Once they start laughing at you, you’re through

By M.D. | OTTAWA

It has not been a good couple of weeks for the Office québécois de la langue française, the Quebec government body charged with ensuring that French remains the dominant language in the largely French-speaking Canadian province. Over-zealous application of the law by its inspectors, known in English as the language police, subjected the office to so much international ridicule that on March 8th its head was forced to step down.

It began, as do many things these days, with a tweet. On February 19th, Massimo Lecas, co-owner of an Italian restaurant, Buonanotte, in Montreal, wrote that he had received a letter from the office warning him that there were too many Italian words (such as "pasta") on his menu. This was a violation of Quebec’s language charter, he was told, and if they were not changed to the French equivalents (pâtes in the case of pasta) he would face a fine.

Journalists with a sense of the ridiculous quickly piled on. An analysis of international media coverage of Quebec showed the story, quickly dubbed #pastagate on twitter, received 60 times the coverage of a trip by Pauline Marois, the premier, that had been meant to drum up investor interest in the province. Other restaurant owners who had received similar letters—a fish-and-chip-shop owner who was instructed to call his main offering poisson frits et frites, a brasserie owner who was asked to cover the “redial” button on his telephone and the “on/off” button on his microwave—came forward, an indication this was not an isolated incident.

Journalists happily uncovered more extreme examples, such as the owner of a sex shop who tussled with inspectors over the English-only instructions on a sex aid. She offered to translate the safety instructions into French and place a sticker over the English warning, but this did not satisfy the inspectors. The case went to all the way to the Superior Court of Justice. (I wonder if the lawyers were able to keep a straight face.) The owner ended up with a C$500 fine.

There is of course a serious issue behind the work of the inspectors. Much to Quebec’s credit, French is alive and well there, even though the province's 7.4m French-speakers (94% of Quebec's population) are barraged with English from the rest of Canada and from the United States. It’s not easy for the government to find the right balance between preserving French and making peace with a world where English is the language of business. What makes the job harder is that the guardians of French also want to keep out foreign words, whereas English tends to appropriate them. Language is of course also a deeply political issue in Quebec, a former French colony conquered by Britain before it became part of Canada. The current Parti Québécois (PQ) government wants to make the province an independent country.

Diane de Courcy, the Quebec minister responsible for language, tried at first to shrug off the pasta stories, saying she was satisfied with the work of the inspectors. When the bad publicity persisted, she announced a review of that particular case. The PQ government is currently attempting to toughen language laws, and pastagate was becoming a distraction. But by March 8th it was clear something more was needed. Quebec was the butt of too many jokes. Ms de Courcy announced that Louise Marchand, president and director-general of the language police, was leaving her post effective immediately. Apparently the move was made at Ms Marchand’s request. It is generally the case with figures of authority that when the masses start laughing at you, you are through.