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There was the perfectly bilingual clerk at Revenue Quebec who frequently meets people who are more at ease discussing their tax questions in English. The clerk prefers to go along rather than turn “a tax problem into a language debate” and possibly spark a complaint.

There was a technician dealing in benefits who was asked to submit an English version of a form to a Quebec-based company because its payroll department was in Winnipeg, and staff there did not understand French.

Then there was the clerk at the rental board who frequently deals with people unable to understand decisions in their files because they are written in French. He takes it upon himself to translate important passages into English on the spot.

If these sound like examples of civil servants serving the taxpayers who pay their salaries, the SFPQ wants you to think again.

“What emerges from these few testimonials is the obligation for frontline staff to provide services in English under pressure from citizens,” the union wrote. “While they should feel supported by their immediate superiors [in insisting on working in French], employees fear the warnings and penalties that could follow.”

As the union sees it, a “shameful bilingualism” is invading the civil service, and union president Lucie Martineau said the Parti Québécois government’s Bill 14, which updates the language charter known as Bill 101, does not go nearly far enough to correct things.