The Office québécois de la langue française, more commonly known as Quebec's language police, has often been a source of mockery. The office, which exists to force businesses to use prominent French-language signage, has always seemed like an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. A business will use signs that their customers understand, so they're going to use French language signs so long as their customers speak it. If they don't speak French, all the signs in the worlds won't change that.
What is more interesting is not that the language police exist, but that they've gone mad with power, and as a result have had drawn a level of mockery that hasn't been seen since they were created. Lacking a real job with a purpose, and existing after everyone has altered their signs, they must have suddenly decided that they needed to justify their own existence. That is the only explanation for their initial rulings on Montreal Italian restaurant Buonanotte, which had the gall to use Italian words to describe food on their menu. Words like pasta, for example.
The OQLF has since backed down, launched a review, and admitted there may have been an abuse of power. In the meantime, other Montreal restaurants have said that they have had insane complaints from OQLF officials, such as a chef's grocery list saying steak, which shouldn't be a big deal since the customers don't actually see that list. The review is necessary, because they have gone completely out of hand.
However, no matter what happens with the review, so long as the OQLF exists, there will be an incentive to abuse power, just because the office doesn't have purpose anymore. One might argue that it never had a real purpose, but even when it comes to keeping French prominent on a sign they are no longer dealing with a big issue. New businesses will design their signs with the laws in mind, old businesses have already changed theirs, the job is now largely unnecessary.
That is essentially why Quebec has the problem they do now. While many jobs can be eliminated from the OQLF with little difficulty, nobody is going to want to actually lose their job. For those people whose job it is to go around Quebec inspecting businesses, they can't admit that they have no purpose, all the signs are fine, and their time would be more productively spent if they just stayed at home and did some laundry. That would mean they have to find a new job, and nobody likes going on a job hunt.
So what do you do? Well, in this case, they invented problems to solve, traveling to restaurants to find menu items that aren't in French, even though cuisine is international and frequently uses words from a wide spectrum of languages. With food, even those with barely any understanding of different tongues could easily order a satisfying meal in a foreign country, just because of the cross-pollination of different cuisine styles.
A restaurant is thus the perfect place for a language officer to prove their worth, since there will inevitably be many non-French words on any menu. Instead, they managed to illustrate the office's pointlessness, and proved that they should perhaps get laid off or transferred to a different department. Their job no longer has any purpose.
