C'est tres ironique that Quebec language-criminal Sugar Sammy would be performing a French-language comedy show – in Toronto. He performs Saturday as part of its La Semaine de la Francophonie festival.

I mean, it's one thing to preserve French in La Belle Province. In Hogtown, it's like fighting to protect a rare bird from extinction.

“It is kind of weird,” says the multilingual Sammy, who has performed worldwide, variously in French, English, Punjabi and Hindi. “It's the opposite of back home.”

Sammy made headlines in 2014 when he bought subway ads in the Montreal Metro – in advance of a series of shows – that read “For Christmas, I'd like a complaint from the Office de la langue française,” a reference to the language police of the province's Bill 101.

A public complaint from a separatist lawyer later, Sammy had tape put over the English part of the sign – which was kind of a protest in itself. The stunt got him plenty of publicity, and outraged editorials from sovereigntist media pundits.

“I'm a big fan of the French language,” Sammy says. “But sometimes it's protected in an excessive way that I feel leaves them open to ridicule and doesn't help the cause. Things like pasta-gate.”

Ah, pasta-gate, a reminder that it's not just English that's the enemy. Sammy would have also broken the law if he'd posted his sign in Punjabi. “That's true,” he says, “but fewer people would have noticed.”

Though the stunt provoked at least one death threat, the comic still finds the whole thing funny. If he hadn't taped over the English, could he have gone to jail? “I'm not sure, but it would be hilarious. ‘I'm here for murder, what are you here for?' – ‘I'm here for posting an English sign.' You know you'd be the first guy raped in prison.”

Sammy laughs and pulls out his smartphone to type a reminder. “I think I just came up with a new bit!” he says.

The controversy certainly didn't hurt Sammy's career. Last week he was nominated for a best actor award at Quebec's Gala Artis TV awards for his single-camera comedy series Ces Gars La (Those Guys), which wrapped up its third and final season this week.

You can add a fifth performance language if you want. Sammy will also soon wrap his You're Gonna Rire tour, which is basically in “Franglais” and, thus, “only really works cities with a bilingual population.”

Suffice to say, Office de la langue française doesn't want to admit franglais even exists.

From my point of view, and logically, it's the more languages the better,” he says. “My kids, when I have them, will grow up going to French school, then they're going to do university in English.

“Along the way, I'll make them take as many elective languages as possible. It opens so many more doors. That's how I was raised. I speak four languages and I'm proud of it.”

Certainly, multilingualism served him well when he fronted the U.S. Comedy Central's first tour of India. “In Mumbai and Bangalore, I did shows in English and Hindi, and in Delhi, I did English and Punjabi.”

What languages does he dream in? “I'm tempted to say usually English, but it depends who I'm talking to in the dream. If I dream about my parents, I'm talking to them in Punjabi. If I dream about my girlfriend it's in English. And if it's my Quebec manager, it's in French.”

Sammy has naturally squeezed a lot of laughs out of “money and the ethnic vote,” Jacques Parizeau's famously bitter post-mortem of a lost referendum.

“And they still say s—like that,” he says. “Lately, they're saying things like, ‘We're losing a riding a year because of minorities.

“That mindset needs to change in Quebec. In Montreal, my neighbourhood, Côte-des-Neiges is totally multicultural and multilingual.

“It's the part of Montreal that's most like Toronto. Toronto's like a big Côte-des-Neiges to me.”

Sugar Sammy plays The Randolph Theatre, Saturday, March 19.