As I understand Bill 101 Truncador, you are correct on your incidences—as are the tongue troopers, "tavern" is not a French word—but I'd still say they have not made French compulsory. Rather I'd say that, in certain circumstances, chiefly signage they've made languages other than French illegal. Hair splitting perhaps, but to me the difference between forbidding unwanted behaviour and compelling desired behaviour is significant.
Lots of jurisdictions enact lots of ranklesome restrictions on signage regulating everything from language to materials to sizes, fonts, colours—you name it it's a law somewhere. There was a thread awhile back inspired by a municipal sign bylaw (in Ontario, I seem to recall, I'll see if I can find it ) Canadian Tire had to re-do the signs on their new store. What the foam-at-the-mouth guys missed was that it was CTC who asked the Council for the bylaw; they'd entirely overlooked the size of the francophone market themselves (over half) and suggested Council would be helping everyone with their bylaw.
The guy who's too pig-headed to imagine that his customers can figure out that a taverne is the same as a tavern is perfect recruiting material for the language nazis, He's as stupid as they are, and exactly the kind of "talk white boy" moron that inspired the language law in the first place.
As to la revanche du berçeau, I thought you were saying there was compulsion—other than the familiar urges TERBians know—there too. Thanks for clarifying. Again, nothing sinister or unusual, it's happened everywhere in the world where dollars flow to new parents. The Harris Tories were quite fond of evoking the image of welfare moms, as I recall.
Some governments, like Quebec's, have intended the population increase, others have expressed surprise or dismay, that poor people should be so short-sighted. Strangely the poor don't see it quite the same way. To them it was money for jam, for some it might be the only cash they'd see in a year. But once they smelled the threshold of the middle class, those bounties don't look so tempting any more.
As you say, the Quebec government looked at the stats, saw that most of the population growth in recent times was through immigration and decided on a 'baby incentive' taxbreak and rebate scheme. As I understand it, it's done what they wanted—even among the middle class—and the present Liberal government would be courting electoral disaster if they tinkered with it. If the voters approve, if their taxes can pay for it, and if their household budgets can manage, I don't really see the harm. Kids are swell, and it's democracy at work making demographics.
That's more or less my view: what's the big deal? BTW can we please agree not to drag in world population growth or the bungled mess that is equalization/federal provincial transfers; there'd be no limit to how wide-rangingly pointless we could make this if we did. Also, duty compels me to point out we've wandered a fair piece from the Supreme Court decision on school access that made langeweille start this thread. But maybe I can turn us back there with a reminder that on the sign law as well as the language law, Quebec has been judged to be legal under the Charter.