Canine bilingualism skit draws howls of protest

MONTREAL – It seems some people really believed Quebec’s language laws are going to the dogs — literally.

Several media websites and a number of readers were fooled by a spoof news report, detailed on the CBC Radio satire This Is That, about the Montreal city officials passing a bylaw that would require dogs to learn French and English commands.

A lot of people got the joke — including famous U.S. dog trainer Cesar Millan. He posted on Facebook that the story was “a reminder not to believe everything you read on the Internet.”

But plenty of people were fooled by the faux report, which by week’s end had been shared more than 29,000 times in social media. Many of the people commenting on Facebook were angry, incredulous — and completely oblivious to the fact that the bowwow bylaw was entirely made up.

Some news organizations were also suckered. The story was picked up by New York magazine and the Raw Story website, which treated it seriously. Both identified it as a fake news story after it was pointed out to them that it was a joke. The popular Drudge Report also linked to the CBC show page.

“Never mind,” blogger Dan Amira wrote on the New York page in an acknowledgment the item was bogus.

The stunt was first broadcast Dec. 12. It featured an interview with an earnest — and fake — Montreal city councillor who said the city’s canines needed to understand commands in both languages or dog parks would descend into chaos.

“You have to weigh it against the alternative, which is that we’re going to turn each of the city’s dog parks into a renewal of the Plains of Abraham every Saturday morning,” faux politician Benoit La Douce said in the interview.

He’s referring to the historic 1759 battle where British forces conquered French troops on the plains where the provincial capital is now located.