COUNSELLING FRENCH-CANADIANS

© Gilbert Donnelly 

The purpose of this paper is to show that Québécois living outside their province may present cultural characteristics that would warrant to approach counselling from a cross-cultural perspective. This will not be an easy task: for though there are admittedly many studies on the peculiarities of traits and habits of French-Canadians, there is on the other hand a paucity of literature on what this means in terms of cross-cultural counselling. The spadework which has not even begun must first take the form of data collection. The present paper will look at the existing data and suggest directions for future research.

 Historical Component of Québec's French-Canadian Society Makeup

 The Québécois' versions of the history of Canada and their views on the place of  Québec within Canada can easily be documented. It will show that there have been among French-Canadians two opposing positions on these matters for more than two hundred years. Indeed, even before 1763 the Canadiens and the French did not necessarily see eye to eye. The Canadiens being those French-Canadian-born or French-born settlers who had made Canada their home as opposed to their French-born administrators and military leaders whose careers had taken them to America but who were to return to France as soon as they would be allowed to. In the battles that led to the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the former fought for a homeland, the latter for mere colonies. Consequently, the Canadiens wanted to act swiftly and fight to the bitter end, the French who commanded them did not. After the Conquest, the Canadiens stayed in the colonies and the French went back to France. However, barely ten short years latter, Britain's hegemony in North America was being threatened again, but this time, by her own nationals. It was rightly feared, then, that as the oldest English colonies of North America were trying to throw off the yoke of their mother country and that the winds of freedom would reach the former French colonies.

To counter the effect of such a movement, Britain needed to fortify the loyalty of her new subjects. The May 1774 Québec Act intended to achieve just that by guaranteeing Canadiens freedom of religion and maintenance of the French civil code. It also granted them more or less the territories that they had enjoyed under the French Régime. In September 1774, the leaders of the American Revolutionary War wrote the Canadiens a message inviting them to join the American movement. The carefully worded message encouraged Canadiens to take part in an endeavour that was portrayed to be an emancipation process not a revolution. But the Act had preempted the message. It granted Canadiens pretty much all they had asked for.

As a result the American invitation was given little consideration. Less than twenty-five years after the Treaty of Paris, Canadiens found themselves in a divided camp once more but this time over the question of a representative assembly. The petitions of 1787 seemed to indicate that there were as many Canadiens opposed to a project of a representative assembly as there were for. The project did not threaten the connection between the throne and the altar, and the Roman Catholic Clergy did not participate in the debate.

 In the aftermath of the American Revolution, large numbers of English speaking loyalists settled in the province of Québéc that stretched from Labrador to Manitoba. As their numbers increased, they weighed more and more in the balance of power. They wanted a representative assembly and the Constitutional Act of 1791 which also divided the province of Québec into Upper Canada and Lower Canada gave it to them. Such imposed arrangement favoured the new settlers at the expense of others and created much discontent among the Canadiens.

 In 1834, Papineau presented 92 articles that summed up the complaints and resentments which had been expressed in the 40 years that followed the Constitutional Act. The articles provoked a fiery debate. Some of his followers felt that he was going too far and opted for a status quo. From the debate two French-Canadian political parties began to emerge. The split was epitomized in the 1837 Rebellion and the years that followed.

The Roman Catholic Clergy felt compelled to participate in the events that followed the 1837 Declaration of Saint-Ours as Papineau and his followers sought to establish a republic on the American model. The Catholic Church could not agree on moral grounds. Mgr Lartigue cautioned that the attempt to usurp the King's God-given authority over his subject was a highly reprehensible act. He quoted a text from Paul requesting submission to duly constituted civil authority and Gregory XVI's encyclical of 1832 on the same subject. The Rebellion of 1837 failed and Papineau fled to the United States.

