20:44 Jan 27 

Thanks for your reply, although this thread is a few weeks old. If I had more/logical context, I wouldn't be in aforementioned pickle. As it was, more clarification had to be requested. Thanks again.

22:51 Jan 11 

That would explain why the FR at first sounded odd to me!

I'm thinking along the lines of "All these data point to the fact that a third of civil-servants would..., and the same goes for Canada" — one has to assume that the 'autant de...' does have something preceding it to refer back to?

I cannot fathom out where the 'contrebas' comes in, unless it really is a reference to something later in your document; and I also cannot figure out why they says 'aussi...', unless they are saying, for example "...a third of civil-servants in City, and the same applies to Country as a whole..."

'civil-servants', of course, will need translating according to the actual groups of employees involved.

I can't help feeling that quite a bit more of your surrounding context would probably make it a whole lot easier to get to the bottom of this and avoid time-wasting guessing games.

22:37 Jan 11 

Would this make any difference:
Autant de données qui impliquent en contrebas, et c’est aussi le cas du Canada, un tiers des fonctionnaires
(Français Québecois)
What do you get the sense it may mean?

22:33 Jan 11 

First of all, is this reliable FR from a native speaker, or from some foreign country that is francophone?

There's nothing wrong with the sentence starting with 'Autant de...', this construction is common enough; but like you say, it is difficult to see how 'en contrebas' quite fits in, especially with 'au pays'.

Is there any possibility of an error — for example 'contrepartie' mis-spelt and then corrected by a spellchecker to 'contrebas'?

If it's « aussi le cas au pays », is there any preceding mention of where we are now, if not in the 'pays'?