of labor shortages, 16.8% of the 252,000 businesses (out of more than 1 million private businesses) offering bilingual services in Canada said hiring people who can work in both French and English is a will pose an obstacle. This percentage was highest in Quebec at 20.6%.

To see in the video