Anglophobia a Cautionary Tale for Head Offices

Bank of Montreal, Head office in Toronto

Way back when I was a high school student, I remember a particularly brutal food fight in the cafeteria that ended up causing several thousands of dollars in damage.  As food whizzed around the room, it didn't take long for the mayhem to degenerate and soon trays and chairs were being tossed around with reckless abandon.
I recall thinking at the time that everyone had simply lost their mind.
Caught up in the hysteria, we see normally rational people doing the stupidest of things just because everyone else is doing it.

We saw this mob mentality take over during the Vancouver hockey riots after the Canucks were eliminated last year and here in Montreal....well, we've had too many similar mindless riots to single any one out.

Watching the language debate spiral up to dizzying heights over the fact that just two highly placed employees of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, are unilingually English, I cannot help being overcome with the same feeling.
....Has everyone lost their mind?

Last year I thought the government insane for proposing a law to ban niqabs, considering that less than two dozen women actually wear them in public, but now a law is being proposed, triggered by just two language 'offenders' and calls into question the rationality of language supremacists, begging the question as to whether the language debate has spun dangerously and ridiculously out of control.

The recent witch hunt aimed at rooting out English in Head offices and government agencies reached new heights of folly with the Parti Quebecois actually proposing a law to eradicate the scourge of English in crown government corporations. Link{Fr}

All this over two employees!

Adding to the charged climate, a PQ loudmouth,  François Rebello, a sitting member of the National Assembly, has demanded that the government boycott the National Bank, all because the bank president decided to keep a unilingual English IT department in Montreal, rather than ship the jobs off to Toronto! Link{Fr}

I wonder if the 80% of the bank's employees, who work in Quebec(some 14,000 people,) appreciate a Quebec politician calling on the public to boycott the bank and put their jobs at risk!  
Could you imagine the outrage if a federal MP asked Canadians to boycott Quebec dairy products because there are too many separatists in Quebec!

Truly we have lost all sense of proportion and like during that food fight forty years ago I feel inclined to jump up on a chair and shout "STOP THE INSANITY!"

Hysteria... there's really no other way to describe the language pogrom that is sweeping the offices of Quebec's largest and most successful companies, where disaffected and passed over employees get to denounce their company like Nazi collaborators. They do so, encouraged by an eager Press, ready, willing and able to whip up a frenzy of controversy that will no doubt have the effect of killing the golden goose.

While the Caisse de dépôt has no choice but to knuckle under, other companies are able to exercise free will and the chilling damper on reason will no doubt affect decisions whether to locate in Quebec or elsewhere.
A couple of years ago the city of London, Ontario tried to convince Montreal's Shriner's Hospital to relocate to Ontario, with an incredibly generous financial offer, which Quebec was forced to better. Had the offer come from Toronto, the hospital would likely have moved, London being too out of the way, travel-wise, for the Shriners' clients.

While that tug-of-war played out favourably for Quebec, it was a rare and costly win, hundreds of other competitions for head offices, factories and companies occurs each day, with Quebec losing out, most of the time.

Today Montreal enjoys a booming video game industry, cultivated by long years of government subsidies and tax breaks.
This industry utilizes the highest level of information technology as well as the creative talent of superstar programmers and game conceptors, drawn from all over the world. It runs in English.
The video games produced, although translated into French and many other languages, are the creation of an English culture.
Conduct a language witch hunt and order this industry to operate in French and we can anticipate a lineup of cities begging to relocate the industry with a package of incentives that will more than make up the cost of moving.
It would be devastating.

Quebec would be well advised to recognize the unseen hand that renders legislation subservient to market forces. Losing a head office that never came because of language issues is just as painful as having one snatched away.

In our last French vs. English piece I told you that Air Canada was moving 160 jobs to Toronto, all without publicity, so as not to create another controversy.
Last Thursday, the union head, representing head office employees hit the panic button and fretted publicly that this move may just be the beginning of a total migration of Air Canada's head office to Toronto. Between language laws and market realities, it's probably just a matter of time.

So how important is it for Quebec to nurture those companies that do choose to keep their head offices in Montreal?
If one cares about economic prosperity I imagine it's of paramount importance.

By refusing to allow companies that operate internationally or in industries where English is de rigueur, the right to have run even the smallest of departments in English, the government has cleared the way for them to either pack up and move and worse still never even consider Montreal in the first place.

Well done!

On Thursday, as the witch hunt proceeded, La Presse revealed that Bombardier was given a special dispensation to operate part of its aviation business in English in Montreal.  Link{Fr}
A francophone employee complained to the newspaper that;

"These are people of exceptional talent, but who have no interest in learning our language. Never a 'Bonjour' or a 'Merci.' "

I guess 13,000 jobs makes a difference, even to the OQLF. (if not language supremacists)
But the question remains....what is the threshold.

Over at CGI, another technology giant based in Montreal, no such dispensation exists. Some employees are calling reporters to complain about English usage in the Head office. The company has 31,000 employees and 125 offices in 20 countries. Link{Fr}
Hellooooo Toronto?

Of course language militants don't care and in the name of linguistic purity are willing to forgo the benefits of tens of thousand of well-paying jobs.
I daresay that if an international company approached the government about locating a thousand employees in a new Montreal office with the proviso that 100 of the jobs would be English only, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Impératif français and all the other language supremicists would scream at the top of their lungs to reject the offer.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the separatists are trying to blow up the province economically, so that people suffer financially and unemployment rises, more will be attracted to the separatist pipe dream.
This is Quebec..

I remain in favour of Quebecers maintaining the right to work in French. Gone are the days of the master and slave.
But a law making French the language of work universal in all cases is counter-productive.

In an inter-connected world, the glue that binds is English. It's a realty that Quebec must face realistically and come to terms with the problem of jobs versus pride.

The answer to reasonable people is clear, it isn't exactly Sophie's Choice.