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Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout
I have two friends who are American but moved to Montreal as students and eventually immigrated. They're both Canadian citizens now. They both speak excellent French and until recently had spent their entire careers working for Quebec companies that operate in French (often with many French-from-France employees). Now they both have jobs that are based in the ROC and they're experiencing real culture shock in dealing with English Canadians. It's a remarkably different working environment to Quebec. People are conflict-averse to a fault, passive aggressive and generally unwilling to express anything directly.
Make of that what you will. Personally I find it very interesting and a decent reflection of my own experience of working with ROCers (given that I've spent my entire adult life either in Quebec or overseas). As an English Canadian myself I'm able to play the game and understand the nuances of how everyone is operating, but my American friends seem a bit taken aback.
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The culture you're describing is most pervasive in Canada's oligopolies, especially in Toronto's big banks (my SO absolutely detested the work culture entrenched there.. said it's very suffocating compared to Desjardins or even Banque Nationale), insurers and telecoms like Rogers. Even the Anglo dominated companies in Montreal like Air Canada, CN, BCE/Bell Media has the same passive-aggressive conflict adverse culture.
It reminded me a bit of the work culture in the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, which I guess is almost like a British colonial hangover. Switching back to working with Americans can be a quite a breath of fresh air and is my preference these days.