A recent study by the Provincial Employment Roundtable (PERT) points to some unsettling trends facing the Montérégie’s English-speaking community. Higher unemployment rates, lower incomes, and barriers to French language training are just some of the challenges facing English speakers, and many of these issues are exacerbated in rural areas where accessing employment services can be more difficult.
Perhaps the most striking findings to come from the employment profile produced by PERT are those that relate to education levels and bilingualism. In general, English speakers attain a higher degree of education than their French counterparts. They are also more likely to self-identify as bilingual. One might think this would make for a winning combination, but as one participant commented during a recent employment roundtable hosted by the Montérégie-West Community Network in Huntingdon, it is a “funny equation, where one plus one does not equal two.”
The inevitable conclusion is that for the current government and employers, being bilingual is less desirable than being unilingual francophone. With the current government’s aggressive stance towards the English-speaking community, it is hard to imagine this will change anytime soon. The statistics used to inform the PERT study come from the 2021 national census, so they pre-date the passing of more restrictive language laws in Quebec which will no doubt amplify these trends in the 2026 census.
PERT is calling on the government to include “the needs of the English-speaking population in its plans to deliver employment services, address poverty, and implement French language training.” At this point, the only way English speakers might get over such barriers to employment is for the walls separating our linguistic communities to be lowered a few notches. It’s time we began to work together.
Sarah Rennie