The Société de transport de Montréal, which runs city buses, has chosen to hide behind narrow legalism, at least for now, in the aftermath of last Friday morning's incident on the 66.
A driver ejected 20 passengers from her bus that day after one of them had the temerity to ask her for the time - in English. We hope the STM will be more forthcoming about its policy and practices after its own investigation is complete.
This case strikes us a good example of the sparks that can fly in the gap between language theory and practice in Montreal.
French, an STM spokesman intones solemnly, is the language of work. And so it is. Anyone working as a bus driver, or in many other public-sector jobs, obviously needs to be able to speak French.
And yet - despite great strides toward bilingualism made by the anglophone community in recent decades - many Montrealers still speak French poorly, or not at all; some speak neither French nor English very well.
In everyday community life, language problems are the small change of cosmopolitan co-existence, and Montrealers take them in stride. Even at times of heightened language tension, the friction tended to show up at the political level, while neighbourhood life mostly remained serene.
There is among very many francophone Montrealers a tremendous reservoir of good-will about language. Despite honest concern about maintaining their culture on an English continent, countless francophones routinely go the extra mile to help anglophones and allophones cope, and to encourage them to learn. It's important for non-francophones to remember this when one foolish person does something anglos find absurd and insulting.
Anglophones like to note, with a certain cynicism, that governments and government agencies have a double standard in matters of language.
Quebec and Montreal tax forms are always available in both languages, for example. But English textbooks arrive at the last minute and chapter-by-chapter; Montreal's official website has little English; and so on.
However, bureaucrats are often more rigid than front-line service personnel: many bus drivers will speak English, some commuter train announcements are done bilingually, and so on.
Even government agencies and utilities like the buses, then, rub along from day to day with at least a few practical accommodations. That is evidently how we all - except a few zealots - want it.
On the basis of what we know, this one driver seems to have over-reacted grotesquely. The driver, or the STM, apparently owes Muhammed Ahmad Munir and his fellow passengers an apology.
But no isolated incident should be allowed to upset our city's generally-acceptable linguistic equilibrium.