Disabling the é key is legal in Canada

The upshot of being a Canadian Windows user is that your keyboard layout supports the selected number of French keystrokes available - if you do not opt to go with the US English keyboard/language when you install Windows. The latter is often chosen by English-speaking Canadians. None of them furrin' letters will appear when you type, and that's what most people are after. All those extra color coded characters on their keys are quickly forgotten.

I understand the sentiments and the time savings. But having at those extra keys without need of remembering their key code can be handy. It gives you ample opportunity to demonstrate the meandering road words have traveled into English when you use Québec, café, latté and the like. If it causes angst for the few that actually are bothered by it, well, c'est la vie. We're English speaking persons from Canadia, and we have an excuse.

The switch that causes Canadian keyboards to flip between those French characters and their English ones is the key combination of CTRL-Shift. Other locales with similar keyboards and language support in Windows suffer from the same issues. On a full sized keyboard with an adept typist at the helm, this combination rarely occurs. But if you are forced to switch between different keyboards, jumping from laptops to desktops and other devices, it may occur much more frequently.

The Windows Control Panel's Region and Language object is where you can change the system's language setting and change keyboard settings. These functions can be added to the taskbar which permit you to always have a means to switch languages and/or keyboard. For many households, this function is the only way everyone can use the same system and feel at home.