Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue 1 - Evidence - Meeting of December 10, 2007
OTTAWA, Monday, December 10, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met to study, and to report from time to time, on the application of the Official Languages Act and the Regulations and directives made under it, within those institutions subject to the act, and to consider a draft report.
Senator Maria Chaput (Chairman) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good day, everyone. I would like to introduce today's witness, Réjean Lachapelle, Director of Statistics Canada's Demolinguistics Studies Division.
Under the Statistics Act, the Governemnt of Canada, through Statistics Canada, is responsible for providing statistics about the Canadian population and various sectors of activity within Canadian society. Statistics Canada conducts a census every five years. The latest one was conducted in 2006. The census data related to language were published on December 4, 2006. Data on aboriginal languages will be published in the 2006 Census analytical document to be released on January 15, 2008. Welcome to the Senate Committee on Official Languages, Mr. Lachapelle.
My name is Maria Chaput, and I am the chairman of this committee. To my right are Senators Comeau, Murray and Goldstein, and to my left is Senator Poulin. I will now turn things over to you, Mr. Lachapelle.
Réjean Lachapelle, Director, Demolinguistics Studies Division, Statistics Canada: Madam Chair, before I begin, I would like to introduce Sylvie Portelance, who has joined me to help us view the slides. I would like to thank you for inviting me to present the 2006 census results pertaining to the main demolinguistic variables.
[English]
My presentation will be based on the data Statistics Canada released on December 4 or before, on the 2006 census and previous censuses. Tomorrow, December 11, we will release a preliminary analysis based on a survey of the vitality of official language minorities. If you wish, we would be pleased to present these results to your committee at a future meeting.
[Translation]
Like the 2001 census, the 2006 census included seven questions about language. No other census in the world asks respondents more questions about language. There is a question about knowledge of French and English, one on knowledge of non-official languages, another on mother tongue, that is, the first language learned at home as a child and still understood. There is also a question about the language most often spoken at home, followed by a supplementary question on other languages spoken regularly at home. That's five questions. Two other questions relate to language of work. The results will be released along with data on the labour market and workplaces on March 4, 2008.
Today, I will describe how the population has changed in terms of mother tongue or language spoken most often at home. I will end with a few quick facts on changes in bilingualism. We have tracked changes in mother tongue other than English or French in allophone groups in Canada since 1951.
We have found that overall — the red line is for Canada, the dark green one, the lower one, is for Quebec, and the blue one, the upper one, is for Canada less Quebec — the number and proportion of the population with a mother tongue other than English or French has grown rapidly in the past twenty years. This is due to increasing international immigration, which includes a large proportion of allophone immigrants.
The following slide depicts the use of English or French within the allophone population. This graphic shows that the use of an official language at home by allophone immigrants increases with the length of time they spend in Canada. Take, for example, allophone immigrants who arrived between 1961 and 1970, 22 per cent of whom spoke French or English at home in 1971, 46 per cent in 1991 and 53 per cent in 2006. Over time, the use of French or English at home is becoming more widespread. This explains why, in Canada, the use of languages other than French or English at home is less significant than the proportion of individuals whose mother tongue is a language other than French or English.
The bottom line represents the proportion of Canadians who speak a third language or who speak neither English nor French at home. The line is lower, but these third languages are seeing increased use, whether as mother tongue or language spoken most often at home.
It goes without saying that if a minority group increases proportion due to immigration, the relative weight of other groups, usually majority groups, decreases, since the numbers must add up to 100 per cent.
This graph illustrates the evolution of the proportion of the population whose mother tongue is English or who most often speak English at home.
In Canada as a whole, as well as in Canada less Quebec, English as a mother tongue and as the language spoken most often at home has been losing ground for the past 20 years. English benefits from language transfer from allophones and francophones, which is why the line representing language spoken most often at home is still higher.
Throughout the country, the relative weight of French as home language differs little from that of French as mother tongue. Nevertheless, it is important to note that this proportion is decreasing.
