Unilingual Labels on Canadian Shelves

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Pics or it never happened…

Oddly enough, the moment I thought to whip out my phone and take a photo of the sign, I realized that I left it in the car on the wireless charger. So If I get the opportunity and can snag a photo, I’ll be sure to upload it here in a future update.

In this episode, I talk about how a sign posted in Walmart advised that some products on the shelves may be labeled in English only.

What’s the big deal?

Canada is a bilingual country, meaning things like government services and product packaging must be offered in both English and French. As a result of supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the products in Canadian stores have been sourced from an area of the supply chain that typically produces products with English packaging.

The sourcing of products from an ‘English-only’ production line has most likely been done to accommodate the increased demand for certain products like cleaning supplies.

The Government’s Approval

This decision to allow unilingual products on Canadian shelves has been approved by the federal government in an effort to keep store shelves stocked during the pandemic. As a result of the lack of French on the products, signs are now posted indicating the manufacturer is required to post the bilingual information on their public website; And while they could have easily written off these costs on their taxes, not even the government saw the value in forcing them to do this.

Perhaps in a future episode we can see how well these companies are in compliance of these orders.

Money Matters

The cost of re-labeling products to comply with bilingual regulations would certainly not be worth the cost during a global economic and health crisis. As a business owner, this is one of those moments where breaking the rules a little bit can make it easy to get past a tricky or tough financial roadblock.

To avoid roadblocks during tax time, I use Quickbooks® for Self Employed. Their easy transaction management makes it easy to track and categorize my spending, and it’s even easier to write-off the software as an administrative cost. Check out this post to learn more about tax write-offs and start your FREE 30 DAY TRIAL!

Midnight thoughts are sponsored by Quickbooks® for Self Employed.