This Emmanuella Lambropoulos scandal fascinates me. A Liberal MP asks the Official Languages Commissioner about issues affecting the English-speaking minority in Quebec, and expresses skepticism about the reported decline of French here. For that, she is forced to apologize.

You can watch the entire exchange that led to this scandal here: - She says she doesn’t want to call it a “myth” but uses air quotes around “decline” to make it clear she doesn’t believe it exists.

Of note, the speaker right after her was Bloc Québécois MP and former SSJBM president Mario Beaulieu, but he said nothing then about her remarks.

Also, the commissioner did not contradict Lambropoulos about the state of French in Quebec, though he did not really address the issue at all.

A lot of the commentary about Lambropoulos from politicians, pundits and the media says a lot more about how people view the English-speaking minority in Quebec than anything else.

For the record, from Statistics Canada, knowledge of official languages in Quebec:
French, 1991: 93.5%
French, 2016: 94.5%

English, 1991: 40.9%
English, 2016: 49.1%

Language used at work in Quebec:
Only French, 2001: 59.5%
Only French, 2016: 56.5%

Only+Mostly French, 2001: 80.4%
Only+Mostly French, 2016: 79.7%

Only English, 2001: 4.9%
Only English, 2016: 4.9%

The House of Commons has unanimously adopted a motion “recognizing” that French use in Quebec is declining.

Whether that’s actually true is a matter of debate, but of course whether it is true is not relevant here because politics. https://twitter.com/vasalloum/status/1329157025050275841

Some pundits are saying it was disrespectful for Lambropoulos to express herself in English about the situation of French in Quebec, apparently oblivious to the fact that her line of questioning was about the *English-language minority in Quebec* https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/590014/le-crime-d-emmanuella