Brendon Wilson: Missing the Point
Wow. I totally disagree with Brendon. That's a new one for me. His latest posting talks about Industry Canada's Eco-Efficiency initiative, but then he goes off on a rant about how it was "inefficient" (or perhaps eco-unfriendly? I'm not sure...) for them to print a brochure with English and French versions:
Yes, you've got it: Industry Canada had printed a combined English-French version of the brochure - duplicating the entire content in a language that, despite being an official language, is not the mother tongue of the majority of British Columbians. And wasted a lot of paper, ink, and energy, not to mention money, in the process. Can you say "do as I say, not as I do"?
Wow. Not something I expected from Brendon. Let's think this one through: you mean Industry Canada, a federal organization, had the gall to only print one, bi-lingual brochure? Instead of making sure that all the Anglos in BC didn't have to sully themselves with a foreign language?
I'm just going to point out that the costs associated with designing, stocking, and shipping two versions of brochures would likely be more expensive than issuing one, centralized stock. But hey, I don't have an MBA or nothun'...
I find that I have become both more and less tolerant of French here in the east. There are some truly scary French people living in Quebec, but at the same time, I begin to feel more that it is definitely more of our heritage, a part that does need to be protected (and not by asinine French-only laws, either).
In fact, I was listening to a story on CBC the other day, about how French Immersion programs in BC are absolutely exploding -- parents are reallizing that being bilingual opens so many doors. What with BC's various resource industries either dead, dying or dormant, people need every edge they can get.
(And he still doesn't have comments or feedback on his site....)
Comments
Rebuttal
Alright, it looks like I'm going to have to defend myself on this one.
Let me elaborate on the design of the current brochure, to make sure we're all clear on what I'm talking about. The brochure is 10 pages, with the first 5 pages in English and the second 5 pages being the exact same design as the English section, but in French. Effectively, you could rip the brochure in half, staple each half, and you'd have an English version and a French version.
So, in terms of costs (both monetary and environmental) to print two versions:
1) "burn the plates": Direct-to-plate technology has made this pretty easy - what's the incremental cost of "do [ing] all the layout/spellchecking" for two 5-page brochures over one 10-page brochure? Probably not a whole lot. They had to do the layout and spellchecking for the French side of the brochure *anyway* - does it really make a difference if they split the layout file into two to do that? The total number of pages contained by two brochures would be the same as the current brochure, so the cost of burning plates would still the same. The only real thing that would cost more would be the folding and stapling, as you'd now have twice as much to do - unless of course, you're smart and realize that to replace 100,000 combined English/French brochures, you'd probably split the run into 50,000 English and 50,000 French brochures (or some other approproate split representing the relative proportions of English readers to French readers) - in which case, the amount of folding and stapling is the same. Bottom line: total cost of layout/spellchecking/burning the plates/folding/stapling would be pretty much the same. Even if it was slightly more, as I'll explain in the next point, the extra cost would be offset by other savings.
2) "waste more natural resources": This one I don't understand. You think that it would waste more natural resources to print only the part that will be used in a particular part of the country (An English version in English Canada, and a French version in French Canada)? By eliminating half of the paper used in a brochure (that, in most cases, will never be read) you've *saved* 5 pages of paper. Given that these brochure are printed by the government printers located in either Ottawa or provincial capitals, you can bet that a huge run of these things has been done - wasting energy and money to print (and transport) half of a brochure that will never be used. Doesn't seem either "eco" or "efficient" to me. And not only that, all that energy has cost you a lot of money that doesn't actually generate any value for most of your audience - the French don't gain from having an extra half in English, and vice versa. Bottom line: large cost savings from eliminating half of the paper volume, reducing energy usage, and eliminating half of the transportation costs.
3) The question of volume: Again, government printers. They own'em. And if they don't own'em, you can be sure that the volume they are contracting out for printing for a single Industry Canada publication is huge. Huge / 2 is still huge. Marginal incremental costs incurred by splitting the run into two brochures at half the run size - I dare say this extra cost would again be covered by the savings in paper, energy, and transportation costs. Bottom line: cost about the same due to huge volume.
The whole point of the brochure was to encourage businesses to drive value in an eco-friendly way, and realize that this introspection and effort could *save* their business money - yet Industry Canada didn't follow their own advice! They chose to print an entire half of the brochure that wouldn't be useful to the English or useful to the French, thus incurring extra production, energy, and transportation costs, not to mention the environmental impact caused by the printing and transportation process. This extra cost didn't drive any extra value for the "customers" (the readers of the brochure). Bottom line: They failed to follow their own rules.
Tim Horton's does it
I went to one of the only Tim Horton's in Vancouver (right downtown -- a join Wendy's/Tim's). I'm used to seeing "essayer" when I roll up the rim -- a.k.a. "try again" in French. But, out here, they are printed in English only!
We went to lots of Tim Horton's on the drive across, the last one being somewhere in Moose Jaw. I don't recall off hand if that one was English only -- it was late at night, so my brain may not have registered.
I started thinking about what has to be done to do English only. Like, they have to keep the prizes constant, or something. It all got terribly confusing for me. Interesting, though.
My perspective
I don't have an MBA, but I have a BCom and worked in the printing business in DTP, in addition to working for my parents at their printing company for all number of years. Both family cars smelled of ink for years because of the jobs they would deliver.
So I can say, without any doubt, that it would cost more, consume more energy, and waste more natural resources, including paper, to create two brochures, one in English, the other in French. Printing is definitely an economies business - small volume on a $30,000 printer leased will quickly make it unprofitable, due to the time it takes to get the printer aligned properly, burn a plate for each job, do all the layout/spellchecking, etc. The plate burning alone is a chemically-intensive process that creates toxic waste enough to do a lot of damage.
So yes, it looks like Brendon was not careful when he posted this. That said - we're all human, and in a war we can all get bored and frustrated much more than usual, with one more thing to worry about, because For, or Against, we all worry about it.
The only personal objection to any one federal policy is smoking warning ads - they are printed in English and French, but not Cantonese or Mandarin - two groups of heavy smokers just about everywhere I go. If there is not a heavy push to reduce smoking in the Asian community some day, they will likely be the largest group of peoples with high cancer risk that will be a drain on our Health Care system.
Well... maybe the only other beef is that the Government doesn't do anything about those blasted Carnies.... circus folk, smell like cabbage. Small hands.....