I live in quebec.

My kids go to a nice school. I live in a nice neighborhood. I get the nice metro to work. Or I cycle on the nice cycle network.

I got my covid test, and result. I saw a really good doctor the same day. The same doctor rang me back 2 days later to check up on me at home.

My kids would normally be in and out of a fantastic, modern library, or at the pool, or playing soccer in the great parks. Sadly the lockdown has temporarily stopped that, but it will be back.

If I go outside I'm not avoiding the homeless in huge numbers. Rent and housing are not absurdly expensive, allowing affordability for families.

Yes Quebec has areas to improve, but it's a great place.

If being a great place for companies made for a good society then the UK and USA wouldn't be on their knees.

...and my kinds go to overcrowded 'secondaire' (with very questionable teaching quality all across the QC, yes I seen articles praising how good is QC in math)

...and I often stuck on overcrowded orange line (last year was was the worst in delays)

...had to travel for the medical reasons abroad, wait times in QC are really bad if you are not dying right now

...I also don't specifically avoid homeless people, but sometimes it hard to take cash on Sainte-Catherine - people doing drugs near indoor ATMs in the winter because they are heated

...and my kids also like BAnQ library, yet ~about a year ago all soft chairs/sofas were replaced by plastic, because BAnQ is partially a homeless shelter

But hey, enjoy your Quebec, Montreal specifically, as I see. ...and I will try to overcome my issues, in my Quebec.

Montreal homeless issue is nothing like the USA situation.

The orange line is a dream compared to the London tube.

That's a very Canadian reply - to compare with the worst examples, especially US ones. Not too many 3rd world countries can 'beat' US in homeless situation.

I've cited the USA and UK, two western, English speaking countries.

I totally have the opposite experience in Québec. Everywhere and anything in Québec feels red taped and low of customer service. Maybe I have to speak French. Speaking in English and being non white gets a degraded service in Québec.

"good service" is a bad sign for society. Americans have "good service" because low income workers are one insane customer away from their lives tipping over the edge.

Americans also complain about service in Europe, where workers are also not treating each customer interaction as a make or break situation.

Good service as in when I went to a restaurant, the waiter said "You have to tip me $10 when you are done eating".

Depends where you are in Quebec though, downtown Montreal, TMR, West Island, gay village, plateau probably fine. East end, you're going to have some troubles there bisdy

Yes. Nowadays I exclusively shop & eat around these areas. But by next year I will be saying Quebec goodbye for good. Its not just businesses here, the govt services and the police too. I am not going to fund them with my tax dollars.

> If I go outside I'm not avoiding the homeless in huge numbers. Rent and housing are not absurdly expensive, allowing affordability for families.

In a recent trip to Montreal I never saw more homeless people out on the streets, and they were nasty and mean, demanding my attention. The shocking part was how cold it was outside and how the city allowed that to happen.

This is anecdata. Homeless in the USA is far, far worse.

NY has 1 in 125 homeless, 70k. Montreal has 3.1k. (1 in 1000).

Yes Montreal can do better, but as per my original point, where the poster complained about the ease of registering a new business, making your province into a great place to register a business is not the path to a great society.

https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/

https://www.homelesshub.ca/community-profile/montreal

Progress and Poverty, the top selling book behind The Bible in the 1890s has more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

It's not clear to me how creating a directory of local online businesses in any way makes anything "extremely complicated"

It's not. In fact, this initiative is laughed at by most people here (in QC) as it is mostly exactly the same thing that "La toile du Québec" was 20 years ago. The government (and a few not very liked but well connected people) thaught it would be a way for people to get infos and to buy local. It's not very good.

The parent just wants to brightly shine his anti-quebec bias.

> first step

It starts with this and then could become if you're not apart of the list you're going to have "more problems".

What other province is doing this? In my opinion this makes it more complicated already.

It always starts with a first step, Bill 101 exists to protect the French culture. Now people actively use it as an exploit against companies.

I've known people who use Bill 101 to have documents provided in French just because they didn't like what the company was doing and for no other reason than to make them have to do it.

Most of the issues and why a lot of things are not offered in Quebec is rarely because of bill 101 or language in general. It is not difficult to get something translated and offer it in a binlingual version. Heck, countries with much smaller populations get a localized version of international products.

Usually, at least when i was in insurance, it is because of legal and regulatory reason. While the law systems in Canada is based on the common law, the law system in Quebec is based on the french civil code. This had repercussions on the way a lot of regulation is thought about. So when it was time to get our products ready for Canada, we had to do a few special cases for Quebec. My guess is that a lot of suppliers just overlook it or do not want to perform the appropriate checks and adaptations because they are not organized in a way to handle this distinction inside a country.

There are also stronger consumer direction laws. Good for us, but yeah, more legal checks to do :)

Consumer protection laws are only good for the citizenry if and when the regulations protect the consumer more than additional competition would.

That's never stopped companies in Louisiana.

Of all the unintended/bad consequences of bill 101, I’m not sure about this one. Maybe you witnessed something but I’d be surprised if that was a regular thing. Also, depending on the context this could be a very legitimate request; how is anyone supposed to know the intent of someone asking for a translation?

I confirm this is true. Happened to me twice.

First time was a company that had 0 clients in Qc (or Canada if that matters), still received a complaint.

