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Is there a future for Quebec’s “.qc”?
The whole world is aware that Canada operates the “.ca” domain name suffix and furthermore, every province and territory has its own identity, such as “.on.ca” for Ontario, “.qc.ca” for Quebec and so on.
But the identity matter is boiling nowadays in the Province of Quebec where Parti Quebecois representative, Daniel Turp, has launched an online petition, called “Opération Point-QC” to build up support for the rise of yet a new domain name extension, specially tailored for Quebeckers — it would be labeled “.qc”, without the trailing “.ca” as in “.qc.ca” which is the way it’s set, right now.
The Bloc Quebecois, a federal political party defending the rights of Quebeckers, has also added its weight in favor of the establishment of the “.qc” domain name suffix.
Quite recently, in September of 2006, the ICANN has granted the Catalans with a “.cat” extension, mainly for their particular cultural and linguistic needs online. The “Dot-QC” movement hopes to emulate that wildly successful operation thanks to the Fundacio puntCAT. The Catalans have set an important precedent that paves the way for an easier acceptation process for all similar requests made to the ICANN, in the future.
The current “pro-dot-qc” operation is conducted in French only, probably to prove a point about the Province of Quebec’s special status, as the biggest francophone community in America.
Are culture, linguistic differentiation and national identity enough to convince both the Quebeckers and the ICANN of the necessity for a “.qc” domain name extension? Probably but to this day, only 6,345 people have signed Daniel Turp’s petition to request the new “Quebec-centric” moniker. While the number is significant for a Province the size of Quebec, it’s still rather small considering the attention the “Dot-QC Project” got in the local media.
More people will likely add their name to the petition in order to show their support for the project. Until that happens, there will be lots of people wondering if there’s a future for Quebec’s very own “.qc” domain name extension.
Tags: qc, quebec, canada, point qc, dot qc, domain name, suffix, extension, culture, identity, language
2 Responses to “Is there a future for Quebec’s “.qc”?”
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After publishing this article, I asked the CIRA if it had an official position regarding the “Point-QC” movement.
Here’s the (very short) answer I received:
So basically, the CIRA states —for the record— that the whole “Point-QC” thing is NOT occuring under their strict jurisdiction. Since the rise of a “Quebec-centric” domain name suffix is likely to (eventually) impact the CIRA in a number of ways, their official position could change, over time.
May be OK for certains!
But I do not want to have someone faster than me registering mydomain.qc when I own mydomain.ca!
It will create a mess if an existing domain in .ca can be registered by anyone in .qc!
One thing to do, masking “ca” in “qc.ca” only for those wanting to see only “qc” and leave everything as they are!