Try having a startup in Montreal. Our has been targeted by the language police, and is being forced to translate not just our front end, but our blog and social media presences. It doesn't matter that 0.01% of customers are in Quebec, and that we have determined that there is no market for our product in french.

Anyone can send an anonymous message to this government agency and it will audit your business to make sure you are compliant. Have more than 50 employees? Make sure the copy button on your photocopier says "copiez" or you'll have to put stickers over it (true story, happened at my brother's pharma startup).

The sad thing is that most Montrealers have the attitude that "you're in Montreal, you should learn french." The problem is, this law goes far beyond that, and is a serious impediment for Montreal startups.

My understanding is that you do have the right to know who complained about your compliance under Bill 101.

Anyways, I don't think it's asking much to have your website/blog/frontend in the language of the province where you operate, but the photocopier business, keyboards in french etc is ridiculous. Also it seems the language police always get more confident whenever a PQ government gets power.

Actually, it is "asking a lot". Quebec's language laws have been found to be in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unfortunately, the Charter (which Quebec did not support) has a "notwithstanding" clause, which Quebec invokes more often than all other provinces combined.

Quebec is a joke, both economically and with respect to liberal democracy.

This is accurate.

The company I work for had to put French stickers on every key of every keyboard. They had to put stickers on the microwave oven as well...

I hate Canadian bilingual keyboards so much.

Wait, you actually look at the keys? You can use whatever keyboard but keep it mapped out to your favourite layout. I personally use a Canadian bilingual layout but haven't owned such a keyboard in quite a while, since work doesn't look fondly in buying a MacBook Pro with a layout that a future inheritor would bristle at...

Now if you mean that you really hate the layout, it's really anti-programming, and sometimes I wonder why I stick to it. :) It's so easy to use a layout switching keyboard shortcut...

This is for real. US alt international layout on Linux is great, best ever. And Azerty > Canadian bilingual keyboards too. Canadian bilingual keyboards suck for writing in both French and English.

I hate how the left shift key is split, and how the backslash moves to the enter position.

Despite being in Canada, I only buy laptops with US keyboards.

Apart from the photocopier sticker, that seems pretty reasonable.

If you speak both languages (or have employees who do), how difficult is it anyway?

Very. We post multiple times a day on social media, create videos, do webinars, and long-form eBooks. Most of our staff are in the US, and don't speak french. Of our ~25,000 customers, 10 are in Quebec.

As you can imagine, hiring a full time french speaker just doesn't make sense. So, we have to "fire" our Quebec customers and block the province via IP. This is what dozens of startups (and big web companies) are doing now to circumvent the crazy laws.

> Most of our staff are in the US, and don't speak french.

> As you can imagine, hiring a full time french speaker just doesn't make sense.

So how are you based in Montreal, and why? Why not relocate to the US, or English-speaking Canada?

I live here, and started the company here. It is massively difficult to move the company without incurring the ire of the tax authorities. Moving was my first response to this situation, but lawyers and accountants have advised against it.

Learning to order lunch or talk about the weather in a second language is not that hard. Communicating at a professional level takes years of practice. For most people - especially mid-career adults with limited time - that's not going to happen.

I work in tech in Montreal.

People speak in english. You can speak english all day if you want. My clients speak in english. We speak in english. We create websites that are 100% english for clients who are based in the USA.

What isn't allowed it having a workplace where the local (who can't speak english) have no chance of being hired because of the language. That is also why the employer must provide all workplace tools with french label. All else is lies, stereotypes and people not understanding the law.

No that's not all it is, and the person who does not understand the law is you. Quebec language laws require for instance that commercial signs not only have French, but that French be predominant. Why does a sign having big print in English and small print in French, prevent a native French speaker from working there?

Also, realistically if you hire many programmers who only speak English, it's simply not realistic to hire a programmer who speaks French exclusively because he can't communicate with the team. Putting "copiez" on your photocopier does not alleviate that.

These laws are discrimination, pure and simple, and have been found as such by the Canadian Supreme Court on many occasions. Most Quebecois just don't care about paltry things like individual rights, where their language is involved.

> Quebec language laws require for instance that commercial signs not only have French, but that French be predominant.

No. If that was true, Best Buy would have big billboards that say "Meilleur Achat". "Canadian Tire" would be "Pneus Canadiens". They don't. The law don't ask for it.

> Also, realistically if you hire many programmers who only speak English, it's simply not realistic to hire a programmer who speaks French exclusively because he can't communicate with the team.

That's the entire point of the law. It's the very reason it's there. To prevent business from hiring an all english staff which would prevent local people from working there.

Edit: Some of it may not make sense to you because we are working in the tech industry. The abuses those laws are there to protect against happen mostly to minimum wage workers in the industrial sector. Some people could get hurt if the machines are not labelled correctly. I admit that stickers on the photocopying machine is a joke but it could be life and death when we are talking about a big industrial machines filled with saws.

It's still a big effort, learning a language properly is not something you do for 2 hours on the weekend and get proficient at it.

Even more so if you don't plan to use that language for anything else afterwards.

It isn't that hard but isn't that easy either.

> It's still a big effort, learning a language properly is not something you do for 2 hours on the weekend and get proficient at it.

There's a big difference between being really proficient and knowing enough to be productive. In any case, like other skills, everyone gets better by actually doing it, but they need to start first.

Many, many of the people injecting money into Vancouver already speak a second language just fine. French would be a third at least.

Apprendre une deuxième langue n'est pas le problème, mais la Loi 101 derange beaucoup de gens

Exactly, how many people coming to Montreal would be happy that their kids could only go to school in French?

Probably about as many parents who are fighting to get their kids in French Immersion in the rest of Canada. I can't speak about anywhere other than Toronto but here it's quite sought after, second language for children.

Especially amongst first generation immigrants like myself.

The difference is that in the rest of Canada, your child (and their children) does not lose their right to go to English school if they go to a French school first.

That's not because of French language, they would try even if it had Zulu immersion. It's just that it's cheaper than private schools, but you still get good students and quality environment

Correct. The parents that care put their children into French immersion because other like-minded parents do so and their children are high-achieving.

Any teacher will tell you that parenting is the biggest determining factor in academic achievement, and as a result French immersion is effectively the "academic stream" in the Canadian school system. It also receives additional federal funding which is not available to English programs.

A Zulu-immersion charter school is my new Toronto-based startup idea.

Exactly. The school rankings are the driver here, not french language.

Anyone wants to work for the federal government or in politics needs French, beyond a certain level. So making sure your kids learn it opens some really valuable opportunities for them.

I don't speak French but would love to put my kids in a French-only school.

They pretty much learn a second language for free. Why not?

If by "free" you mean "at the cost of learning anything else".

I went to French immersion in Canada. We didn't 'miss out' on anything that kids did in English school. They still had to take a second language class (we didn't since we already had English + French). We just had classes like science, math and social studies in French as well. We still learned English, and of course live in an English-speaking region, so we missed out on nothing.

You miss out on special education support. Have reading troubles? Behind the curve in math ability? Have motor skills issues that make writing difficult? You're told to drop out of French immersion and return to the main English stream. It's a de-facto removal of anyone with any academic problems at all.

And by extension, English schools that overlap with French immersion schools become biased towards kids with learning difficulties which makes them that much less attractive to high-achieving parents. The TDSB elementary system isn't supposed to be streamed but effectively it is.

(I had two kids in TBSB French immersion until grade 4 when we moved away)

How many people come to the rest of Canada and are happy that their kids are forced to learn English?