Since 1951, the proportion of individuals whose mother tongue is French has steadily diminished. This is due in part to language transfer, in part to lower birth rates since the mid-1960s, and in part to high levels of international immigration.
I would note that in terms of number of speakers, the use of French as a mother tongue is increasing even though the proportion is decreasing.
In Quebec, when immigration is high and the proportion of allophones is increasing, particularly because of immigration, one would expect that the relative weight of the majority group would decrease. That is what we observed in Quebec between 2001 and 2006. French as a mother tongue dropped from 81.4 per cent to 79.6 per cent. Similar changes were already observed in 1931, but the proportion then increased dramatically during the depression and the war. Immigration was low and birth rates among francophones were high.
The use of French as the language spoken most often at home has also decreased from 83 per cent to about 82 per cent.
It is important to note that since 1971, the percentage of people speaking French at home has been just as high as the percentage of those whose mother tongue is French and has remained constant, proportionally. A gap developed over time as French benefited from an increasing proportion of language transfers.
I would like to take a little time to examine the situation of francophones, outside Quebec. In this case, the relative weight of French as mother tongue has fallen steadily from 7.3 per cent in 1951 to 4.1 per cent in 2006. For the language spoken at home, we began collecting data in 1971, when the proportion was 4.3 per cent. It is now 2.5 per cent.
In the case of language spoken at home, the numbers themselves have dropped from 676,000 in 1971 to 605,000 now. Currently, 975,000 individuals claim French as their mother tongue, but in the previous census, that number was 980,000, an increase of 10,000 over the census before that. The main reason for this change in the number of people outside Quebec whose mother tongue is French is migration between Quebec and the other provinces and territories.
In the francophone population, Quebec recorded a total loss of about 9,000 people. Between 1996 and 2001, 9,000 more people left Quebec for other parts of the country than came to Quebec. Between 2001 and 2006, 5,000 more people came to Quebec, and this is related in part to exchanges with Ontario, which gained over 5,000 people between 1996 and 2001. Migratory losses were observed during the last five-year period.
Both Alberta and British Columbia typically record gains, which tend to be slight for British Columbia, whereas the Atlantic provinces, in general, record migratory losses from within the francophone population.
This phenomenon has been closely tracked from one census to the next. This is called the linguistic transfer rate or linguistic mobility, that is, the proportion of the population whose mother tongue is French but for whom English is the language spoken most often at home. This number increased between 2001 and 2006. This phenomenon has been observed in nearly all of the provinces, with the exception of a slight decrease in Prince Edward Island and British Columbia. The rate in some provinces, such as Saskatchewan and British Columbia, exceeds 70 per cent.
Age is a factor in this phenomenon. Throughout the country, the francophone population is aging because of low birth rates.
The red lines represent age groups in 2006, and the yellow lines represent those same groups in 1971. This graph represents a 35-year period and shows that baby boomers were between 5 and 24 years old in 1971.
In 2006, that same group appears in the 40 to 59 range. The number of young francophones in 2006 is dropping rapidly. This is due in part to lower birth rates and lower linguistic transfer rates because mothers do not always transmit French to their children as the mother tongue.
What this graph shows is that outside of Quebec, the number of children under 5 is about the same as the number of people aged 75 to 79, and there are about one third fewer of them than of individuals aged 45 to 49, who represent the peak of the baby boom.
Now let us look at the evolution of the linguistic situation in Quebec. I will get right to the evolution of the proportion of allophones, people whose mother tongue is neither French nor English and whose home language is neither English nor French. That is the line at the bottom.
The same phenomenon is occurring throughout the country. There are fewer allophones who speak a non-official language at home than whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, but over the past 20 years, that number has been growing because of increasing immigration.
Nevertheless, I would note that, in Quebec, of those allophones who speak either French or English at home, a growing proportion of them are adopting French. In 2006, 51 per cent chose French and 49 per cent chose English, while in 2001, 46 per cent chose French, and in 1996, 39 per cent chose French. The phenomenon is even more marked in the immigrant population than in the non-immigrant population, but all of the indicators are up for linguistic transfer rates toward French.
