I have been studying the Latin Script Root Zone Label Generation Rules [here <https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/lgr/proposal-japanese-lgr-20dec21-en.xml>] and, for practical purposes, (U+0065) vs. é (U+00E9) are not variants. The variants for lower case Latin letter "e" are listed under "Variant Set 3" and consist of one homoglyph (forward and reverse mapping) and one out-of-repertoire (reflexive) instance, both which do not apply here. Also, é (U+00E9) is recognized as part of the French language in the document, so linguistic relevance is recognized there. Potential for malice also does not come up as a significant concern in the LGR, as opposed to something like dotted i (U+0069) vs. dotless i (U+0131), for example. That said, considering that we are dealing with a geoTLD, linguistic and cultural relevance are important aspects, and looking into the writing of the word "Québec" on the Web, both the the "e" and "é" cases seem to be widely employed, in such a way that they are interchangeable in a way. If these TLDs were to be managed independently, that would almost certainly lead to confusion. However, the requestor of the accented TLD is the same as that of the ASCII TLD, which is PointQuébec, so we are looking into a "same entity" situation. If PointQuébec were to run both TLDs as if they were the same (as if they were variants), meaning that domain names would resolve consistently instead of being operated independently, this would allow the people of Québec the linguistic freedom to utilize their language while at the same time avoiding confusion. Since, as Seb pointed out, this is the only applicant from the first round reaching out to have this issue resolved, it does not seem to be out of scope to simply recognize their request, and allow them to operate the TLDs in this way, more than anything because there seems to be no good reason not to. We would just need to be very clear about the necessity of both TLDs operating in this consistent manner. Best, -- Mark W. Datysgeld [markwd.website <https://markwd.website>] Director at Governance Primer [governanceprimer.com <https://governanceprimer.com>] ICANN GNSO Councilor