By Ruby Pratka

Local. Journalism Initiative

Anglophones make up between 10 and 16 per cent of the Quebec population, but only between 1 and 3 per cent of civil servants – a number which has remained stubbornly low since at least the 1970s. A Université de Montréal social psychology professor believes making anglophones a protected group through the provincial government’s Equal Access Employment Program (EAEP) may go some way toward addressing the representation gap.

Richard Bourhis, emeritus professor of social psychology at the Université de Montréal, has written extensively on language and bilingualism in society. In a new research paper published by Concordia University’s Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network (QUESCREN), he makes a case for designating English speakers as a protected group under the EAEP alongside women, Indigenous people, members of visible minorities, applicants whose first language is neither French nor English, and people with certain disabilities.

The EAEP, established in 2001, is overseen by the Quebec human rights commission (Commission pour les droits de la personne et de la jeunesse; CDPDJ) and covers hiring practices at 338 government agencies, throughout the health, social services, law enforcement and public education networks; its mandate also covers 71 municipalities, eight transit agencies and 25 crown corporations. Under the EAEP, if two candidates of equivalent skill, knowledge and experience are competing for a position and one is from a protected group and one is not, preference will be given to the applicant from the protected group. Bourhis cites data indicating that the EAEP has helped improve minority representation in the civil service, particularly among visible minority employees, whose representation rose from 2.7 per cent to 11.9 per cent between 2009 and 2022. Bourhis hopes anglophone representation will receive a similar boost if anglophones are included in the EAEP.

“If we succeed in including anglophones in the Quebec public administration [in greater numbers], it will provide more job opportunities and encourage future generations of anglophones to stay in this province,” Bourhis said. “It will also help anglophones in all parts of Quebec to get better services in English from the public sector, if there are more bilingual people. It’s time to add anglophones as an equity-deserving group.” He believes increasing the representation of anglophones in the public service will have a snowball effect. “Anglophones are afraid to apply for these types of jobs because of fear of rejection, because they don’t feel secure enough in a majority French setting … the only way to [combat] that is to have more anglophone representation,” he said.

“Over the past 25 years, many people have said, ‘We would like to have more anglophones in the public service,’ and they have made more efforts, but these efforts were not successful and they were not systemic – they were more pious statements. If you don’t have real targets for inclusion, it won’t happen by itself,” he added.

He acknowledged that in the current political climate, it may be difficult to convince the National Assembly – which would have to approve the addition of a new target group – that anglophones should be considered an equity-deserving group. “We don’t know how this will pan out – we never know why parties take up causes or not – but the point is, let’s put this on the table, because it’s never been done before.”

CDPDJ spokesperson Halimatou Bah told the BCN the addition of anglophones to the EAEP was not currently under consideration, and a separate access-to-employment program existed for anglophones in the civil service.

“For a group of people to be considered one of the groups targeted by the law, people belonging to a group must have historically been victims of discrimination in employment, and they must be underrepresented in the job market,” she said. “For English-speaking people in Quebec, it has been demonstrated that they are underrepresented in government agencies and departments. However, it has not been demonstrated that English-speaking people in Quebec have historically been victims of discrimination in the job market in Quebec,” she said.