Many of those who had supported a united Canada won a major victory as the Union Act of 1840 was brought in and English became the sole official language, others felt betrayed. It seemed for a moment that Canadiens had been doomed to assimilation. But in 1848, after years of championing the Canadien cause in the political arena, much as Papineau himself had done unsuccessfully for so many years, Lafontaine fighting alongside Baldwin helped to establish an internal self-government. With self-government, French was restored as an official language. Furthermore, Elgin recommended that Britain abandon the denationalization of French-Canadians and try Americanizing their way of life instead. For many Canadiens, Lafontaine and Baldwin had shown that the political process could work. The British North America Act of 1867 followed: Canada became a confederation of which Québéc was an integral part and for close to a hundred years Papineau's rhetoric and ideas fell into partial oblivion (Brunet, Frégault, & Trudel, 1956).  His ideals resurfaced during the Great Depression and the Union Nationale Party was born. In the post-depression years of the 1930's, Québéc started to become more urbanized and in the 1950's the religious and moral powers of the Roman Catholic Church began to dwindle. The 1960's saw the Quiet Revolution during which the province evolved from a clerical society to a secular one. In the 1970's, those who believed that the traditional parties had failed to obtain from the federal government the necessary powers to allow Québécois to be Maîtres chez Eux formed the Parti Québécois dedicated to the separation of Québéc from the rest of Canada. The Liberal Party Maîtres chez Nous slogan was replaced by the Parti Québécois rally cry, Le Québec aux Québécois. The Front de Liberation du Québec embraced a terrorist ideology that led to the October 1970 Crisis. Twenty-five years and two referenda later the Québécois society  is divided more than ever along multi-ethnic lines.

 The Assimilation Threat

 The results of the 1995 Referendum show clearly the Québécois' ambivalence: for in truth, who is a Québécois? Does the term refer to all the inhabitants of Québéc regardless of their ethnic origins, their native language and the length of time they or their families have lived in the province? or, does it apply strictly to those who can trace their ancestry to settlers who came to Canada under the French Régime and who still speak French? From the debate that surrounded the 1995 Referendum one can safely assume that there cannot be one definition that will satisfy all Québécois. Understandably, Québec anglophones and allophones feel that they should be included in the definition, especially since a faction of the Parti Québécois has been pushing for the restriction of the right to vote in Québec referenda to French Québécois only, that is, those whose roots go back to the French settlers. For these Québécois the term cannot include anglophones and allophones who have been known to favour a united Canada, a Canada where francophones have been decreasing in numbers for the last forty years. Separatists believe that, in effect, Québéc is the only province where francophones can hope to acquire and maintain any control over their own identity and destiny. René Lévesque even wrote:

Being ourselves is essentially a matter of keeping and developing a personality that has survived for three and a half centuries. At the core of this personality is the fact that we speak French. Everything else depends on this one essential element......We are ...heirs to the group obstinacy which has kept alive that portion of French America we call Québec. More is involved here than simple intellectual certainty. This is a physical fact. To be unable to live as ourselves, as we should live, in our own language and according to our own ways, would be like living without an arm or a leg--or perhaps a heart (Lévesque, as reported by Handler, 1984, p.60).

 Strategically, it makes sense to strive to protect the language and culture of a vibrant people in what is left of what was an immense country stretching from Lake Winnipeg to Labrador and from the Hudson Bay Company's territories to lands south of the Great Lakes; it makes sense to protect the language and culture of a vibrant people which lives in a province that is three times the size of France and where it still represents 80% of the population. This effort makes even more sense when one considers that the present territory of the province of Québéc is surrounded by French communities which were once also vibrant but which are struggling today to maintain their language and culture. The Parti Québécois is persuaded that by becoming maîtres chez eux French Québécois will never have to struggle to maintain their identity, language and culture.

 The proportion of francophones in the population of Quebec has remained fairly constant, dropping marginally over the last 40 years. Meanwhile, although, more anglophones live in Quebec today than were living there in 1951, their share of the total population of the province has gone down about four percentage points. Matching these decreases in a corresponding increase in the proportion of 'allophones', those claiming neither English nor French as mother tongue. Immigration is the main cause of this increase, which echoes a pattern seen across the country, especially in recent years (Wood, 1993, p.100-106).

 While all of this augurs well if one is in the separatist camp and one is optimistic about the future of the separatist cause, an objective observer cannot fail to see that the future may not look as bright for English Québécois. It seems that the separatists are impervious to the plight of anglophones who have been losing ground in Québéc for as long as francophones have in the rest of Canada. Indeed how many anglophones are there for every Daly, McGuire, Brown, Payne, Fraser and others whose grandparents barely spoke a word of French when they settled down in Québéc and whose grandchildren cannot speak a word of English today?

 Anglophones in Québec have been surrounded by francophones as francophones in  the rest of Canada have been surrounded by anglophones. It is a fact of life that minority groups wherever they live are bound to face assimilation after a while. This is even truer for allophones whose languages have not been recognized as official languages of Canada.

