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Quebec Premier Bernard Landry said last month he believes the city of Montreal is "too English" and cautioned the business community to beef up French in their businesses or face more restrictive legislation from the Quebec government.

Strangely, there was very little reaction to Landry's words. If you were watching closely, the reaction of Montrealers seemed to be a collective shrug. And a few days after Landry's speech, census statistics issued by StatsCan confirmed why city dwellers felt his remarks were off the mark.

The 2001 census figures show that, in fact, Montrealers speak more French and are more bilingual than anytime in the past. For instance, the bilingualism of anglophones in Quebec rose to 66.1 per cent in 2001 from 61.7 per cent in 1996; French-English bilingualism among allophones (of neither French or English backgrounds, which means they probably speak at least three languages) rose to 50.4 per cent in 2001 from 46.7 per cent in 1996, and bilingualism among francophones increased to 36.6 per cent in 2001 from 33.7 per cent five years earlier.

Nor should we worry about the erosion of French in the province as a whole. According to the same census figures, the proportion of residents who said they speak French most often at home edged up to 83.1 per cent in 2001 from 82.8 per cent in 1996.

When you sort through the blizzard of numbers, two trends seem clear. One is that French is not in any immediate danger in Quebec and was probably reinforced by the controversial language law, bill 101, passed in 1977. The other is that Montreal has a vastly different ethnic, cultural and linguistic mix than the rest of the province.

But Montreal always was different -- economically and linguistically -- from the time English-speakers began arriving in the late 18th century. Some founded businesses in the city, others started the lucrative continental trade in furs, in partnership with francophones and native people.. The fur trade, of course, gave rise to Montreal's first economic boom in the early 19th century, a period when the city was the bustling centre of a commercial empire on the St. Lawrence.

By the 1840s, English, Scots, Irish and Welsh immigrants were pouring into the city. The result was the first census in 1851 showed an English majority. To be sure, it wasn't long before Montreal became a French majority city, but from 1840 until 1914 -- well after a francophone majority was established -- by common agreement the mayoralty alternated between French and English.

So, for most of its history Montreal has been an open, tolerant, multicultural and essentially bilingual city. For most of its history, too, it has exported its youngest and brightest. In recent years, most of those who have been leaving are not only young and bright, but they are also bilingual or trilingual. For all these reasons they are quickly sucked up by Ontario, Alberta, American and European businesses, universities and law firms.

This is a point that Premier Landry failed to make in his speech but is stingingly clear from the latest census data. In the five years between 1996 and 2001, Quebec was hit by a net loss of 57,300 people, consisting of 29,250 anglophones, 19,170 allophones and 8,800 francophones. Those numbers should be worrying for anyone concerned with Quebec's economic future. Apparently Premier Landry doesn't recognize their long-term consequences.

Meanwhile, his threat to use the language card as a political tool again isn't likely to elect any Parti Québecois MLAs in Montreal in the next election. An accommodation over language has been reached in the city, at least for now. And one of the reasons for this is bilingualism has become part of the solution, and not part of the problem as Premier Landry appears to believe.

The problem lies elsewhere. It is that Quebec continues to haemorrhage far too many of its best educated, multilingual, young people to the rest of the world.

James Ferrabee welcomes comment on this column at jferrabee@irpp.org