Can I speak to a Canadian??

While working for HBC here in India and listening to at least 10 calls a night (sometimes more) I can really see how multi-cultural Canada has become. Sometimes on a given night I can come across agents calling me over for help, because the other person on the end of the line doesn't speak much English at all. Most of these callers seem to be Chinese-Canadian. But they also include many Italian, and Arabic speakers as well.

One time an agent spent an hour on the phone with a Canadian-Chinese customer just trying to help her. He got so desperate and asked me to listen to the call. Wow, I had no idea how he kept his patience, 'cause even I didn't understand a word. But that's Canada, we're multi-cultural, a miss-mosh of the entire world, with every and language and religion under the sun living in one country.

What pisses me off though is when some Canadians call and ask to speak to someone in Canada, or they say "let me speak to a Canadian." It upsets me because I thought Canadians were better than this.
Let me set the record straight, my agents speak English well, for most of them it's their second or first language, and ALL of them did their University in English. They HAVE ACCENTS!!!! Having an accent does not mean you can't speak English. When you speak to a British or Scottish person, do you ask them to speak to someone else? No, of course not, cause they speak English they just have an ACCENT!!
Biggest misconception is that Indians don't speak English. Of course in smaller village areas English is definitely not abundant. But I live here, and I know they speak English. They speak it well!! My boyfriend's English is excellent, and he barely even has an accent. So please, when you call a call center and you hear an Indian accent on the other end please don't assume they don't speak English.

It's actually kind of funny because on this one call I was listening to, as soon as the Indian agent introduced himself, this Canadian guy asked to speak to a Canadian right away. I cringed when this happened 'cause I thought "are we really this ignorant?" So the agent said no problem and connected him with an agent in Montreal. When my agents connected with the agent in Montreal, the Canadian agent had a thick French accent, and I knew it would be difficult for an English speaker to understand. So I thought it was rather humorous that this Canadian guy who asked to speak to a "Canadian" was probably still going to have to deal with someone with an accent. He probably would have understood the Indian agent a lot more than the guy with the thick French accent.