According to the 2006 census, the results of which were released last week, three quarters of immigrants in the years leading up to the 2006 census who chose to make either official language their home language chose French instead of English. Obviously, that does not represent all immigrants, just the 20 per cent or 25 per cent of immigrants who, shortly before or after arriving here, adopted either English or French.
The Chair: May I please ask you to finish, Mr. Lachapelle?
Mr. Lachapelle: Yes. In that case, before finishing, I would like to point out that we noticed a stabilization, for the first time, of the proportion of the anglophone population in Quebec, between 2001 and 2006. For a very long time, in fact for over one hundred years, the proportion had been declining. As for the numbers, they increased for the first time since 1976. That was a first.
I would also like to share with you information regarding the evolution of bilingualism in the population with English as the mother tongue outside Quebec. In Quebec, bilingualism has risen very sharply in the population with English as the mother tongue. Here, outside Quebec, what we see is that bilingualism is declining at the age where it normally peaks, at 15 to 19 years of age. You can see that it was 16 per cent in 1996 and is now about 13 per cent in 2006.
Before closing, would like to say that the Statistics Canada site has a very rich analytical text and a slide presentation that is even more complete than this one and includes dozens of thematic slides on languages throughout our country as well as hundreds of tables. This is all available to every Canadian and, given that it is on the Internet, I would add that it is available to anyone in the world.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Thank you for understanding as I am certain you could have continued. I will ask the first question.
I am a francophone from Manitoba and this is my concern: the census questionnaire asks respondents to identify the language "most often'' spoken at home and, further on, the language spoken "on a regular basis'' at home. When the census results are announced, I have the impression that the focus is only on the language "most often'' spoken at home and that the results of the second part of the question are not taken into consideration.
For example, Radio Canada reported that, in Manitoba, only 20,000 persons used French "most often'' at home, which leads us to believe that there are 20,000 rather than 45,000 francophones.
The Statistics Canada Daily only refers to the results for the language spoken "most often'' at home and not to the results for the language spoken "on a regular basis'' at home.
In Manitoba, as elsewhere, francophones in a minority situation in these official language communities, often live in an exogamous environment where one of the spouses is a unilingual anglophone. Therefore, it is normal that the francophone spouse, and even the francophone children, most often speak English because one of the members of the household is unilingual. I am not saying that I agree with that; however that is what happens in Manitoba. I believe that we cannot, because of that, come to the conclusion that francophones who speak English most often or on a regular basis are no longer francophones. Unfortunately, that is the message of the media based on the initial releases by Statistics Canada.
My question is as follows: why not simplify things and just ask the respondents to indicate the languages spoken at home — French, English, or other — rather than attempting to distinguish between "the most often'' and "on a regular basis''? It is very difficult to make these distinctions.
Mr. Lachapelle: I can tell you that it is probably true that the media refer to the language spoken most often at home — I have done it. I must say that, in our analytical document, I can refer you to Table 9 that shows the language spoken most often at home, and therefore the persons who speak English the most often at home; however, the following table, Table 10, indicates, for those who use English the most often at home, the proportion of those who use French on a regular basis. In the case of Manitoba, it shows an increase from 37 per cent in 2001 to 39 per cent in 2006. Thus, I believe that an attempt has been made to give a complete picture.
You wish to know why we ask these two questions. That is because with almost every census, from 1971 to 1991 and even in 1996, we asked the question about the language "most often'' spoken at home. Afterwards, there was pressure from francophone communities and also from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. We examined the situation and the reason we added a question regarding other languages spoken at home after the question on the language most spoken is because previous users wanted to be able to compare data from previous censuses. Had we completely changed the question we would have lost all comparability. Therefore, we attempted to complete the portrait, not modify it completely.
We knew very well, and it was said each time, that just because a person speaks a language most often at home does not mean that they have abandoned their mother tongue and we took that into consideration by adding a question. However, the media tend to simplify things.
The Chair: That is the perception that arises when the media use only one part of the responses. In other words there is the perception that the Canadian francophone population is disappearing in certain areas and I cannot agree with that.
