Question Period Note: Demographic trends for official languages (2021 Census of Canada)

Statistics Canada released, in August 2022, data on official languages from the 2021 Census of Canada.

• Societies and their language profile evolve and change, notably due to immigration. Canada is no exception.
• English and French remain – by far – the most spoken languages in Canada, and they remain Canada’s languages of convergence and inclusion.
• The number of French-speaking Canadians has never been so high, but the relative weight of francophones has decreased in the past years. We will continue to protect and promote the French language across the country.

• On August 17th 2022, Statistics Canada released linguistic data from the 2021 Census of Canada.
Highlights : Bilingualism
• In 2021, 98.1% of the population of the country could sustain a conversation in French or English. Moreover, there has never been as many bilingual Canadians, with 6,581,000 people who can conduct a conversation in English and in French, they now represent 18.0% of the Canadian population (compared to 17.9 % in 2016). This relative stability stems from two divergent trends: the rate of English-French bilingualism rising in Quebec, but decreasing outside Quebec.
• In Quebec, the proportion of bilingual English-French individuals rose from 44.5% in 2016 to 46.4% in 2021. Except for a dip from 2001 to 2006, the rate of English-French bilingualism has been rising in Quebec in recent decades. in 1961, it was 25.5%.
• Although the number of bilingual English-French individuals rose in Canada outside Quebec (+53,000) from 2016 to 2021, the English-French bilingualism rate decreased, falling from 9.8% to 9.5%. This is due to faster growth in the number of people who can conduct a conversation only in English, or in neither English nor French.
• The proportion of bilingual English-French Canadians increased between 2016 and 2021 among those whose mother tongue was French (from 46.2% to 47.6%), and decreased slightly among those whose mother tongue is English (from 9.2% to 9.0%) or another language (from 11.7% to 11.5%).
Highlights: First official language spoken
• French was the first official language spoken by more than 7.8 million Canadians in 2021, up from 7.7 million in 2016. However, since this growth (+1.6%) was slower than the growth of the population overall (+5.2%), the proportion of the Canadian population whose first official language spoken is French decreased from 22.2% in 2016 to 21.4% in 2021, continuing the downward trend seen in recent decades. In 1971, French was the first official language spoken by 27.2% of Canadians.
Highlights : Official Language Minority Communities
• The number of residents of Canada outside Quebec who had French as their exclusive first official language spoken has decreased by 36,000 since 2016, but has continued to top 900,000. This decline—the first since the period from 1991 to 1996—was observed in all the provinces, except British Columbia (+1,200). In the territories, the number of speakers was fairly stable, except in Yukon where it grew (+200).
• The proportion of Canadians living outside Quebec whose first official language spoken is French was down from 3.6% in 2016 to 3.3% in 2021. This decrease is attributable to a combination of factors, such as an older population on average (generally speaking, there are more deaths in an older population), incomplete transmission of French from one generation to the next, and linguistic transfers (when a person speaks a language at home that is different from their mother tongue). Also, the effect of interprovincial and international migration on these figures varies depending on the period and the region.
• In Quebec, the proportion of people whose first official language spoken is English rose from 12.0% in 2016 to 13.0% in 2021, at about the same level as in 1981. For the first time since comparable data have been compiled, the number of people in Quebec with English as the first official language spoken topped the 1 million mark in 2021.
Highlights : French in Quebec
• Echoing the situation at the national level, the number of French speakers in Quebec is increasing, but their proportion in Quebec's population is decreasing. In 2021, 85.5% of the Quebec population reported speaking French at home at least on a regular basis. The number of people who spoke predominantly French at home increased from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021, but their proportion in the population fell from 79.0% to 77.5%.
• Furthermore, while the number of people in Quebec with French as their mother tongue rose from 2016 to 2021, their proportion in Quebec's population decreased from 77.1% to 74.8%. Increasing numbers and declining proportions were also observed for people in Quebec with French as their first official language spoken (down from 83.7% to 82.2%) or who could have a conversation in French (down from 94.5% to 93.7%).
• From 2016 to 2021, the proportion of the population with French as their first official language spoken decreased in all regions of Quebec, except in Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine (+1.1 percentage points).

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