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QUEBEC — It was Quebec’s language minister Luc Fortin who stated the obvious.

Commenting recently on new census information indicating French had slipped in Quebec and English was up, Fortin pointed out a pretty basic fact.

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The data in question chiefly concern the language spoken privately at home; not the language used in the public domain such as schools, on commercial signs or in the workplace.

“You have to keep things in perspective,” Fortin said. “This (the public sphere) is our area of jurisdiction. It is not the responsibility of the state to legislate or meddle with the way people express themselves in their living rooms.”

Point taken. But even if Statistics Canada later corrected itself and released new numbers showing the situation is less dramatic, in Quebec’s long and tumultuous history of language politics there have always been those who wanted to go further than the original Charter of the French Language –also known as Bill 101– intended.