Senator Tardif: I must say that I was surprised and also disappointed by some of the statistics presented. I will give you a few examples. I come from Alberta and when I looked at the statistics what I realized was that the statistics do not represent the reality as we know it.
For example, according to the last census, there were about 1,200 students in the province's French-language schools in 2001. At present, there are about 5,000 students in the province's French-language schools. The number of students who, under the Charter, can attend the province's French-language schools has almost tripled.
In addition, since the last census in 2001, almost 30,000 people from Quebec and New Brunswick have exchanged their provincial health insurance cards for Albertan cards. It is very likely that, for the majority of these people, the language spoken at home is English. However, we could expect about one third of these people to have French as the language spoken at home. This is not indicated by the statistics.
Also, in recent years, French employment centres in Calgary and Edmonton every year have received applications from thousands of francophones who arrive in the province. I know that Alberta has had a slight increase in the total number of francophones. However, that does not seem to correspond to the reality in our province. I do not know how you can explain that but there is something wrong.
Mr. Lachapelle: It is difficult for me to examine the situation on a case-by-case basis. With regard to the schools, we could take a closer look. I have already examined the situation in schools compared to the number of francophones in 2001. I have to say that we did not do it here because we cannot examine everything. But in 2001 at least, the data were plausible.
Tomorrow we will be releasing data on students and francophone minorities as well as anglophone minorities, by province, and that will be based on much more data than that provided by the census.
I was formerly the Director of the Demography Division. We estimate interprovincial migration, but without the language component, because it is not found in the administrative data that we use — tax data —, which is generally checked against the health insurance data of the different provinces. Many studies of this have been carried out. In general, there is agreement. There are the arrivals, but there are also those who leave subsequently. The census captures migration between 2001 and 2006 overall, based on the question, "Where did this person live five years ago?''.
I presented what the census reveals; we would have to do a very detailed study of the situation based on the data you mentioned. It has already been done for the population in general. Most of the data available are in the census. However, there is no information in the census about the language of education for reasons that are complex. I cannot explain it to you.
A census is taken, we verify that the census provides plausible data. In Alberta, there may be some situations that are somewhat unique because, in the census, a person who goes to work in Alberta, and whose family lives in another province, is enumerated with his family in another province. In this regard, there may be temporary workers in Alberta who, in fact, were enumerated in other provinces. In taking the census, the rule is that we try not to separate families.
Senator Tardif: Thank you. I would just like to say that I hope we will have more information than just one survey in order to continue in this direction. I believe that statistics are a double-edged sword. As Madam Chair said so well, the general public's perception is often not the reality. We must be very careful.
Senator Champagne: If you will allow me, I will go back to the question posed by Madam Chair regarding languages spoken at home. If I go back several decades, it would have been difficult for me to answer this question. I spoke French to my children and English to their father, who was a unilingual anglophone. The children heard both languages almost all the time and above all we wanted them to keep the languages separate, to not mix them up.
I do not know how I would have answered your question at that time and not given a wrong answer or an answer that could have skewed the statistics that you are providing today.
I am certain that I am not the only person in the world who is in a relationship where one person is francophone and the other is anglophone. Amongst ourselves we speak the common language, but we speak to the children. My children always had francophone caregivers and I never spoke to them in English. That has resulted in two perfectly bilingual adults today. What would I have answered?
Mr. Lachapelle: We know perfectly well that the situation of certain couples or individuals is very complex. With a census designed for the overall population, we cannot attempt to define a situation by using a large number of questions.
In Canada's census, there are already seven language questions; in most countries there are none and, if there are language questions, there may be one, two or three questions. It is very unusual for there to be as many as in Canada's questionnaire to define the situation as precisely as possible.
What gave rise to this language question? The mother tongue, as it is currently defined, is an old question that goes back to the 1901 census. It evolved somewhat, but did not change much after the 1941 census. The question on the language spoken the most often at home resulted from a recommendation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and was introduced in the 1971 census. We try to subsequently ask the same question; we have always been cognizant of that. For that reason, we take into consideration suggestions as to how to improve things while maintaining them as much as possible, or how to improve questions while changing them as little as possible? Otherwise, you lose comparability. And that is what most of our users want us to retain.
