Official Languages Committee on April 10th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the 25^th meeting of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

This morning, before we go any further, I want to inform the committee members that, during our next few meetings, we will look at access to justice, and the linguistic competencies of exempted managers.

So, I would ask you to send me your suggestions by April 15 of witnesses to call in our consideration of those two subjects.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Could you repeat that, please?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

I invite you to send me the names of witnesses you would like to have appear in our consideration of the next two subjects on our agenda, access to justice and the linguistic competencies of exempted managers, pursuant to the work plan that we adopted a few weeks ago.

This morning, we have the pleasure of having with us Mr. Jean-Pierre Corbeil, Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section. As you know, Mr. Corbeil has done a study specifically on linguistic minority communities.

Mr. Corbeil, we are pleased to welcome you to our committee once again. We have had the opportunity to resolve a few minor administrative details since your last visit here. That is why this morning we are all ears and ready to hear your presentation.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil, Chief Specialist, Language Statistics Section, Statistics Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, committee members.

I want to thank you for inviting me to appear before you. In my presentation, I will give an overview of the evolving linguistic portrait in Canada. My presentation is based on statistics taken from various censuses, in particular the 2006 census. Then, I will present various results taken from a report entitled "Survey on the Vitality of Official Language Minorities", which was published on December 11.

First I want to talk about the changing number and relative weight of the major linguistic groups in Canada. I invite you to follow along with the information that I have distributed. On page 2 you will find the first slide which deals with trends observed over the past 25 years. In fact those trends increased between 2001 and 2006. In the 2006 census, there are approximately 18 million Canadians with English as their mother tongue, an increase of 3% since 2001, and there were approximately 6.9 million Canadians having French as their mother tongue, an increase of 1.6%.

Anglophones still represent the majority of the population, obviously. While their numbers continue to grow, their percentage of the Canadian population dropped from 59.1% in 2001 to 57.8% in 2006. The same is true of those with French as a mother tongue. The relative weight of that population dropped from 22.9% in 2001 to 22.1% five years later in 2006.

Obviously given the significant increase in immigration since the middle of the 1980s, essentially comprising individuals whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, the weight of the population known as allophones increased rapidly. It went from 13% in 1986 to 17% in 1996 and 20% in 2006.

Still on page 2, on the second slide, we can see that, in Canada, the use of languages—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Just a moment please, Mr. Corbeil.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to know if it will be a 20-minute presentation, followed by a question and answer period.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Exactly.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

I asked the question because I didn't know if we could interrupt you during your presentation.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Will the text that Mr. Corbeil is about to read be tabled, Mr. Chair? Could you tell me whether we will be able to get a copy of his presentation afterwards?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Yes, of course. We could distribute it. I just wanted to make it easier to understand the first few slides.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Just a reminder about our procedure. Usually, we give witnesses about 10 minutes to make their presentations, and then we move to the first round of questions.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Very well.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

I move that he take as long as he wants—whether it be 10 or 15 minutes. I have no problem with that. We want to get some information.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

There are actually two topics: the census and the survey. Do you want to ask questions between the two presentations, or wait until I have completed both?

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

I think we will give Mr. Corbeil the time he needs to make his presentation. After that, we will carry on.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

So, as I was saying, slide 2 shows that the use of languages other than English or French most often at home is less frequent than their proportion as mother tongue. This is due to the fact that allophones use one of the two official languages at home; these are essentially cases of language transfers.

For example, we know that the number of immigrants whose mother tongue is neither French nor English has increased since the 1980s. In 1981, these allophones accounted for 60% of the immigrants, while in 2006, they accounted for 80% of the immigrants. So there has been a significant growth in this group of immigrants. However, the percentage of francophone immigrants has remained very low, between 2 and 4%.

Almost one allophone of every two speaks French or English most often at home. If we add to that those who speak French or English as well as their mother tongue, the figure is close to 68% of the population. So you can see that English outside Quebec is quite attractive to immigrants.

The slide on page 3 shows the situation of francophones living outside Quebec and we see that the relative weight of French as mother tongue and language spoken at home has decreased steadily for close to half a century. That is the red line on the chart. The green line represents the language most often spoken at home.

In 2006, there were 975,000 people whose mother tongue was French and who were living outside Quebec. That is 4.1% of the population. That is a drop from 2001, when there were 980,000 such individuals. So there has been a drop of 5,000 francophones living outside Quebec.

