Quebec's language police have ordered a small business owner in the Gatineau region to stop making posts to Facebook solely in English.
Eva Cooper is the owner of a fashion boutique named Delilah in the Parc in Chelsea, Quebec, which has a sister store in Ottawa.
Both stores have their own Facebook pages, and last week the Office Quebecois de la langue francaise sent Cooper a letter saying her Quebec store's page could no longer make posts solely in English.
Cooper said she was shocked her Facebook page was flagged by the language agency.
She is bilingual, as are all of her employees, and said she always serves her customers in whichever language they speak.
"I'm not interested in having a French posting and then to write the identical one in in English," said Cooper of her Facebook page. "I may end up mixing English and French together."
The issue, according to the language watchdog, is with article 52 of the Charter of the French language, which states catalogues, brochures and similar publications published by a business must be in French.
That law also applies to websites, as the two-man, Montreal-based public relations firm Provocateur Communications found out two weeks ago when it received a notice to create a French version of its website.
And as Cooper has found out, the law also applies to Facebook pages.
“When you’re advertising, and it’s commercial, it has to be in French,” said OQLF spokesman Jean-Pierre Le Blanc.
Jean-Francois Lisée, minister responsible for relations with the Anglophone community, said he believes posting in French on Facebook is just good business.
“Well if you are the store owner and you want to communicate to Quebec customers, the majority of Quebec customers are Francophone so you can communicate in any language that you like, but French has to be part of it,” he said.
Cooper has asked the OQLF to send her the notice again--this time in English--but she has yet to receive it.
Cooper said it is time for language laws to be updated in order to make the rules surrounding social media clear, since only people who request to follow her store's page normally see it.
"Nobody's paid me a membership fee to be part of my Facebook page," said Cooper. "It's up to them to like us, so that's where I think there's a bit of a grey zone."
She has been given until March 10 to come up with ways to address the complaint or face a fine.
She said she is considering fighting the OQLF, but if she’s found guilty, she could be fined anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.
"I’ve obviously insulted someone and I feel bad about that. But at the end of the day I never thought that the laws extended to Facebook,” said Cooper.
But there is a bright side to her story -- Cooper says her store's Facebook page has received more than 2,000 "likes" since Wednesday night.