Senator Champagne: We spoke at length just now about bilingualism with the hope that it is present throughout Canada. I was surprised when you showed us the chart indicating that fewer young anglophones are learning French now than a few years ago. Yet, when you speak to them, their French is much better than what we heard before.
I think that the best example is definitely that of our young athletes, who we will see at the Olympic Games. No matter what province they are from, they can generally speak in both languages and often anglophones speak better French or English than Quebeckers. That is something that really annoys me.
Mr. Lachapelle: In that regard, for a very long time we have asked exactly the same question about the ability to conduct a conversation in French or English, let us say since the 1971 census. That was when self-enumeration was introduced. Previously there were people who asked this question. However, because they went door-to-door, there could have been some slight changes. Since 1971, the questionnaire is delivered to homes and everyone answers the question that has the same wording. We did not change it in order to have a certain comparability, and that is what we have observed.
Senator Champagne: Perhaps we should find another way of asking the questions in order to obtain a bit more information, as that interests me a great deal: who is bilingual, to what extent, and what is the quality of language. Thank you.
Senator Goldstein: If I have understood correctly, we could come to the same conclusion as Le Devoir did last week that French is more or less thriving in Quebec, but is not doing very well elsewhere in Canada. For example, the table you showed on the predominant use of French at home, which is slightly higher than the proportion of French as mother tongue in Quebec, shows an increase.
If I extrapolate, roughly 7 per cent of those who speak French at home are not francophones as defined by mother tongue. Hence, they must necessarily be allophones or anglophones. Is this a valid conclusion?
Mr. Lachapelle: Yes, there are more people who speak French most often at home in Quebec than there are people whose mother tongue is French. I attempted to show that, at present, of allophones who choose between French and English, 51 per cent choosing French, 49 per cent English. That mostly explain the phenomenon that you refer to.
Senator Goldstein: And the opposite is true for the rest of Canada. The figures are not the same; however, the trend for the rest of Canada is the same in that the use of French as the language spoken at home is declining.
Mr. Lachapelle: In general, yes. That is what we observed, what was presented. It was mentioned at the same time that, in general, there had been a certain increase in the proportion of francophones who speak English most often at home, but who nevertheless regularly speak French at home. That is pointed out in our analytical document.
Senator Poulin: Mr. Lachapelle, thank you for agreeing to explain the recent surveys. I was somewhat surprised by the presentation you gave this evening; it is a statistical approach which surprises me somewhat. My question is along the same lines as that of Senator Tardif. You have situated Quebec and you have allowed us to look at the evolution of English and French in Quebec. But I was somewhat surprised to see that you lump together the statistical results for nine other provinces and the three territories.
As a Franco-Ontarian from northern Ontario, I am very aware of the fact, for example, that the experience of Senator Ringuette, seated beside me and who comes from New Brunswick, is very different from that of francophones in Ontario, or of someone from Alberta such as Senator Tardif, or from Manitoba such as our Chair. I am somewhat confused because I believe that the presentation on the evolution would be much more useful if given by province and territory.
Mr. Lachapelle: You are quite right. In our analysis, it is done province by province and territory by territory. But given the limited time, I had to do a very simplified presentation; had I given a complete presentation, I would have needed much more time. You are right, in certain provinces, such as Ontario, it would be preferable to distinguish the north, the south-east or the different regions. The situation is very different in New Brunswick depending on the region and that also applies to certain areas in Nova Scotia. We are aware of such things. But we had to give one presentation and we chose to do it at the provincial level based on our analytical document.
Senator Poulin: In terms of the statistics, do you think that the conclusions drawn for Quebec and the other provinces are nevertheless just as valid as the conclusions by province and by territory?
