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Quebec’s public security minister apologized Wednesday for replying in French to an English-language question in the legislature.

Martin Coiteux said he did not mean to offend Quebec’s English-speaking community when he answered Quebec solidaire’s Amir Khadir in French on Tuesday.

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Khadir prefaced his question by saying he was asking it in English because it was about allegations of illegal fundraising within the Liberal party, a topic he said Quebec anglophones don’t hear enough about.

Coiteux then said, in French, he would reply in French in keeping with the “tradition” of the national assembly.

That triggered a pointed response from an organization that links more than 50 English-language community groups across Quebec.

The Quebec Community Groups Network noted that 44,980 of Coiteux’s constituents in his predominantly anglophone riding of Nelligan “have a tradition” of speaking English, as do “more than one million Quebecers.”