Poll: Should B.C. businesses have to use English?

Quebec is no longer the only part of Canada with language issues.

Four Richmond condo owners have filed a human rights complaint about strata meetings conducted in Mandarin instead of English, and following years of complaints about Chinese-only commercial signs, the City of Richmond wants to hire someone to encourage businesses to include English on their signs.

In Canada the freedom to communicate in the language of one’s choice is a constitutional right, B.C.’s strata property act allows business to be conducted in any language, and the City of Richmond’s sign bylaw simply says, “To promote community harmony, it is encouraged that 50% of the sign’s content be in English.”

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BCBusiness

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