Soucy said he hopes this retrospective look at his concern doesn't incite the government send a final fine notice. Dear Michel, I read the article. I can well understand the need for dual language sites for those which are meant for both. Personally, I would not want to wade through a site which had dual languages, since I don't understand them. Official publications and websites are one thing.
Private business is another.
In some cases, the working language of even medium and large businesses in Quebec was English-only, which meant in practice that francophones either had very reduced employment or promotion prospects, or if they were strictly unilingual francophones, they had no prospects with those companies except for the most menial jobs. One of the main original intentions of Quebec's language laws seems to have been to ensure that the bulk of the workplace became uniformly francophone, with common sense exemptions for businesses below a certain size, to allow, for example, small family businesses or other very small businesses to continue working in languages other than French. However, all businesses were required to have external signage in French, and to offer customer service in French when required. The Web, being a non-physical medium, does not impose any visible signage on any passerby in the real world, and since nobody physically visits a Web site, they are not inconvenienced unduly by a lack of French language content or customer service, as they would be if they were physically present in a shop or office that lacked French language signage or French speaking staff. The issue that the Quebec government now has to decide to deal with is how hard or how tolerant they will be on small businesses on the Web.