Figures indicate...that the longer...immigrants remain in Canada, the more likely they are to make a language transfer to the dominant language in their community, both outside the home and within. Since the 1970s, Quebec's allophone immigrants are increasingly adopting French as their home language, with two-thirds switching to French, while in Canada's other provinces, English becomes the language of choice (Colombo, 1996, p.53).

 Consequently, in view of Québec's aggressively pro-French language laws, anglophones and allophones who wish to join the anglophone group have been given every reason to fear assimilation and defend their right to vote in referenda on the separation of Québec from the rest of Canada. It must be stated in all fairness though that francophone Québécois are not overreacting to some shallow threat. Assimilation appears to be a rational projection of events to come. The demographic change since the Conquest and more particularly since 1951 explains why French-Canadians have reasons to fear for the survival of their language and culture in North America.

 In each province and territory of Canada, the proportion of francophones in the population dropped between 1951 and 1991, and the population of francophones to the total population of Canada has been in steady decline throughout that period. Nevertheless, their actual numbers have strengthened considerably from 4.1 million in 1951 to 6.6 million in 1991. This represents a 63% increase over the period (Wood, 1993, p.100).

But, in comparison, the number of anglophones in Canada went for the same period from 8.3 million to 16.2 million, which represents a 95% increase. In 1951, francophones represented 29% of the total population of Canada; in 1991, the proportion of francophones had slipped down to 24%; but while the proportion of anglophones had maintained itself at roughly 60 % (an increase of 1%), the proportion of allophones had gone up to16% ( an increase of 4%) (Colombo, 1996).

Linguistic Characteristics of Québec's French-Canadian Society

 Altogether, in 1951, according to Statistics Canada, 82.5% of Québécois reported that French was their first language, 13.8%, that it was English and 3.7% that it was a language other than French or English. In contrast, in 1991, 82.1% claimed French as their first language, 9.6% claimed English, and 8.2% claimed other languages. Colombo (1996) looked at the same events but from a very different angle and reports that, in 1961, there were 61.9% of Québécois whose first language was French, 11.6% whose first language was English and 25% of Québécois who were bilingual. In 1981, 60.1% of Québécois had French as a first language, 6.7% had English and 32.4% were bilingual. In 1991, 58% of Québécois had French as a first language, 5.5% had English and 35.4% were bilingual. These statistics on bilinguals are certainly interesting but they are in sense useless figures for failing to reveal the levels of bilingualism achieved and the additive and subtractive forms of bilingualism.

 The figures above appear in various official sources sometimes the result of self-reports, at other times the result of unexplained compilations. While these various sources tend to agree, researchers must bear in mind that these figures could be less exact than some purport them to be. For example, a common procedure in a census or on a questionnaire is to ask respondents to declare what language they consider to be their first or primary language. The disadvantage of such a method of inquiry is that an individual's answer may vary from one form to another. When funding, entitlements and employment opportunities are based on quotas, group membership or group status, those who master a second language may choose to answer one way rather than another and that may not always reflect reality.

 Moreover, there is not one measure of bilingualism that remains constant from one individual to another for the whole population of the province. In most cases, self-reports are all that has been used to establish whether vast numbers of people are bilingual or not. This means that when Colombo reports that, in 1991, 35.4% of Québécois were bilingual, the spectrum of bilingualism surely ranged for barely bilingual, at the contact level, to fully bilingual with native-like fluency. There is a vast difference between being able to exchange a few civilities for a few minutes, being able to socialize for an hour or two, and being able to earn a living in one's second language. There is also the ultimate level, the level at which one is able to express appropriately thoughts and feelings in one's second language that one would find also difficult to express in one's own primary language. It is at this level of bilingualism that one is expected to be able to not only present and explain one's ideas but to debate a question and counsel someone. There is, unfortunately, no practical way to administer a second language test to a whole province since accurate assessment of a person's linguistic competence and performance requires that subjects be tested interactively one at a time. So far, only large organizations, corporations and governments have been able to implement successfully such testing procedures. Therefore, the degree of bilingualism of these Québécois cannot be assessed with any semblance of accuracy.

