31 Replies to “Yet, Strangely”

  1. I wonder if these people bothered to correlate the rate of bilingualism both in Quebec and outside of Quebec with the percentage of people working for the federal government in each situation. It seems to me that if a federal government employee earns 25% more than the average worker, and Federal government workers make up 10% of workers, then that would make up a large portion of the difference.

  3. Fine up until the second half of the article, then the conclusions drawn are completely delusional. The obvious reasons why bilingual Quebeckers would earn more, apart from the federal government jobs noted by Andrew, lies in the fact that in a North American market, an employee who can communicate with the larger market of a company is inherently more valuable. In Alberta or BC, I’d wager that employees speaking both English and, say Mandarin, would likewise be generally more valuable; French (which I speak) not so much. In fact I’m hard pressed to imagine the last time my French language skills could have added value to any employer. Bilingualism may also reflect, on average, a higher intelligence than unilingualism and thus higher earning potential. But the idea that teaching French to kids in BC’s lower mainland is going to raise their earning potential, outside of the federal civil service due to the government fiat, is ridiculous.

  4. Can’t say I have an identifyable income enhancement but from time to time what facility I have with french has resulted in “light duties” from time to time…..even “loaned” to other concerns.
    Even now semi-retired on diability, I get called out from time to time to liase….usually involves a steak dinner….
    Here in Ontario, companies which do business into Quebec tend to rely on the Quebec contacts to speak french. Failing that they call up the guy from the back/yard who can converse with the mono-lingual Quebecers who blunder into McSquinty land.

  6. I know that the articles says that “The results are adjusted for variables such as education, experience, regional differences and type of industry.” but I suspect the adjustments are misleading (the facts were adjusted to meet the needed conclusion). It is obvious that bilingual jobs are overrepresented in government and in central Canada. Government jobs have wages and benefits that are significantly higher than private industry. So the wage gap is caused by politicians and is not market driven. Government jobs have higher wages but they do not create real wealth because they require taxpayer money to survive. Another oddity is that all of the “have” provinces are the least bilingual.
    “Meanwhile, in the rest of Canada, men who know both languages earn an average income 3.8 per cent higher than those who know English only. Bilingual women earn 6.6 per cent more.” As stated in the other link, that 3.8 %& 6.6% gap can also be closed by choosing in-demand occupations and being willing to move to less desirable locations.
    Anyone that actually believes that bilingualism has magical qualities like “a proclivity for education, cultural sensitivity or sophistication.” has been immersed in central Canada BS for far too long. The biggest factor that allows for bilingualism is birthplace not high IQ. Knowing other languages is a good thing but this article reeks with the stink of a political agenda and forthcoming demands for expensive new language programs.

  7. I liked the Cree language inference. How true. In northern Sask the immersion in Cree language is a handicap for native children. They start school with substandard language skills. This requires the entire class (K and beyond) to slow down in a futile attempt to help them catch up. The situation was so bad that I was forced to homeschool. When we moved I found that the difference between the northern school district and the southern one was at least a full year in math and reading. The northern school, OTOH, did have superior coloring skills and diversity/sensitivity training.

  8. Depends entirely the sector you are working in – if you want a federal government job then French probably is a good language to have. If you want to work in the hard sciences, German is probably more useful, if you want to trade into Asia – Chinese is probably needed and if you want to expand your business into Central/South America and the US, you might want to study Spanish

  9. [quote] we don’t pick up an additional reward from the use of French in the rest of Canada.”
    [/quote] Link
    The article would explain why the BLOCK/Liberals are hell bent on putting a BAR to English speaking SC of Canada Judges…
    When you are losing the argument in the real world, the voluntary system must be Jettisoned

  10. Don’t just take the civil service out – remove all legislation and faux incentives requiring bilingualism – and let’s see what happens.

  11. For gawds sake, of course they have better paying jobs only Francos living in the special zip codes in the Ottawa and GTA and Montreal area are allowed to apply for Federal jobs.

  12. Belabouring the obvious again.
    My Dutch colleagues, when I was working in Utrecht,
    remarked occasionally that “he who speaks only one
    language speaks no language”. Most of them spoke
    three languages. It was that approach which made
    the Netherlands a great mercantile nation.

  13. LC Bennett – my dad (northern Sask) and my ex-father in law (northern Manitoba) both spoke a bit of Cree. White European families. Dunno if that still happens much anymore . . . .

  14. Because those poor saps that have spanish, german, ukrainian, dutch, cantonese, as their other/second language aren’t bilingual.
    But as Speedy alluded to, if your dream job is the federal service, there’s nothing like being able to ace the federal french test.

  15. he who speaks only one
    language speaks no language
    Logic at it’s finest.
    So they could be stupid in 3 languages if they wanted to then.
    Pot is still legal in Holland, eh?

  16. I am not sure Eric. I suppose that non-natives who are long term residents will pick the language up. When I had the opportunity to visit a fairly remote northern town/reserve their teachers and medical staff were from the south. The yearly turnover rate for teachers was around 9O% so I doubt that many learned Cree.

