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Comment by archgoon | Hacker News Reader

Stringent local laws with respect to competitions.

https://www.thebalanceeveryday.com/why-are-so-many-competiti...

> Quebec's sweepstakes laws are designed to protect its residents from scammers and to ensure that prizes are awarded as promised.

The solution they came up with is to make the rules so complicated that there are no sweepstakes available in Quebec! Cool.

> Why is Quebec excluded from the CTF? Local laws and regulations make it extremely challenging for us to run a competition open to residents of Quebec. We are truly sorry about this, and hope to change this in the future if possible.

This aspect could be the real hurdle:

"Pay a fee of up to 10% of the sweepstakes' value, depending on who is allowed to enter."

So they would need to pay Quebec $3K just to have the competition available there, even if it is a global competition.

It sounds to me that Quebec have got to have some reason for these Quebec special laws. It has nothing to do with France, there has to be another reason. Does anyone have any ideas?

From a 2011 Globe and Mail article:

> Ever notice that Canadian contests keep barring the poor residents of Quebec from entering? It's not that contests are illegal in Quebec – it's just that the government makes it especially difficult to run one.

> For one thing, contest runners have to pay tax on the value of the prize. For another thing, contests with prizes over $2,000 have to register their rules with a government agency, the Régie des alcools des courses et des jeux – which is usually just referred to as the "Régie."

> To top it off, contests with prizes worth more than $5,000 actually have to deposit an amount as a security with the Régie, as a means of protecting consumers should the contest runner fold or renege.

> When compounded with the complexities of working in two languages at once, many contest runners simply disqualify entrants from the province.

Yeah that's a good way to make everyone just skip your whole province. Just like how all the big headquarter offices moved to Toronto from Montreal in the 1970s, Quebec keeps shooting themselves in the foot. This chart shows everything you need to know:

http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-toronto-evolve-1.png

By all means they should be the dominant city in Canada instead of Toronto, or at least equal. But they are so obsessed with mirroring France's obsession with rules.

Canada almost always ranks near the top of the Economic Freedom Indexes (higher than the US), while France is in the middle ranking below most post-soviet eastern European nation states.

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

And yet, housing prices in Montreal are much more affordable. And it has much better transportation options (separated bike lanes) despite significantly harsher winters. And Montreal is significantly happier [1] than Toronto or Vancouver. In other words, population growth (or money, or property values, whatever) isn't everything.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/a...

I tried living in Montreal and the long punishing winter trumps all of the other great benefits of Montreal over Toronto. It goes on far longer and the snow fall is far, far worse. But yes it's also a far prettier city than Toronto with a better music and cultural scene with super cheap rent.

But I now see it as a far better tourist destination than somewhere to build a life/business. Unless you're an artist or student who can't afford rent in a big city but still want to live in a big city (which is what 99% of the young people I met seemed to be doing, a whole lot of creative but unmotivated individuals).

I also found the stereotypes of the francophone Quebecois I heard my whole life growing up in Ontario to be surprisingly accurate (I went in highly skeptical as I'm a bit of a snob myself). The francophone parts of town were often both rude and hostile to someone still learning the language, while local laws force every worker to start every interaction in french. I was basically forced to start every interaction in every cafe/convenience store apologizing that I don't speak french well and continuing in English, missing every opportunity to learn. I also witnessed multiple protests over companies like JC Penny and not french-ifying their brand names (which sounds crazy to me), which I thought was ridiculous and unsurprising that business was slow there.

I spent a year living in MTL then came back multiple times over the last decade and very few new buildings or businesses changed. Meanwhile Toronto build about 100 new skyscrapers and new companies in the same time period.

the laws were probably written with lotteries and gambling originally in mind, and made overly broad to prevent people from finding loopholes. (like, say, a poker tournament where the chips aren't worth real money, but there is a cash prize at the end.)

It is also because the government is the one managing casinos and gambling all together. Even a bar is prohibited to have game consoles if they don't pay some kind of fee to Loto-Quebec.

Almost everything in Canada, every ad, promotion, service has some kind of special section for Quebec.

They insist on having completely different laws for every little thing. From a companies POV, its probably as legally onerous as operating in a different country altogether - not worth it.

As a resident, yes this is pretty much it.

For an American firm especially, it's just a odd little place with everything in a different language, it's just not worth the hassle for lawyers and risk, so they just skip it.

> From a companies POV, its probably as legally onerous as operating in a different country altogether - not worth it

It's much worse than that. Google didn't research the sweepstakes laws in, say, Paraguay or the Gambia before making this announcement. They figure that, in the worst case, their legal department will tell them not to award the prize if the winner comes from a country where they can't legally award it, and they'll scramble the necessary PR people if that comes to pass.

For Quebec, on the other hand, they'll be forbidden from carrying on business in all of Canada if they advertise this competition as one that can be won in Quebec. A terrible chilling effect - and I say this as someone who universally favours the freedom and self-determination of small nations such as Quebec.

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