One must also ask whether the trend towards bilingualism in Québec has fostered additive or substractive bilingualism, additive bilingualism being defined as the acquisition of a second language with no loss of competence and performance in the first language, and subtractive bilingualism, as the acquisition of a second language with loss of competence and performance in the first language. Whereas additive bilingualism is considered to be an asset, subtractive bilingualism is often deemed to be a liability that sometimes warrants, as is the case in some parts of the United States and Canada, assigning students to special education programmes. Another matter of importance to our subject and to language evaluation is the perception that people have of Québec French. Québec French is often considered to be a poor relation of Parisian French, the latter meaning, I suppose, French as spoken by the cultivated élite of Paris. People who speak French as a second language often claim to have learned Parisian French and use this as an explanation for their inability to understand Québec French. Likewise, people who learn English as a second language, often state that they cannot understand American English because they have been taught the Queen's English. From a linguistic point of view, these explanations are lame excuses that point to gaps and deficiencies in linguistic competence and performance. People who offer such explanations are deluding themselves for French-Canadians and Frenchmen understand each other as much as English-Canadians and Englishmen do, even though there are indeed important differences between Canadian English and British English and Canadian French and European French.

 All languages cut off from the parent stock by an accident of history display two major tendencies. On the one hand they are archaic, retaining words, pronunciations and idioms long since disappeared from the mother language. On the other hand they are innovatory; in phonetics, morphology and syntax they offer new forms unknown to the linguistic family from which they have separated. This has been the destiny of both English and Spanish in the Americas, a fate which French shares to the full (Orkin, 1971, p.22).

 Québec French varies from one region of the province to another for a variety of reasons. A French-speaking Québécois counsellor would pick that up immediately and would be able to investigate some historically and geographically based assumptions as regards upbringing, beliefs and values.

...the most striking aspect of Canadian French is its homogeneity: essentially the same language is spoken from one end of Quebec to the other, and although there are regional variants it nevertheless remains true that residents of Trois-Rivières, Quebec and Rimouski would experience no substantial difficulty in understanding each other. At the same time, the linguistic unity admits of a good deal of variation form place to place...[of] differences which relate for the most part to the language of such everyday occupations as farming, fishing, lumbering and building (Orkin, 1971, p. 22-23).

There was a time when the economic engine of a region could also be used as an indicator of social class, level of education, linguistic ability and accent. With the advent of radio and television these distinctions have started to vanish. Québécois who come from regions that were industrialized by English, English-Canadian and American companies tend to use an inordinate number of anglicisms. This should not be taken as an indicator that these French Québécois would be at ease with an English-speaking counsellor: all it could indicate is that they are from an industrialized region and are probably high school drop-outs but not necessarily so.

Interestingly, and without prejudice to any of the people whose name will appear in this paragraph, it should be noted that linguistic competence and performance as well as accent have not kept some Québécois from acceding to the highest stations in Québec and Canada. Among those who have massacred the French language the most are Camilien Houde (1899 - 1959) former mayor of Montreal and Maurice Duplessis (1890 - 1959), former Premier of Québec. While Jean Chrétien (1934 - ) can speak French as well as one would expect a Prime Minister to able to, there remains from time to time in his accent and delivery a suggestion that his speech is closer to that of the working class than that of politicians and upper echelon bureaucrats. Among those who have graced the French language the most, one finds Jean Drapeau (1916 - ) former Mayor of Montreal, Jean Lesage (1912 - 1980), former Premier Québec and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada.

 The reader can surmise already that a cross-cultural counsellor would be well advised not to assume that his Québécois clients share typical beliefs and values, and speak a folkloric dialect of the French language. The historical and linguistic facts presented so far show that Québécois cannot be deemed to form an ethnically monolithic society. This becomes even more evident when religious beliefs and social values are considered.

Religious Beliefs and Social Change

Wood (1993) and Colombo (1996) report that, in 1991, 86% of Québécois were Catholic. By definition, this should mean that there are, in Québec, proportionately fewer common-law unions, divorces and lone-parent families than in the rest of Canada. The fact of the matter is, however, that Québec had, in 1991, 42% common-law unions in Canada, followed by Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta which had respectively 25%, 12% and 8% of them; Québec also came first with the highest proportion of births to unwed mothers in Canada (this being probably due to the increase in common-law unions); and Québec and the Yukon topped the lone-parent family, their lone-parent families reaching 21.7% of their respective populations. Furthermore, Québec (francophones, anglophones and allophones) had the lowest fertility rate in Canada from 1987 to 1991 (Wood, 1993). And much to the chagrin of the Parti Québécois, assimilation has become a more serious threat since French-Canadian women have had in recent years the lowest fertility rate in Canada as Lucien Bouchard deplored during the 1995 Referendum campaign. According to the separatist movement, the numbers game has become unfair to French Québécois.