  17. When I was in Her Majesty’s service my uni-lingual career progression would have stopped at Warrant Officer. Without being bilingual I’d never be promoted past that rank and for that matter not being bilingual I would lose several points on the promotion board score.
    btw, I settled for Sgt and never having to salute that Crouton again.

  18. I wish that I were as smart as that prof.Wow,imagine,someone that spoke only french earning more in a North American market by learning english.Such insight.I am dazzeled by the mans intelligence.

  19. Sounds like the profs are enamoured of the long form census so they can do more research without getting out of their chairs. All told, a rather useless study in search of a grant.
    I’ve posted before that “bilingualism” for Francophones is much easier to obtain than for an Anglophone because the federal tests are biased to be much more difficult for the Anglo. I’m bilingual in every day conversation (although that isn’t much use in BC!) but I had a rough time with the environmentally specific technical jargon on the test and with the double entendres and puns worked in. It’s not a level playing field.

  21. One of the G&M commentators:
    “Bilingualism may also reflect, on average, a higher intelligence than unilingualism and thus higher earning potential. ”
    Apparently he’s never dealt with a gov’t employee who barely speaks english….I’ve dealt with many gov’t employees who soundly disprove that theory…

  22. I’ve applied for jobs that require French. As I do not speak French academically, my luck was shot.
    I don’t mind learning languages for professional or personal reasons. I do mind when a particular language is given precedence over others for political reasons. This is what we are seeing in Canada. When I taught overseas, no one cared if I spoke French or not as English was the lingua franca (or lingua anglia, as the case may be).

  23. Well, for a Canadian to learn to speak French requires a substantial degree of commitment and dedication. Whereas for a Quebecker to learn to speak English requires only that his head be positioned somewhere outside of his ass. So there may be something to it.

  25. I also suspect that when snivel-servents are excluded any “bilingualism advantage” will be gone. I got a kick out of my being declared “officially bilingual” when I passed my French course at Uof0; didn’t seem to make much difference that I was fluent in Ukrainian and Croatian before learning English; seems those two languages don’t count in the east of this country.
    What I suspect is the most significant factor in people making more money is if they chose a field of employment which is in demand. My slavic languages allowed me to become fluent enough in Russian to deal with patients more quickly at a time I had a lot of Russian patients as there is nothing more frustrating than taking a medical history through a translator.
    Having the ability to converse in varying degrees in 4 languages, I can’t see what the big deal is in being multilingual. The main thing I got out of knowing these languages is familiarity with the problem of translating initially non-verbal concepts into various common representational methods. I don’t think in conventional languages. Picking up a new language (in terms of routine communication) is easy; get a word frequency list, learn the most common words and then figure out the others as you go along.
    Rather than learning French, students should be learning Java which seems to be about as close to a platform independent language as one can get. If I had the time to learn another language, I’d chose an ideographically based one; had a fascinating bus trip sitting next to a Japanese exchange student who was practicing her English on me and showing me how Japanese ideograms were constructed.

  26. Well, at least the good news is that the ROC (I frikkin hate that acronym)is paying for the extra wages that these QC bilingual civil servants are earning.
    Ok, that was sarc…

  27. More than likly there was some…mmmm…adjustment to the figures so as to be fair and ;;;;; after all its good for the rest of Canada some how????

  28. Loki, easy for who?
    Some people just cannot pick up languages that easy..I grew up in uni lingual Etobicoke, a borough of the old Toronto.
    We had some passing French in class when I was in grade 5 or 6..nothing after. Certainly no French was taught in high school when I was there, ’78-’82. I knew no French speaking people, never heard it spoken and Quebec was not even an afterthought.
    Are the people who can’t pick up languages as easy as you doomed to never get a really good paying job in Eastern Canada? Especially when those who are bilingual and hold the levers of power consider the uni lingual Canadians to be inferior , undereducated ( and dare I day ) stupid?
    The fix has been in for years. I left the forces because I saw no career advancement by not speaking French. Moreover, I saw career advancement by French Canadian officers who could barely speak English.
    That is one of the reasons you will never see any French Canadian officers leading a battle group of English Canadian soldiers. When they send in the French Canadians ( Van Doos etc.), the command structure sent with them are all French..it’s a basic communication issue.

  29. Well me I speak French. I am the turd cousin of Jean Chretien. Da man who speak wit da wrong side of da mout.
    One time me, I’m in Auto-Wa. It was Krismas. Me and my two friends we are getting drunk. We come out of da bar, dere’s Jean on da sidewalk. He say to us, “Where are you boys from?”
    I say to ‘im, “We are da tree kings from orient.”
    He aks me, “Wat are you doing in Auto-Wa.?
    I answer, “We bring joy and happiness to all.”
    Chretien, ‘e laff and he say, “Tree kings, dats interesting. Wat are your names?”
    I say, Smo-king, drink-king, and F*+k-king.

  30. I am absolutely convinced that a facility for picking up new languages only exists in people who were fluently bilingual at a young age – say under 10 (at the oldest).
    I have seen more examples of this than I can count. I can’t count very high, but still.

  31. I hear that in Nouveau-Brunswick (the only bilingual province bilingue), there are certain professions where you must be bilingue in order to even be hired, such as Nurse/Infermier(ère). Unilingues néo-brunswickais have to go to another province to work.

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