Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 19th, 2018

[William Fizet]

I would also like to point out that, for the programs we administer, it is the communities that determine the gaps they have and what they need in terms of language learning, language revitalization, and the promotion of language. Communities are the ones that are actually telling us what they need, and those are the types of projects that are actually supported.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Corbeil, you talked a bit about languages that have been brought back or helped through the use of at-home learning, child learning, and so forth. In the case of my own family, my wife and I speak six languages between us, but we only have one language in common, so that's the language my daughter speaks. What challenges are there in reintroducing or building a language when you don't have both parents who speak it natively? How do we get there?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

We know fairly well, from our statistics and our studies, that it's always a challenge when we have mixed marriages, because when the language is spoken at home usually it is the language that will be transmitted to children. As we mentioned, because there are many indigenous people who do not speak an indigenous language and they would like their children to learn it as a second language, it's often an issue because the first language transmitted was not an indigenous language, but often English or French. It's certainly a challenge, but we can see over time that those who are not using their language at home are usually more of an aging population, so the average age of the population is higher, so it's a big issue. It also depends on the place of residence. If you live in a place where there's a high concentration of speakers of a language, this will have an influence on the likelihood that the language will be transmitted.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

A critical mass.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

A critical mass, that's right.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You mentioned that Dene, for example, has an increase of 15% over 20 years. I think you said an increase of 34% over the same period.... What can we credit that success to, and what lessons can we learn from it for others?

[Vivian O'Donnell, Analyst, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

We need to understand that growth within the context of the population growth as a whole. The Inuit population is growing quickly. A lot of that growth is because they have high fertility rates. We see the aboriginal population, as a whole, growing substantially over time. However, not all that growth is necessarily because of high fertility. It's because of people who are newly identifying as indigenous on the census.

Therefore, when you're looking specifically at Inuktitut, I think you could credit the growth of the number of speakers to high fertility. Most Inuit live in Inuit Nunangat, which would be Inuit homeland, where the language is more common and would be easier to maintain. Dene, I believe, would be similar in the sense that the speakers are concentrated in communities where there is a high number of speakers.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Fair enough. If we were to find ways of bringing these languages into the House, as we are discussing in the study, could you help us understand how that helps languages themselves, for the record?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

As I mentioned, there are many factors that can have an influence on the vitality of those languages. All specialists mentioned that speaking a language at home is certainly a critical domain, but as we know, it's not only speaking a language at home, but also it involves social networks. It involves visibility, status, and prestige.

When a language is spoken in the public domains, in the administration for instance—when you look at Inuktitut you know that those using Inuktitut at work do so mostly in government agencies for the administration, for the delivery of services. This certainly has an impact on the future and vitality of these languages; so not only being spoken at home but being visible in the public domain will certainly have an impact on the status and use of these languages.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you to all our witnesses. Those were very interesting presentations.

I wanted to ask some additional questions about the strength of the languages and the measures you're using for determining those strengths.

In the information we were provided, you list off several columns: ability to conduct a conversation, mother tongue, language spoken most often at home, and other language spoken regularly at home, which implies the secondary use of the relevant indigenous language not as the primary source of conversation or means of conversation, but as another way of conducting some speech that takes place in a private environment. I assume that “mother tongue” refers to a mother tongue that is still understood, right?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Yes.

[William Fizet]

Yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I wrote a book on language policy back in the 1990s. That's it there. One of the measures that I used to try to determine the vitality of the language within a language community was to look at the ratio between mother tongue and language spoken most often in the home. The lower the proportion of people who are using it in the home, the weaker the situation for the language. I looked at the numbers you've provided on some of the larger language groups. I see that number contradicting another number you've provided. In the case of the Innu language, I see there are 10,710 individuals who have this as their mother tongue, and about 90%, so 9,500 individuals, use it primarily in the home. I looked at Ojibway and I see that of the 20,470 who have it as their mother tongue, only 9,005, or 43%, use it in the home. That implies a very significant rate of decline in a single generation. Yet when we look at the ability to conduct a conversation, we see something very different. We see that for Innu, only 9% of total speakers are those for whom it's not a mother tongue, and that figure for Ojibway is 20%.

I'm just wondering what the dynamic is there. That's something I've never experienced in looking at official language communities, which is the source of what I was looking at in my book.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

They're very relevant comments.

We use a term called “continuity index” when we look at the number of people speaking a language most often at home versus those having this language as their mother tongue. You're absolutely right, there's an enormous difference between language groups. You mentioned, for instance, Ojibway. In fact, what it means is that 44% of people having Ojibway as their mother tongue speak it most often at home. This index is 44. When you look at Cree, it's 62%. This means, obviously, there is a big difference, because, as we usually say, the language that is spoken most often at home is usually the one that will be transmitted. Many children will speak this language on a regular basis, although it's not the predominant language spoken at home. This can have an influence because in many cases these children learn the indigenous language at school, but it's not necessarily the main language at home. The dynamic can become very complex. It also, obviously, depends on whether we're within a mixed-marriage household or both partners or husband and wife, for instance, will speak—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

When you say mother tongue, you allow for people who have two mother tongues?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Absolutely.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Those are people who would be included in that?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Absolutely, so the minute an indigenous language is reported, whether it's “Cree and English”, because we know there are many multiple responses for indigenous people.... We see there is enormous variation, but what is very interesting is that when we look at the acquisition index, that is the number of people speaking a language who are able to conduct a conversation versus those who have it as their mother tongue, it can be surprisingly important versus the mother tongue. You just talked about Ojibway. We know the continuity index is 44, but when you look at the acquisition index, it's 1.4, so it really means that we have 40% more people learning this language as a second language versus those having it as their mother tongue.

The dynamic is very complex, there are many factors that can have an influence, but, clearly, it differs a great deal between languages.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

One of the things I did when I was looking at official languages communities in minority situations was to look at the age structure of speakers, but I broke it down a bit differently. I didn't simply work out the average age of the speaker. I apologize for the fact that I have to show a picture from this book. At the bottom here, you can see this is a robust francophone community in Quebec. What you're seeing is an age tree where children of all ages, adults as well, tend to retain a high percentage of using that language.

When you look at francophone communities in western Canada, you see something very different. It's primarily people in the highest age range, over age 65, and those who are under age five who are unilingual speakers. What that allowed me to do was determine whether it's only small children who only talk with their mom, and very old people who only are in a home environment who have the use of the language.

Do you track that sort of thing for indigenous languages?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Absolutely, you're right. We did it for official languages in minority communities. We even compared the age pyramid or age structure between 1971 and 2016, and it changed completely, because, over time, the population is aging, and the language is not being transmitted fully to their children, mostly because of the fact that there are mixed couples, exogamy. It's exactly what's happening with the indigenous community. In some cases, young children will learn the language as mother tongue, but in many other communities, they won't learn it. If you look at the age structure of the mother tongue, because the language is not being transmitted through generations, and if you track this over time, you will see the pyramid change dramatically and sometimes completely reverse.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I know I'm out of time, but I just want to say, if you have that information available in a form that doesn't require a vast amount of additional work but could be simply transmitted, would you be able to pass to our clerk as much as you are able for as many languages as possible?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Absolutely. It just depends on whether you want that for the overall indigenous languages all together or for specific languages. We could certainly provide that information.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Saganash.