 Perception of Unfairness

 The separatist voice was heard clearly in the 1960's and since the Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson, political measures have helped to alleviate the consequences of unfavourable demographic change for Québec. French is no longer just an official language of Canada: all over the country the federal government has imposed hiring quotas that secure employment for French-speaking Canadians; English-speaking Canadians have had to learn French in order to occupy positions that have been declared bilingual; and in the Canadian Forces, 27% of the members have also had to be drawn from the French-speaking population and promoted to all levels accordingly. These and many other measures have helped to shore up the position of French-Canadians in the whole of Canada. In smaller but appreciable ways, provincial governments have emulated their federal counterpart. French immersion schools have opened up from the Atlantic to the Pacific and become a craze. The private sector, however, did not follow suit.

 Indeed, in the unprotected world of private firms and businesses, French Québécois have had to learn English in order to accede to the higher paying positions of an English dominated economy and even at that "... findings concerning occupational differences suggest that the French obtain lower incomes due in part to forms of discrimination which prevent occupational skills form yielding the same financial returns to the French that are enjoyed by the English" (Fenwick, 1982, p.17).

 But discrimination alone does not explain these discrepancies: attempts on the part of French-speaking leaders to ward off the assimilation process have also limited the amount of skills French Québécois have brought to the work force and 'led to a segmentation of labor markets characterized by English domination of jobs in the most productive sectors and firms' of the economy (Fenwick, 1982). A this point, one wonders whether the French Québécois's strategy of resistance to assimilation has not backfired but yet one cannot help being struck by the overwhelming success of enterprises, firms and businesses that French Québécois have developed and run in their own particular ways as Lévesque insisted they should. To illustrate one of these ways, let us consider for instance a three-century-old form of distribution of power within an organization.

 Distribution of Power

Reminiscent of the French Régime, the distribution of power in French Québécois businesses and firms differs noticeably from the distribution of power in their English-Canadian counterparts. For instance, in a French Québécois enterprise, power tends to be centralized and in the hands of the plant director as opposed to decentralized and shared with immediate managers as would generally be the case in a comparable English-Canadian enterprise. French Québécois workers tend to prefer plans for the now and then along with contingency plans for the future, and rules that state clearly policies that cover all possible contingencies with their if's and but's, even though some of them may never happen; in contrast, English-Canadians seem to favour plans for the now and then but not necessarily where all the i's have been dotted and t's crossed, preferring to do so when a particular problem presents itself.

 In a French Québécois enterprise, the immediate supervisor has very limited powers, his role being limited to supervising the implementation of decisions made by his or her superior, whereas, in an English-Canadian enterprise, the immediate supervisor has discretionary powers and is encouraged to show initiative. Finally, French Québécois tend to adopt a defensive attitude towards management and demand rules to protect themselves. On the contrary English-Canadians expect to be consulted and take part in the decision-making process (Mercier, 1985).

 Sense of Control over Life Circumstances

 'Maîtres chez nous' and 'le Québec aux Québécois' are phrases that stress the importance of achieving control over life circumstances. They may also point to the lack of it. Lévesque was quite clear: French Québécois have developed a personality of their own; they speak French and everything else depends on this. In their need to be themselves, they must be able to go through life according to their own ways. But when French Québécois workers do, and this is certainly not what Lévesque would have wanted, they earn less money than do English Québécois equivalents. But worse, even when French Québécois learn English in order to be able to compete more successfully on the job market they still generally earn less money than do their English Québécois  counterparts (Fenwick, 1982). In recent history, French Québécois have tried to have their own country but have been prevented from having it by anglophones and allophones and a minority of francophones. It would not be unreasonable then to assume that they must feel somewhat pessimistic about life and have very little control of life circumstances.

 Research has found that contrary to what could be expected, French Québécois are very buoyant. According to Grabb (1982), French Québécois feel just as capable (not helpless) and active (not passive) as do English Canadians in running their lives but are more apprehensive about having to change plans. French Québécois more likely than English Canadians are to make plans for the future and less inclined 'to see luck involved in such plans'.

