Lack of Bilingual Labelling Costs Small Grocer $20k

[randito]

I still find it ironic that we use fines and laws and bureauracy to ENOURAGE the use of french, while quebec is using fines and laws and bureaucracy to DISCOURAGE the use of english.

Don't get me started on what it is like for a Vancouverite to live in Québec for a few years, let's just say that I am seeing a counsellor to help me deal with the trauma. No matter what the news does not report, they are at war with Canada and the english speaking world and it's business and money, and they don't care what gets damaged in the process.

As a bilingual person I have to say that agree with the posts on here that we should let the market decide if a product should be bilingual. It makes it very difficult on our businesses to be globally competitive, and it is a waste of resources because the effort goes completely 100% unrecognized by quebecers. Those few quebecers who do know that we go through the effort of doing this mock us for it.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by randito

I still find it ironic that we use fines and laws and bureauracy to ENOURAGE the use of french, while quebec is using fines and laws and bureaucracy to DISCOURAGE the use of english.

Don't get me started on what it is like for a Vancouverite to live in Québec for a few years, let's just say that I am seeing a counsellor to help me deal with the trauma. No matter what the news does not report, they are at war with Canada and the english speaking world and it's business and money, and they don't care what gets damaged in the process.

As a bilingual person I have to say that agree with the posts on here that we should let the market decide if a product should be bilingual. It makes it very difficult on our businesses to be globally competitive, and it is a waste of resources because the effort goes completely 100% unrecognized by quebecers. Those few quebecers who do know that we go through the effort of doing this mock us for it.

Letting the market decide on labeling was the problem to begin with.

If you let the market decide on the value of needing to make customized French labels for the Quebec market, most producers would balk. The cost of producing just French labels eats up the profits from selling in Quebec. So it's like why bother. And that's what started happening way back, companies would skip over the Quebec market and only sell their stuff in English Canada. The cost of producing a limited batch of French labels wasn't worth it to sell stuff in Quebec.

So the government made the law so that all labels in Canada had to have English and French so that it would force the French on the labels thus force companies to sell stuff in Quebec. It's economies of scale in action. If everything is in French and English, then it's easy and affordable to send your products to Quebec.

The law wasn't originally intended to make the lives of Francophones in English Canada easier, the law was intended to bring more products to market in Quebec.

If we let some companies start to slide on the labeling, where do we draw the line? Any company could say they "only intend to sell locally". How could we prove it or not?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Letting the market decide on labeling was the problem to begin with.

If you let the market decide on the value of needing to make customized French labels for the Quebec market, most producers would balk. The cost of producing just French labels eats up the profits from selling in Quebec. So it's like why bother. And that's what started happening way back, companies would skip over the Quebec market and only sell their stuff in English Canada. The cost of producing a limited batch of French labels wasn't worth it to sell stuff in Quebec.

So the government made the law so that all labels in Canada had to have English and French so that it would force the French on the labels thus force companies to sell stuff in Quebec. It's economies of scale in action. If everything is in French and English, then it's easy and affordable to send your products to Quebec.

The law wasn't originally intended to make the lives of Francophones in English Canada easier, the law was intended to bring more products to market in Quebec.

If we let some companies start to slide on the labeling, where do we draw the line? Any company could say they "only intend to sell locally". How could we prove it or not?

What is your source for this?