Quebec should stop trying to legislate language by itself
Quebec has recently undergone a new wave of tightening enforcement of its language laws - targeting any products sold whose text is not fully bilingual . As usual, this will have the impact of driving out suppliers who are unwilling to make the change for all of Canada, or to create new supply chains for Quebec alone. Remaining suppliers can then charge more due to the decreased competition. Aside from the fact that commerce is designated as an area of federal jurisdiction , Quebec is unwise to go it alone on its regulation of product language laws. Canadian consumer packaging laws already require that a product identifies itself in English and French , and compliance with this law is nearly universal in the country. The Quebec law would go further, requiring all text to be in French or bilingual. However, when going it alone, Quebec stands to lose more compared with standing together with the rest of the country. It is (necessarily) a smaller market than Canada as a whole. Many ...
