Bilingual NB and the Suffering Workforce

Companies in New Brunswick are no longer hiring the “best” person for the job, they are hiring the bilingual person for the job. Even the very English speaking town of Riverview is making new efforts to seem more bilingual. The worst part is that bilingual can mean anything from completely fluent in both French and English or fluent in French with minimal English. Yet an English speaking person with minimal French would not be considered bilingual. Explain that one!

Additionally, the school system isn’t set up to support a bilingual province. English speaking children cannot attend French school unless their parents; a) attended elementary school in French, b) the child already speaks French or, c) the child has a sibling already enrolled in French school. So where does that leave the English kids? The only choice they have is enrolling in French Immersion in grade 3, which is very different than actually completing school entirely in the French language.

Two years ago, I tried to enroll my son in a French elementary school, but was turned away because we didn’t meet their criteria. It wasn’t enough to have a French last name, or that I was bilingual (having learned French in university) and have a French teacher for a husband. I was told that it would actually be illegal for them to enroll him. It turns out, after doing some research of my own, that they were right. How can we raise bilingual children in a province that won’t let our English speaking kids into French schools??

French speaking people have a very clear set advantage in New Brunswick. When two job applicants are equally qualified, yet one is bilingual, I certainly understand why the unilingual person does not get the job. It’s when the highly qualified applicant is turned away simply because they are not bilingual that I just shake my head.

Highly qualified people are left unemployed and/or are being forced to make major career changes to find employment. They are spending months on employment insurance, while trying to find a job that pays more than their claim, and come up empty handed. We live in a system that sets us up to fail. (Don’t even get me started on Social Assistance!)

The over-emphasis on bilingualism is costing us all millions of dollars and will continue to get worse if the hard push for bilingualism continues.  If New Brunswick wants a bilingual province, they better change the laws on enrolling English speaking kids into French schools and also provide free-of-charge immersion classes for all adults who are willing and able to work.  Otherwise we’re going to end up with an ill-equipped, bilingual workforce and a bunch of over-educated street walkers.