Official Languages Commissioner rules against Canada Post’s English-only web address

Complainant Chantal Carey of New Brunswick was given a report from the commissioner that found her language rights were violated by Canada Post.

The problem worth filing a complaint?

The Canada Post Corporation’s French version of the website has an English URL–www.canadapost.ca–because Canada Post didn’t build a separate French domain name for its French version.

“It’s a principle of equality,” Carey said to the Canadian Press. “Often, people give up by saying ‘We’ll make a complaint and get a response in two years, what’s the point?’ But we must, we must! And often, it’s by making this information public that things change. When reports aren’t made public, the institution says ‘there aren’t too many consequences, so we won’t do anything.’”

Carey filed her complaint last December.

The language commissioner found that Canada Post must have its domain name and URL for every web page in both official languages or at least have the URL in the same language as the the web page’s content.