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sign: I think the government of Quebec has to take all the measures to put incentives in place to ensure people are welcomed in French in different businesses, but we won't legislate on the singular question of 'bonjour-hi,' Jolin-Barrette told reporters in Beloeil, on Montreal's South Shore, according to National Observer. Don't miss out on the latest news Sign up for our daily briefing The bilingual greeting has been widely adopted by retail workers in Montreal in an effort to welcome a diverse clientele, but it has also become a sore point among those who fear the gradual erosion of the French language in the province's largest city. Simon Jolin-Barrette, who is also minister responsible for the French language, said the government will work to encourage retailers to greet customers in French, but he shut the door on the idea of forcing them by law. On Friday, Jolin-Barrette said the province was looking for a way to ban the greeting as a way of building on two unanimous motions passed in the legislature calling on store clerks to stick to a simple bonjour. Unilingual French greetings dropped to 75 per cent from 84 per cent over the same period. ; Jolin-Barrette did not specify how he planned to accomplish the ban but insisted to reporters that people want to be welcomed in French an assertion he repeated Monday. As justification, he cited a recent study by Quebec's language watchdog that suggested bilingual greetings became twice as frequent between 2010 and 2017, making up eight per cent of all greetings in Montreal. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.