MONTREAL — Just over two years ago, the Quebec government gave itself more powers to police the language spoken in the halls and flowing through the digital networks of the businesses in the province. That includes the tech sector, source of about five per cent of Quebec’s GDP. The law itself is black and white, allowing the state, among other things, to inspect said words and data and issue fines should it not contain enough French.

But it’s hard to measure the effect that Bill 96, the “act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec,” has had on businesses since its passage, because it often means trying to prove a negative. How do you quantify what a company didn’t do as the result of legislation? What’s more, the businesses in question don’t want to talk about anything language-related, ever, for fear of angering the state policing it. 

It’s why I’ll call this particular CEO “Frank.”

Frank is the president and CEO of an established Quebec-based tech company, whose name I won’t divulge, either. Frank didn’t even want me to specify the tech field in which he plies his trade. Suffice to say, with roughly 200 employees worldwide and a market cap of just under $200 million, he does a lot of publicly traded business. Including foreign investment, the company has brought in close to half a billion dollars into the province since its launch, he estimates. And Frank is thinking very seriously about leaving.

I spoke to him at length recently, and the conversation followed a familiar pattern. He could have set up anywhere but chose to stay in Montreal for the usual timeless reasons: the French fact and the rich life it affords, not to mention the many world-leading institutions and resulting easy access to PhDs.

Invariably, though, politics poked through this cheery bubble. We in Canada have a tendency to laugh off Quebec language laws as occasionally embarrassing quirks. American VCs, Frank said, take a decidedly darker view, which came clear when he found himself assuring them that, no, officials from the Office québécoise de la langue française (OQLF) won’t likely raid the company’s offices and inspect its computers—even if would be within its rights to do so.

Already, the company has mostly given up on trying to recruit talent to the province, simply because the one-year window for those workers to pass the provincial French test is too narrow. I say “mostly” because Frank is looking into setting up a Canadian office outside of the province to circumvent Quebec’s French requirements. With a looming lease renewal, the notion of downsizing in Quebec, even pulling up stakes altogether, is an active board-level discussion. “And it’s hard for me to say, ‘Oh, no, screw that. We can’t,’” Frank told me.

Frank’s situation isn’t anecdotal. In fact, you could argue it was inevitable. In June 2022, weeks after the new law came into effect, the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) wrote an open letter urging the Quebec government to pause its implementation, saying it is “threatening to do enormous damage to the province’s economy.” CEOs of over 170 Quebec companies of all sizes signed it. 

The government did no such thing, though, and businesses are responding in kind. Some—London Drugs, PetSmart and OtterBox—have ceased shipping to the province because fulfilling the law’s communication and labelling requirements wasn’t worth the cost. Others are voting with their feet. “Firms are just hiring outside the province, setting up in different regions of the country, or keeping people in their country of origin,” CCI president Benjamin Bergen told me. He even has a term for it: “Quiet leaving.”

Those who remain face another significant regulatory burden. Come June 2025, businesses with between 25 and 49 employees will have to enforce the French language charter or face penalties of up to $30,000—a rule that previously applied to those with 50 or more workers. The change affects about 20,000 businesses, nearly 85 per cent of which have yet to begin the process, according to the Conseil du patronat, an association representing Quebec employers. Enforcing these regulations won’t be a problem. The OQLF staff increased by nearly 40 per cent, to 330, between 2019 and 2023, according to agency statistics.  

I spoke to another Quebec tech CEO who started his business nearly two decades ago, and has roughly 500 employees around the world. OQLF inspectors visit roughly every two years, he told me, to look at laptops, check documentation and ask questions: Why is your internal information written in English? Why do you use English keywords in job postings? Why aren’t social media posts in French? “Internally, it’s kind of a joke,” he told me in accented English. Call it another joke. Like much of his executive team, the CEO’s first language is French. 

Here’s another: all of this is for naught. Though Quebec Premier François Legault has said this legislation is necessary to stem the erosion of French in the province, the use of the language has actually remained stable for the last decade and a half, according to the OQLF’s own study published earlier this year. No matter; Legault has already shown he isn’t above hobbling the province’s English-language universities so as to keep Quebec nationalists in his tent. What’s a few thousand more businesses?

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panelist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.”