They want to belong, but Quebec isn't making it easy

Tashi Farmilo

For 16 years, one English-speaking Quebecer tried. Took courses. Practiced. Kept going. And still, after a decade and a half of living in the province, the feeling of failure persisted, not because of a lack of effort, but because the system meant to help never quite delivered.

That story, captured in a new report published this March by the Provincial Employment Roundtable, turns out to be less an exception than a pattern.

The report surveyed more than 650 English-speaking Quebecers living outside Montreal and found a community that wants, deeply and for genuinely good reasons, to learn French and participate in francophone life. More than 75 per cent said they considered learning French important. Nearly 65 per cent tied it to personal goals. Almost two-thirds named relationships and social belonging as motivators. These are not people who resent the language or resist the culture. They are people who want in and keep hitting the same locked door.

Eight in ten had received French language training in school. Nearly 60 per cent rated it satisfactory or poor. Respondents described classrooms built around grammar drills and formal writing, producing graduates who could conjugate a verb but could not order at a counter, navigate a clinic, or survive a job interview. Many described the French they were taught as closer to what you would hear in Paris than in any Quebec town or city they lived in.

Two-thirds went back as adults and tried again, through continuing education centres, employer programs, college courses, whatever they could find. It did not fully close the gap. Nearly half still described themselves as speaking French with moderate or significant difficulty in everyday situations. When the stakes rose, the numbers got worse. Just over 40 per cent felt comfortable communicating with the health care system in French. Fewer than 26 per cent felt at ease with the justice system.

In the Outaouais, where English speakers make up roughly 20.7 per cent of the regional population and where many live their lives straddling the Ottawa River between two provinces, these gaps carry particular weight. The region sent 143 of the survey's 656 respondents, one of the largest shares of any region represented. For people already navigating the complicated linguistic terrain of a border community, inadequate French training is not an inconvenience. It is a compounding disadvantage.

The workplace findings are blunt. Nearly 80 per cent of respondents had been required to use French on the job at some point over the past decade. Nearly 80 per cent worked primarily in English-speaking environments. Close to 30 per cent said they used French at work while not being comfortable doing so. More than half could not confidently write a cover letter in French or conduct a job interview in the language. The report is careful to note that this does not reflect a lack of underlying ability. Many respondents appear to have the capacity to work in French. They have simply never been adequately prepared to translate that capacity into professional confidence.

What respondents asked for was neither radical nor expensive in concept. They wanted practical programming rooted in real situations. Mentorship. Hybrid delivery. Courses built into the working day. Intermediate and advanced content tailored to specific industries rather than generic beginner material. Many noted that what was locally available seemed designed for newcomers taking their first steps in the language, and that it was sometimes delivered entirely in French, which meant that beginners, the very people the programs were supposed to reach, could not access the instructions well enough to complete the work.

The infrastructure problem is real and getting worse. Recent cuts led to the closure of French language programs in several regions after Francization Quebec, the coordinating body created in 2023, ran out of funding. A prior PERT (Practical Experience Reporting Tool) review found that 30 per cent of French language workforce programs were clustered in Montreal. In some regions, there were none at all.

The Provincial Employment Roundtable is calling on the provincial government to stabilize and expand regional programming, improve instruction quality at every level of schooling, and build a coherent system capable of meeting learners where they are, in terms of geography, schedule, proficiency level, and stage of life.

The argument the report makes is a practical one. English speakers outside Montreal are already contending with higher unemployment rates, lower incomes, and higher poverty rates than their francophone neighbours. The gaps are widening. Better French language training will not fix all of that. But a community that wants to belong and is asking clearly for the tools to do so, is not a problem to be managed. It is an opportunity being squandered.