In countries with multiple linguistic communities, does the way minority group members speak the majority language pose a barrier when they seek the highest political office? Can their accent undermine their claim to represent all citizens? Is it associated with certain stereotypes? We aim to address these questions through a randomized survey experiment conducted in Canada, a bilingual country with two official languages: English and French. Specifically, we examine how a perceptible Québécois accent in English influences anglophone Canadians’ evaluations of federal party leaders outside Québec. Participants (n = 1,200) listen to a 30-second audio recording featuring a fictional party leader speaking in English. While the content of the message remains identical for all participants, the delivery varies: the first experimental group (n = 600) hears the leader speaking with a “standard” Canadian English accent, whereas the second group (n = 600) hears the leader speaking with a Québécois accent. Participants evaluate the candidate’s competence, intelligence, and trustworthiness, and answer questions exploring whether the candidate’s accent evokes stereotypes about their political orientations. They also assess the candidate’s capacity to represent the interests of all Canadian citizens. Our study contributes to the growing body of literature on cognitive shortcuts by shedding light on language-based judgments, a relatively understudied area of political behaviour.