OFL crackdown doesn't compute
The Gazette
To understand the Office de la Langue Francaise, it helps to view it as the bureaucratic equivalent to the late Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis - arrogant, autocratic and unassailable.
To its care has been entrusted the job of ensuring that the French language predominates in Quebec and it is unswerving in its devotion to that cause. The Montreal business community sees the language policies the Office so energetically defends as an impediment to job-creation? Tough. Francophones have turned to Alliance Quebec to protest against the Office's intrusiveness in their working lives? Too bad. The Office will not yield.
Computer software in the workplace is the latest battleground for the Office and those who would prefer not to be protected by it.
Two years ago, the Office ruled that the use of French software in businesses of more than 50 employees was obligatory and the use of English software was prohibited. Outlawing English software was necessary, the Office stated, if French is to be the language of the workplace in Quebec.
This week, in a surprising move, francophone office workers turned to the English-rights lobby group Alliance Quebec to protect their right to use English-language software on the job. Alliance Quebec said it will take the workers' case to court, certain of victory in light of the 1988 Supreme Court judgment that ruled that while one language could predominate, no language could be suppressed altogether.
Suppression clearly seems to be what the Office has in mind in the struggle over English software. It is threatening to pull the francization certificates of companies that do not remove all English-language software programs from their computers. This is tantamount to blackmail, since companies in Quebec cannot do business in the province without a francization certificate.
The francophone workers, all from the pharmaceutical industry, were astonished at the powers of the Office. To them, it's a question of their freedom to choose the language of the software they use. The Office has ruled differently, saying there is no choice. It's French and nothing else.
English software, the Office believes, would cause the entire workplace to start communicating in English. It cites no proof for this hitherto unknown linguistic dynamic other than "experience.''
Making matters even worse is the fact that the Office seems to have specifically targeted one of the few growth industries in the Montreal region, the high-tech, knowledge-intensive pharmaceutical industry.
This is evidence of terrible short-sightedness on the part of the Office.
It has to know that Montreal's unemployment rate is over 13 per cent and that it ranks dead last among North America's 24 major cities in terms of job-creation.
If the Office is allowed to continue to make such excessive and unfair intrusions into the inner workings of Montreal-area businesses, there is a risk that more businesses will leave.
That's a price that Montreal can't afford to pay.