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Comment by ckdarby | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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