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Ruth Kovac is bringing her fight for bilingual traffic signs to Quebec City. A petition launched by the Côte-St-Luc councillor with Hampstead lawyer Harold Staviss amassed nearly 7,000 signatures.

Kovac and Staviss will present their petition, which is sponsored by D’Arcy-McGee MNA David Birnbaum, to the National Assembly on Tuesday.

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“They’re going to have to read it … and they’re going to have to deal with it,” Kovac said Friday afternoon.

Kovac hopes MNAs will see beyond the province’s language politics and look at the proposal as a matter of road security. If a sign doesn’t already have a symbol describing what it means, the petition argues, Quebec’s French Language Charter allows for a second language to be added to ensure public safety.

Côte-St-Luc passed a resolution in favour of the initiative, Kovac explained, and seven other municipalities — Hampstead, Stanstead, Ogden, Bristol, Cascapédia-Saint-Jules, Hemmingford and New Carlisle — have followed suit.

Unilingual French signs are a danger not only to tourists, Kovac noted, but also to bilingual anglophones who might not know unusual terms not used in everyday conversation.

“We’re not asking for anything that isn’t permitted by law,” she said. “The only obstacle has been the (Office québécoise de la langue française). They have a stranglehold on signage.”