STATEMENTS AND SYMBOLS
Unanswered questions remain about new sign rules
We don’t have the language crises in Quebec that we used to. Since linguistic peace has been reached, along with the practical limits of what can be done for French through regulation, the issues have got smaller. There used to be loopholes in Bill 101, now there are pinpricks.
This week, the Couillard government announced its solution to a so-called problem that has existed since before Bill 101 was adopted in 1977, but to which nobody paid much attention until a few years ago.
As the courts have recently confirmed, businesses with English names that are protected as trademarks by federal law or international treaty can put them on signs without having to translate them into French.
So the government decided this week that it will adopt a regulation by the end of the year that will require such a business to add a descriptor in French to its name on outdoor signs.
It could be a description of the goods or services offered by the business, a slogan, or a theme, above, below or beside the business’s name, said the minister responsible for the protection and promotion of French, Hélène David.
She added that the regulation will give the affected businesses time to comply, and that the government might even help them pay the cost of changing their signs.
The regulation hasn’t been drafted yet, and David left some questions unanswered.
Why should taxpayers reward businesses financially for having been what the
government says are poor corporate citizens? Why should those businesses be subsidized to do what others have done voluntarily and at their own expense? Shouldn’t the latter be compensated, too?
What is the logic that requires a business to add a descriptor to its name on its storefront, but not on its indoor signs, or in its advertising, or anywhere else?
And since we’re talking about the language of commercial signs in Quebec, size matters. The present, general rule is that French must have “marked predominance” over other languages on commercial signs. Under the new rule, how big will the French descriptor have to be, relative to the English name?
Inevitably, some anglophones see the proposed new language rule as silly. But some anglos see every language rule as silly.
At least this one takes nothing away from anglos in Quebec, and would have no effect on our daily lives. It is trivial compared to the former Parti Québécois government’s Bill 14, which would have restricted access to public services in English.
The reaction of some anglos, however, looks like a throwback to 1974, when anglos objected to a new requirement in Bill 22, legislation introduced by another Liberal government, that French be added to English commercial signs in general.
It’s true that the new rule is not a solution to a practical problem. Requiring that French be added to English business names is not really necessary for purposes of communication.
Is there a French-speaking consumer in Quebec who has managed to avoid saturation bombardment by advertising
about what, say, Best Buy sells? And anyone who is offended by that store’s English-only name can send it a message by shopping somewhere else.
But like so much of Quebec politics, including the government’s proposed anti-“radicalization” legislation, the proposed new rule is not about reality, but about symbols. It’s another use by a Quebec government of legislation, or in this case regulation, to make a political statement.
In this case, it’s a statement about language, not as a means of communication, but as a symbol of the status of the people who speak it. It’s about territory, and about redrawing a boundary to expand it, if only a little.
Have a good summer. This column returns Aug. 4.