The Quebec government agency responsible for ensuring the use of the French language has raised the ire of the Jewish community.
The Office de la Langue Francaise sent letters last week to several grocery stores informing them that kosher for Passover products imported from the United States were displayed illegally.
The English-only labels on the products contravened the law that requires retail items to also bear labels in French, the agency said in the letters.
“We didn’t tell them to remove the food. We just informed them it was against the law and asked them to correct the situation,” said Gerald Paquette, a spokesman for the Office.
While Paquette acknowledged that the Passover products have been sold in Quebec stores for years, he said this year his office “received about 10 complaints that the packaging wasn’t in French.”
Many of the complaints came from members of Montreal’s French-speaking Sephardi community, which comprises 21 percent of the Jewish population, he added.
However, one Jewish community leader who is Sephardi expressed skepticism about Paquette’s assertion.
“It doesn’t make any sense” because Sephardi Jews “buy the food as well,” said David Sultan, director of community relations for Canadian Jewish Congress’ Quebec region.
“Why would they do something that would prevent the products from being sold here?”
Sultan said he would ask officials at the government’s French language office to invoke a provision of the province’s French Language Charter that permits certain specialty foods an exemption from the label rule if they are not produced in Canada and if they are sold for limited periods annually.
Paquette said his agency would consider such a request, but added that every effort would be made to persuade the U.S. companies to print their labels in French as well as English.
Sultan was decidedly dubious about influencing U.S. firms.
“The market here is so small. It’s unrealistic to expect them [Americans] to label things in French,” he said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
