Bill 96 would essentially force them to learn French as soon as possible, as government services and contracts would be exclusively in that language after what appears to be a short grace period.

The CBC has reported that the Quebec language law, which was amended in May, has left many developers working in Quebec concerned about the impact it will have on the local developer scene (and there are a lot of companies with studios in Montréal in particular!). The short version of Bill 96 is that French will be the only official language in the Quebec region, so English will not do us much good: we will have to communicate in French for administrative purposes.

For those whose mother tongue is not French, you will only have access to services in English for six months, and then everything will be in French. After that, only those who attend/attended a school in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada in that language can access English-language services. Osama Dorias, a veteran Montreal developer, told the CBC that Bill 96 would hamper studios in the province because they already have difficulty finding people in the international market. He said, “Now [those job seekers] are looking elsewhere, and I don’t blame them. It’s going to be very hard for us to compete globally.” He does not recommend that developers move to Montréal because they will not be welcomed when he has suggested the opposite for years!

The Guilde du jeu vidéo du Québec, the local industry trade group, is also concerned about the law. Christopher Chancey told the CBC that many people come to Quebec from all over the world to develop. Still, they fear this is over because Bill 96 sends a message that Quebec is not welcoming to other cultures… and 138 senior Quebec tech executives have written an open letter to the provincial government about the six-month grace period. After all, they think it’s an untenable deadline for people whose lives have changed significantly by moving there, and they don’t like that all business contracts must be written in French.

The open letter states, “If the best and brightest innovators, technologists, and business builders gravitate to Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Halifax instead of Montreal and Quebec City, it will do permanent damage to our province’s economic prosperity. This is already happening, but it’s not too late to change course. Quebec is facing a labour shortage, and the scarcity of skilled talent in the tech sector is especially intense. Successful Quebec companies need to rely on global recruitment and immigration to fuel innovation, and bringing newcomers to Quebec is more difficult under the requirements of the new language law.”

The Office Québécois de la langue française (the French language police, so to speak), created by Billy 96, told CBC that, in addition to working on a program to teach French in schools and workplaces, “All sectors must contribute to the effort to ensure the sustainability of our official and common language.”

So far, it looked like Montréal was going to be one of the rapidly growing centres of the games industry, but Bill 96 (which came into force on June 1!) could turn it around…

Source: Gamesindustry