Mr. Lachapelle: I can tell you that, in the document, there are very explicit tables by province for mother tongue, language spoken most often at home, and also for all census metropolitan areas, including Ottawa where we find ourselves, the Ontario and Quebec portions of Ottawa-Gatineau, Sudbury, Toronto, and Moncton. We tried to present an overview; I could not give a province-by-province presentation here.
I indicated that, because of migration, the francophone population is growing in Alberta and Ontario; that is correct. In the Atlantic provinces, it is declining. I did not want to provide details on the portrait; if that is what you would like to have, it is available in our analytical documents and there are hundreds of tables available to everyone.
Senator Poulin: My concern was with regard to the general conclusions.
Mr. Lachapelle: The general conclusion is what I stated: there is an overall general decline in most provinces. In terms of proportion, it is occurring almost everywhere; in terms of actual numbers, it is not occurring everywhere.
Senator Poulin: A few days ago, an extremely interesting article in MacLean's showed by province the French language as the mother tongue, the French language learned as a second language and the impact of immigration. I was looking at each province; the figures for Ontario, for example, showed that almost 600,000 have French as their mother tongue. When we add the two other groups, almost 1.3 per cent of the Ontario population speaks French, which is a very significant number in the country. However, nowhere in your research on the last census do I see a similar analysis.
Mr. Lachapelle: What you are talking is detailed examination of the situation. In this document we could not go over a total of 40 pages for certain reasons and there was another 40-page document on immigration. We have constraints. Naturally we cannot, in so little time, write about and study things from every angle. After the 2001 census we published an overview of the situation of French, English and other languages totalling several hundred pages. We plan on publishing a similar report based on the 2006 census. That allows us to describe the situation in more detail and we plan on improving this overview for the census in 2006.
When the data are released, they have only been available internally for a very short period of time. We cannot attempt to analyse the data instantly and provide the media with an analysis that is several hundred pages long, understandably.
Senator Ringuette: Your documents refer mainly to percentages, which can be misleading, whereas our observations in the field are given in numbers instead. That is basically different. When I look at the tables on the percentage of francophones in New Brunswick, for example, you show a decline. That is certainly not what I have observed. You give a decline in percentages; however, if we could compare that to real numbers, the portrait would be different. This leads me to ask you about the other information that you said would be made public.
Mr. Lachapelle: Information that is not in the census. It is a survey of official language minorities, of children and adults, conducted with a sample of approximately 40,000 persons who responded to the census questionnaires. We asked many more language questions, precisely about languages spoken in the family, outside the home, in associations, with government agencies, and so forth.
Senator Ringuette: You are therefore confirming that we do not have the overall portrait at present. We have only parts of the picture revealing the reality. Your report and presentation provided us with information in terms of percentages, which is misleading if we compare percentages to real numbers in terms of population. There is a considerable number of allophones because of immigration. In the past five years, we have welcomed 1.2 million new Canadians. The percentages paint a completely different picture. It is because of this point that we find it difficult to concur with your conclusions.
Mr. Lachapelle: In the analytical document I also simplified things. It is more difficult to present trends over 50 years; I could have done it with actual numbers, but it becomes complicated. It is easier to use proportions. In terms of numbers, I can tell you that we have the figures and that there was an increase between the censuses from 1996 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2006. With regard to New Brunswick, the francophone population dropped from 239,000 to 235,000 between 2001 and 2006. The proportion declined, and so did the numbers. That was the case for several provinces. That is all found in our document. We tried to present general conclusions and the media have not necessarily reported the conclusions found in the document. We try to present the situation and people draw their own conclusions.
Senator Comeau: Statistics are very important to decision makers. You have shown us statistics compiled from the responses to your questions. You do not draw conclusions. You do not make recommendations; you leave that to others. Have the provinces asked for a presentation such as the one you gave here? I presume that the federal government does.
Mr. Lachapelle: Not for the time being. We would be very willing to do so. However, what I presented is found in much more detail on the Statistics Canada Internet site. Basically, yes, we generally give a presentation to the committee concerned with the implementation of section 41 of the Official Languages Act. We give presentations to interested public servants and departments. We have not received any requests for the time being. However, the most recent statistical data were only released last week.
