A report published earlier this month by the Office Québécois de la Langue Française (OFQL) stated that in 20 years, French will be a minority language on the Island of Montreal. According to the report, only 47.4 per cent of those living in Montreal will speak French at home by 2031, compared with 54 per cent in 2006. Montreal’s recent influx of immigrants is likely the major factor behind the decline of the French language in the city. However, both Premier Jean Charest and McGill Professor Charles Boberg, a sociolinguist, caution that these numbers should be taken in the context of the greater Montreal area, and Quebec as a whole.
Boberg explained that immigration keeps Quebec’s population numbers from dropping.
“Quebec francophones, like Canadian anglophones and most western Europeans, have seen a dramatic drop in the birth rate owing to a number of social and cultural changes that have been developing since the 1960s,” Boberg said.
Booming immigration has forced Quebec to face problems of integration, and encouraging immigrants to speak French is a top priority for the Quebec government and the OFQL.
According to several Montreal residents, this policy appears to be working. An IT consultant for Accenture, the world’s largest consultancy firm, works almost exclusively in French while speaking her native Tamil at home.
“I was brought up speaking Tamil and English at home, but I went to French school and learned French,” the consultant, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “Now I teach French and all my nieces and nephews speak French, because … the younger generation is speaking French.”
However, this move towards French is not universal. Saddiq Akbar, who works in McGill food services and owns a restaurant on Saint-Laurent, never learned French and has been getting along very well living in Montreal for the past 13 years after moving here from Pakistan.
“It’s good to know other languages, but practically if you want a job you should know English. I own a restaurant and in four years I’ve lost business maybe two or three times because I don’t speak French. Before I came over I was worried it would be hard because I didn’t know any French but my in-laws said it was fine and it has been,” Akbar said.
Premier Charest, in his response to the study, claims that most immigrants do learn and are in fact speaking French, thanks to the Charter of the French Language instituted in 1977.
Newcomers to Montreal tend to install themselves among others who share their language, customs, religion, and food. On the other hand, an expanding group of middle-class Francophone families is leaving Montreal for the suburbs of Laval, the North Shore, and the South Shore.
As for the future of a French Quebec, Professor Boberg cautions that there is a big difference between the island of Montreal and Quebec at large.
“Let’s remember that Montreal and Quebec are very different: as soon as you move a few kilometers away from Montreal, Quebec is 95 per cent francophone, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. The large anglo populations that were once found in the Gaspe, Quebec City, the Eastern Townships, and even the Outaouais are now effectively gone.”