Fortunately, since we didn't care about the FR website, we basically added a link which was pointing to a google translate version of it.

But yeah, this law is definitely used by many as an "exploit against companies" just to make you waste your time.

Multiple different times, different companies, different people and knowing the intent because they either told me point blank or I asked.

Yes I understand that you know the intent; but are you suggesting that we shouldn't mandate businesses to hand out some documents in French because a few people you know are assholes? Do you realize that there is a reason that this law exists and that people could legitimately want to ask for documents in French?

> Do you realize that there is a reason that this law exists and that people could legitimately want to ask for documents in French?

I don't see where my comment is saying that individuals shouldn't be provided the documents in French.

I'm only discussing what I observed and further providing context when it was suggested it doesn't happen often and it could be legitimate.

Equally it might not be legitimate.

It is actually fairly common reply I get when I mention it can be abused.

Ok then I misread what you were trying to say. I wish Bill 101 wasn't abused (like the Italian restaurant scandal thing). Sadly, as with most laws, people will always find a way to twist it...

It really is not the bad, most of the time when there is actual abuse there is a social outrage and they back off.

Bill 101 was created to protect the only French-speaking group in America. It's by definition a lesser evil to protect French from declining and it is visibly not enough since the percentage of French speaker across the province is going down.

There are quite a few other French-speaking places in America and most of them are (or see themselves) under no cultural threat.

Bill 101 was only created by the Quebecers for themselves, not by some entity above them in order to protect them.

Citation needed. French is definitely in decline in Louisiana and some efforts are being put in place https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/louisiana-french... .

Similarly story for New Brunswick as far as I know. Those two are, to my knowledge, the biggest francophone regions outside Québec in North-America. Franco-Ontariens are not very happy either right now with Doug Ford cutting French services. I don't disagree with you second sentence.

I didn't really think about New Brunswick and Louisiana as those only have French-speaking minorities of tens of thousand people.

Haiti and the various French territories have many more French speakers than those (more or less 7 million, only slightly less than Québec has).

Edit I'm afraid that without an actual source you might not believe me, so here it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_F...

Replying to seszett; You're right, I forgot about Haïti. Don't forget that they are their own country so they are not quite under the same amount of pressure than Québec or other French minorities in NA. Apart from that I don't really see your point; the other francophone territories in NA are mostly France's Territoires d'Outre Mer so of course they wouldn't feel that their French culture is under threat... Let's just say I'm less than convinced by your point here

I was just saying that Quebec is not the only French speaking place in America, nothing more.

>> There are quite a few other French-speaking places in America and most of them are (or see themselves) under no cultural threat.

Well... This reads to me like you're saying something more.

Well I was saying that they don't seem to need bill 101, since you were saying that bill 101 was created to protect the only French speaking group in America.

Québec is not the only French speaking group in America and bill 101 is only a Québec law, that's what I wanted to say. Maybe that wasn't clear.

Well, of all the other places, either they are a) Haiti, which is its own country b) territories of France c) places where French is dying.

Thank you for this perfect example of the slippery slope fallacy.

I guess you're not French Canadian if you think that way

Think what way? That Bill 101 exists to protect the culture or that people actively exploit it?

I got the Covid-19 care guide in my mail box by the Québec government in French only because of Bill 101. Language politics trumps even in case of emergency communications in Québec.

It's nice that Legault is doing his conferences in French and English though.

Skilled immigration to Canada via Québec takes 3 years in the fastest category. In other categories it takes 4 to 6 years. Immigration to the rest of Canada takes only 6 months via Express Entry.

Québec's immigration system is the slowest, red taped and infamous for its bureaucracy and mismanagement.

They can't even get a grip on senior home issues with Covid-19 let alone have an online local shopping site. The province's bureaucracy has no limits.

What type of insurance can't you get in Quebec? Insurance is usually cheaper in Quebec compared to its peers (Ontario & BC).

Flight cancellation insurance, for example. Personal car insurance in QC is cheaper partially because SAAQ is basically as co-insurer for the car incident disabilities. Some personal insurances are cheaper in QC. Commercial insurances most of the time is the over way around.

> Went to buy insurance, couldn't because ToS lists countries couldn't do business with includes, Sadi, Iran, Iraq and Quebec.

What company is this out of curiosity? To think they see nations entrenched by Wahhabism, or Shariah Law to be on equal footing with Quebec when assessing their threat analysis', it seems like quite a leap in risk management strategies.

I'm told Quebec is a lovely place, to visit... mainly for the reasons you described. And the only working relationships I've had with people from there were 50/50 on relative polar positions: as in one of the most short sighted, lazy entitled person to deal with, to a pretty good worker who showed motivation to want to be part of a team and be a part of something that mattered and willing to adapt to their given situation/role.

Oddly enough, they were a couple.

Also worth noting the post that Amazon's DC in France look to be mothballed, too:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/amazon-is-at-a-standsti...

Their Québécois may sound odd when compared to the Old World, but it seems they're just as 'French' in practice. Maybe we'll see Yellow Vests to a street near you.

>> To think they see nations entrenched by Wahhabism, or Shariah Law to be on equal footing with Quebec

It's not this - the laws around insurance, contests and many contracts are different than the rest of Canada; many companies find it's not cost-effective to have to support another jurisdiction for the potential customer base so they just exclude it.

I heard great things about the paper-based bank system. :)