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Comment by cvinson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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...

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.

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