Senator Comeau: I presume that the provincial governments still have time to make decisions based on your statistical data. I thought that the provinces would have been interested in asking questions in order to shed light on particular aspects of the issue, as we are doing here today. To the best of your knowledge, have the provinces expressed an interest in having a presentation?
Mr. Lachapelle: In general, community groups invite us to give presentations. However, we have given presentations about our work to a federal-provincial committee on official languages minorities.
Senator Comeau: I am particularly interested in the identification of Acadians in your censuses. In the past, people were asked if they were Chilean, Japanese or Aboriginal, but never if they were Acadian. Will you look at this in the future or is it not in your space-scale diagram?
Mr. Lachapelle: People who identify themselves as Acadians are mentioned and the data disseminated. I do not know offhand the number of Acadians.
Senator Comeau: The problem for me is that the other ethnic groups simply have to put a check mark in a little box indicating that they are Japanese, Chilean, and so forth, but there is no little box with Acadian written beside it. They have to write it in themselves. It would have been interesting had the Acadians been included with the other groups.
Mr. Lachapelle: In fact, in the question on ethnic origin, there are examples and a certain number of spaces, and people have to write out their response.
Senator Comeau: The Acadians are one of the oldest groups in Canada. It would be good if you gave them the option of just having to check a box rather than writing it out. We are lazy on occasion when we have to do things, myself included. Please forward my remarks.
Mr. Lachapelle: I will note your suggestion.
Senator Tardif: On the census questionnaire do you ask which language is most often used at home — English, French, or other — and what is the mother tongue — English, French, or other?
Allophones who use neither English nor French as the spoken language at home would usually choose "other.'' However, French could very well be the first language spoken by allophones in Canada. This information is not found in the results because they would choose "other'' in this category.
Is there a way to discern a tendency with regard to allophones who have chosen French as their second language?
Mr. Lachapelle: In principle, different questions are asked in the questionnaire and generally the French questionnaire starts with "French'' and the English questionnaire starts with "English.''
For third languages, we ask them to specify. That is why we publish estimates for almost 180 different languages. Respondents provide detailed responses regarding mother tongue or languages spoken at home. That is what comes out of the census.
Senator Tardif: Nevertheless, you will understand that a population pool has been lost because all those who may speak only French in addition to their mother tongue are not included in the sample of people who have French as the first language spoken here in Canada. The statistics overlook an entire population pool which could increase the total number of people who speak French.
Mr. Lachapelle: That is known as "first official language spoken''. In regulations on service in English and French, the federal government asks for an estimate of the first official language spoken and that is based on census data. An individual who indicates that they speak French is classified under "French,'' and the same applies to English.
In the case of bilingual individuals, we look at the mother tongue. For those individuals who cannot be placed in a group by using the two questions on knowledge of official languages and mother tongue, we consider the language spoken most often at home.
That arises from a regulation adopted pursuant to the Official Languages Act. This variable is found on our Internet site as well as in a vast number of tables, but is not published in this small document simply because it was more complex to answer. It is not just one question, but a variable resulting from three questions.
Senator Tardif: Yet, it is an important variable?
Mr. Lachapelle: Yes, you are quite right.
[English]
Senator Murray: I have a comment on a subject that the witness may wish to state some clarification, but what I have to say is for the benefit of colleagues on the committee.
I am looking forward to tomorrow and the release of your document on the vitalité des minorités francophones. On the weekend I was reading some of that analytical material to which you referred, the background material based on the 2006 census and the 2001 census. Unfortunately, I left it at home and my memory is slipping.
One of the things I got out of it was that francophones — I suppose like others — are increasingly moving into the great urban areas of the country. Among the tables in your analysis, you listed not just breakdowns of francophones, anglophones and allophones by province but also by census district. One of the things that jumped up and hit me in the eye with regard to Nova Scotia, for example — and Manitoba also — is that at least one third, perhaps more, of the francophones in Nova Scotia are now located in the Halifax area.
