If you want to do business in Quebec, Canada, you better be able to parlez-vous Francais. (Actually, this means "Do you speak French?", so it just demonstrates my lack of knowledge of the language.) Here is a recent email from a friend in Quebec:
French is essential in Quebec - not in the rest of Canada. Legally required, and the French text needs to come first and be larger. If someone in Quebec goes to your client's website, I don't think it's required that it come up initially in French, but it needs to have a button for French. And if they really want to win Quebec business, the French should come up first when a Quebecois goes in, and the English be hard to find! I think the entire design and construction industry in Quebec is French speaking. You can get just about any product you need in Quebec from a French speaking source (or manufacturer even), so they can be picky, and are.
There's a website for the provincial government that lists the language requirements (see below).
http://www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/english/infoguides/selling/selling.htmlThere are an estimated seven million French speakers in Canada. I suspect many of these are also able to read English, but others are militantly French-firsters. This is not an insignificant market, especially for building product manufacturers based in the North Eastern and parts of the Midwestern US.
http://plushtext.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-canada’s-language-laws-before-you-sell-your-products-here/