By Kaitlynn Mendes
The restaurant business is a very volatile endeavour, but the Empire Grill could soon see a boom in business.
The restaurant is just one in Ottawa’s business community taking advantage of a new pilot-project to encourage companies to provide bilingual service and signs.
Heather Ferguson, the restaurant’s manager, hopes the new French menus will bring more business to the restaurant.
She says she knows how hard it is to translate food terms to French and that she was grateful Ottawa has finally offered help.
Ottawa Coun. Georges Bédard oversees the $2.5 million project.
He says it won’t come cheap.
“It’s a partnership program, so for restaurants for example if you want to have a menu translated in both languages this will be done,” he says. “You’ll have to pay for it, but there will be quality control.”
Bédard said that businesses will have to cover the costs of changing signs and menus.
Bédard says the University of Ottawa’s human resources department is working with the city and will provide “an inventory of bilingual people with expertise to provide services.”
Catherine Gagnaire, spokesperson for the Department of Heritage gave Ottawa the funding two years ago.
“Ottawa so far has been the only Canadian city to have this program,” she said. “The funding comes on a basis of request.”
Ferguson says the project is attractive because it includes her francophone clients. She says 95 per cent of her staff are bilingual and she’ll keep it that way.
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street Business Improvement Association says she hopes her association will eventually join the project.
“It’s a great program and many of our customers come from the Gatineau region,” she says. “It’s really tough to get good restaurant and shop services in French”
Patricia Caven, manager of Perfect Books on Elgin, says the project would not be useful for her business.
“There is only one French language bookstore in town, so we’re never called on that much to be bilingual,” she says.
Caven says if she were to have another language, it would be Spanish, not French.
“There’s such a limited amount of French language books available in Canada,” she said. “It’s easier to get Spanish, most of our books are published in the U.S.”
Caven says bilingualism is an employee asset, but her francophone customers usually speak English anyways.
Sally Chinn, manager of Vanilla clothing stores says introducing French is hard for older business owners.
“People in the government get paid to take it (French),” she said. “And we who make less money don’t have the time, or we might have the time, but we certainly don’t have the finances to do it.”
Chinn said she didn’t think having French signs was crucial.
“I mean, our signs are pretty limited, like 50 per cent off,” she says. “It’s not really anything French people can’t understand.”
Bédard says the project is important for French speaking residents and tourists.
“We want a feel in this city of comfort, using one or the other language.”
The program targeted the Byward Market and St. Laurent areas first. After that, Bédard says the onus rests on other businesses to get involved.
Mellor says she wasn’t surprised business associations are required to approach the city.
“In defence of the city, it would be very difficult and costly to contact every business, especially ones that aren’t linked by a business improvement association.”
The Preston Street Association represents about 135 businesses alone, which Mellor says can be challenging.
Instead, she thinks businesses should show they want the program.
“This is their bread and butter, and I think businesses could go and individually press for these services,” said Mellor.
Bédard says he hopes private enterprises will continue providing bilingual services after the project ends in 2006.