When we think of francophones in Nova Scotia, we think exactly of the Acadians who come from Yarmouth and the District of Clare, where our friend Senator Comeau originates, and other places the committee has visited, like Petit-de-Grat, Chéticamp and Cape Breton, but increasingly they are living in places like Halifax. I hope that I will be able to see in your analysis, or elsewhere, a breakdown of those people and the extent to which they are able to live successfully in their language and maintain it in a large metropolitan area like Halifax or Winnipeg, for example. I think half of Franco-Manitobans are to be found in Winnipeg.
To what extent do these children frequent the French schools placed there at their disposal? Are there child care facilities in those large areas? What are their viewing habits? Radio-Canada at least gets to all those parts of the country.
At first blush, there were two reactions when your statistics were reported in the media. A man by the name of Castonguay, who I think is an academic at the University of Ottawa, said that goes to show you that we are wasting money spending anything on francophone minorities in places like Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan, and so on, so let us stop. On the other hand, one of the spokespersons for the francophone organization said that, on the contrary, we must spend not the millions we are now spending but the billions.
I think they are probably both wrong, but we may have to imagine, as a government and as a Parliament, new approaches to this subject that will go where the francophones are located. With the greatest of respect to our friends from the District of Clare and Yarmouth and places like that, perhaps the emphasis should be changed to the urban francophones and what we must do there.
I do not know whether the document you will publish tomorrow will be helpful to us in that regard. I suspect it probably will be. If you do not want to give us an avant-goût of that, you could at least describe to us in a word or two what subject matters are covered.
Mr. Lachapelle: I would like to confirm that effectively one third of francophones from Nova Scotia are living in Halifax and half of Franco-Manitobans are living in Winnipeg. That information is from our publication.
[Translation]
We will be releasing the first data from the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities. This survey deals with many subjects and four themes are discussed, including languages used in daily life. This is based on many questions put to francophones in various provinces and territories and anglophones in Quebec.
This survey does not include anglophones outside Quebec or francophones in Quebec. It deals only with official language minorities.
Another part of the results will provide information about the sense of belonging to various communities and what researchers call subjective vitality, or the perception of people about the situation and their situation in particular.
The survey also examines the issue of access to health services and the school situation in the different areas. Obviously a great deal of subjects could be examined through this survey. Many researchers throughout Canada have already expressed an interest in analysing the survey data.
Senator Murray: We await the survey results.
Senator Goldstein: Thank you for your very interesting presentation. In the documents provided there is information not contained in your presentation. Among others, the percentage of francophones in every province and territory, except the Yukon, decreased between 2001 and 2006. In some cases, the decrease is so significant that we have to question it. You obviously do not have a solution for preventing this trend from continuing.
In some provinces, the population is minuscule. I wonder how we can protect these small populations. For example, in Saskatchewan only 1.8 per cent of the population is francophone; in Newfoundland and Labrador only 0.4 per cent of the population is of francophone origin. Naturally we are speaking of mother tongue and not language spoken at home. In Quebec, for example, we know that the number of people who speak French at home is greater than the number of people of francophone origin.
How can we protect francophones in areas where they represent a minuscule proportion?
Mr. Lachapelle: That does not fall within Statistics Canada's mandate. Our mandate is to try to ask the questions that satisfy researchers and decision makers, to do the analysis of the answers and to attempt to explain the various factors that impact the evolution of the demolinguistic situation, domestic migration, international migration, linguistic transfers and fertility. It is obviously not our responsibility to suggest measures to change the situation.
Senator Goldstein: I understand.
The Chair: Mr. Lachapelle, I wish to thank you very much for testifying this evening. Our committee's order of reference touches on the needs of and services for minority official language communities in Canada. We are interested in the census data because government services are tied to that data. There are repercussions for services that could be provided. That is why the committee members asked you so many questions. We would have liked to have continued, but time has run out. It is very important that the census data provide as accurate a representation as possible of the reality in 2007. It is just an observation, not a criticism. You have graciously answered our questions and I thank you very much.
Mr. Lachapelle: I thank you.
The committee adjourned.