 ...the most prudent strategy is to look with skepticism on traditional assertions about French passivism, resignation, and submission to external forces. In the broader context of contemporary Quebec, social and political changes in that province seem to signal a new-found French confidence and assertiveness which belies the old image of French-Canadian society. ...there is no necessary correspondence between the move for collective control and sense of individual control. Nevertheless, the findings ...are completely consistent with these changes and may reflect the same reality--a desire for French autonomy and control, both individually and collectively, and a renewed optimism that these goals will be achieved (Grabb, 1982, p.372-373).

 Summary

 The facts and figures presented in this paper will probably come as a surprise to all those who have held the traditional view that French-Canadians are staunch and obedient Catholics who have large families and never divorce. This is also information that cross-cultural counsellors should be aware of in order to understand where French Québécois come from. Furthermore, the cross-cultural counsellor's task is made more complex by intermarriages, that is, marriages between members of different races, ethnies, religions and linguistic groups. The last name which used to be a sure indicator of linguistic and religious group membership applies less and less. Jean-Baptiste Dubois could be the only child of a lone-parent family or one of twelve children of a two-parent family. And Bruno Fraser might be the son of a second generation Italian mother and a fourth generation Scottish father. He may not speak a word of Italian and barely be able to introduce himself in English, expecting you to pronounce his last name Frahzair and not Fraser; he may have been baptized in the Roman Catholic religion but no longer be a churchgoer.

 This being, some may argue that the present problems of French Québécois society are the result of socio-cultural discontinuity, others that these stem from sociocultural continuity in a de facto multicultural province that has figuratively speaking shrunk and become less tolerant of idiosyncrasies, a province where economic imperatives leave individuals and ethnic communities alike with fewer choices. The consequences of this could very well be maladaptation on the part of those less able than others to adjust to a new environment.

 This new environment for French Québécois may not always be the province of Québec itself but a number of other provinces as well. Wood (1993) reports that, in 1991, 26, 723 Québécois moved to Ontario, 5,021 to British Columbia and 3, 138 to Alberta. How many of them were anglophones, francophones or bilinguals is not known. Langlois (1993) notes that among those who migrate to Québec are important numbers of francophones from other parts of Canada and French Québécois who are simply coming home after having spent some time in other provinces. Langlois hypothizes that language and culture are probably the motivators behind these migrations.

 I have been associated with French Québécois living outside Québec since 1967. It was part of my duties to help them adjust to their new environment. Of all the places where I worked, Ottawa, Kingston and Borden (Ontario), and Comox and Victoria (British Columbia), Ottawa is probably the only area where these francophones appeared to feel relatively at home. This is probably because they where close to Québec and also because there were so many francophones around. In fact, among all these places, Ottawa is the only bilingual environment.

 In contrast, in other areas of the country where French is not spoken and culture is noticeably different from Québécois culture, I have witnessed maladaptive responses to the new environment. These were depression, inability to go out and meet people and find employment, inability to work for an English-speaking boss, unruly behaviour in children and aggressive behaviour in adolescents and young adults. Discussions with adolescents, young adults and the parents of children experiencing difficulty in adjusting to their new environment have convinced me that language barriers and culture differences had caused at least partially some of these maladaptive responses.

 I realize that my view of the plight of French Québécois living outside Québec is based on my personal and subjective observations. But given the fact that I have associated over many years with hundreds of French Québécois living outside their own province and the part that I have been brought to play in their lives, I have come to the conclusion that cross-cultural counsellors dealing with French Québécois living abroad should have access to information on French Québécois language, history and culture; beliefs and values; attitudes towards life, death, family and friends, sex, work, money, leisure, food, alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Unfortunately, so far, such information is available or presented in ways that would make it easy for cross-cultural counsellors to look at French Québécois from a French Québécois perspective and not from the biased angle of another culture.

 Finally, bilingual counsellors must understand that while counselling in one's second language could be an asset, it could also be a liability. As much as possible, one should counsel in one's second language only when one's command of the language approaches native-like ease and accuracy. Furthermore, a cross-cultural counsellor should always be aware that the last name, first name, ethnic origin, religion, education, occupational status of a client, and his or her apparent command of the counsellor's language could also lead to misleading assumptions.

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