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The past few years have been a roller-coaster for English-speaking Quebecers, allophones and immigrants as punitive laws have been adopted, rights trampled and institutions undermined, all in the name of reversing the decline of the French language.

But recent data suggests French in Quebec is on more solid footing than the government of Premier François Legault has claimed in justifying some of its more drastic policies.

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A study by l’Office québécois de la langue française found that the use of French in the public sphere has been stable over the past 15 years while the use of English has dropped off. A survey of 7,200 Quebecers conducted in 2022 found 79 per cent spoke French most often outside the home, the same as in 2007 and up slightly from 78 per cent in 2016. Even among anglophones, French in public rose to 25 per cent from 20 per cent between 2016 and 2022.

On the island of Montreal, often the subject of much hand-wringing over the “Bonjour-Hi” greeting in downtown businesses, the use of English dipped to about 17 per cent in 2022 from 23 per cent in 2016.

The OQLF barometer comes on the heels of a book published last year questioning the prevailing narrative that French is in free fall. Le Français en déclin? Repenser la francophonie québécoise posits that French will always be vulnerable in North America’s last francophone redoubt, but that politicians, pundits and policymakers seem to focus on the wrong data — mother tongue and the language spoken most frequently at home — in assessing how French is doing.

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The true portrait is more nuanced, some of the authors recently explained at a panel discussion organized by the Quebec Community Groups Network and sponsored by The Gazette and the Notre Home Foundation. This ignores many of the successes of the French Language Charter in integrating newcomers over nearly 50 years and paints an unnecessarily grim picture.

Not all the latest statistics are rosy. A recent study by French language commissioner Benoît Dubreuil pointed to major challenges in ensuring non-permanent immigrants to Quebec master French as this population surpasses 500,000. The rate of newcomers who cannot hold a conversation in French is said to have tripled among international students, temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers in just two years.

Nevertheless, new evidence and fresh perspectives are raising serious red flags about the Legault government’s divisive approach to the important objective of protecting and promoting French.

The OQLF study period predates the implementation of harsh new measures of Bill 96 (now Law 14), Quebec’s update to language laws, demanding that we ask if it was really warranted to give the language watchdog extrajudicial search and seizure powers, require immigrants to receive public services in French only six months after arriving, and shield the law from court challenges with the notwithstanding clause, to name a few examples.

In light of the OQLF’s findings, the Quebec branch of the Retail Council of Canada is calling on the Legault government to reconsider regulations pertaining to French markings on products like home appliances, which it argues could hurt merchants, the economy and consumers.

And scapegoating asylum seekers or university students from the rest of Canada for anglicizing Quebec only whips up resentment when an inclusive strategy for safeguarding French could be more constructive.

This reality check on the health of French offers an opportunity to both rethink the government’s linguistic policies and ratchet down the polarizing rhetoric.

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