Because of the anglicization of francophones, only 2.5% of the population speaks French most often at home. Of the 975,000 individuals whose mother tongue is French, only 605,000 of them speak it most often at home. This chart shows that there are far fewer people who speak French at home than there are people with French as a mother tongue.

The census defines mother tongue as the first language learned in childhood that is still understood by the person at the time of the census.

On page 4, there is a chart which shows that francophones outside Quebec—and this will come as a surprise to no one—are an aging population where the number of young people is declining because of the low fertility rate and the incomplete transmission of mother tongue. If you look at the chart, you can see that the yellow lines show the number of francophones in 1971 by age group, and the red lines show the number of francophones in 2006. It is quite clear that the number of young people is almost comparable to the relative weight of people in the 70-to-74 age group. So, as you can see, there has been a significant reduction in the number of young people. We also see that there are 34,000 children under age 5. There are almost three times fewer of them than there are adults in the 45-to-49 age group, of whom there are about 94,000.

This gives you some idea of the trend in the situation facing francophones outside Quebec.

The slide on anglophones in Quebec shows that the percentage with English as their mother tongue who speak English most often at home remains virtually stable between 2001 and 2006. This is a reversal of the trend that has been in place for a very long time. We know that the proportion of anglophones had steadily gone down from census to census since 1851. Their numbers are on the rise for the first time since 1976. The change observed between 2001 and 2006 can be explained mainly by the drop in net migratory losses of anglophones to the rest of the country. You will see an example of this.

If you look at the chart that shows the situation regarding anglophones who left Quebec, you can see very clearly that between 1976 and 1981, for example, a great many anglophones left the province. This trend was less pronounced later, but we see that beginning in 1986, there was an increase in the number of anglophones who left Quebec. The chart shows clearly that the number of anglophones who left Quebec was at its lowest between 2001 and 2006. There were about 8,000 people who left the province. As I said, this is the lowest loss of anglophones we have seen since the end of the 1960s.

The chart on the next page shows the age structure of anglophones in Quebec and shows that the breakdown by age of anglophones in Quebec was marked by these heavy migration losses that happened between 1971 and 2001. The fact that many anglophones left Quebec between 1971 and 1986, in particular, had an impact on the younger population. We see that the under-40 age cohorts in 1971 were reduced drastically in 35 years.

The chart on the difference between the relative weight of mother tongue and language spoken most often at home shows that the gap widened progressively over the years among allophones in Quebec.

When we look at the red line, which represents the language spoken most often at home, and the blue line, which represents the mother tongue, we see that the percentage of those who speak their mother tongue at home is much higher than the percentage of those for whom this is their mother tongue. That means that historically, in Quebec, English held a very long attraction. This is why English is the language most often spoken at home by allophones. However, as you will see, this trend has been reversed, at least since 1976.

The slide at the top of page 7 shows that language transfers among allophone immigrants—that is those who speak a language other than their mother tongue most often at home—are increasingly toward French. Over 60% of all allophone immigrants spoke French most often at home in 2006, compared to slightly over 25% of this group in 1971. This was the first time in a very long time that French was spoken more often at home than was English, by all allophones, and not just allophone immigrants. In 2006, the percentage was 51%.

Let us now look at the slide at the bottom of page 7. This slide shows that the percentage of allophone immigrants who came to Canada after 1970 and who spoke an official language at home in 2006, and for whom that language was French, was very high. Between 2001 and 2006, close to 75% of allophones spoke French most often at home. We know that one of the important reasons for this has to do with the mother tongue of the immigrants. For 5 or 10 years, Quebec in particular has had a significant percentage of immigrants whose mother tongue is Arabic. And they tend to speak French more at home because they often spoke French even before they came to Quebec.

I also wanted to add some information about the languages that are spoken at work. As you can see from the slide, the bars on the left show that French is predominantly spoken at work by Quebec francophones. However, we also see that there has been an increase in the amount of French spoken at work by allophones and by anglophones. The use of French is on the rise among francophones. The figure went from 92% to 93%, while the percentage of anglophones who speak French at work predominantly went from 22% to 23.4%. There was also an increase among allophones—in other words, the percentage of people who spoke French predominantly increased from 42% to 47%. Outside of Quebec, however, we see that French was spoken predominantly at work almost exclusively by francophones, and 60% of them actually speak English predominantly.

As you know, there was a discussion, particularly in Quebec, regarding the census data published in December and those published in March regarding language of work. The chart shows that while there was a reduction in the percentage of people whose mother tongue was French between 2001 and 2006 and a reduction in French as the language spoken most often at home between 2001 and 2006, the percentage of people who spoke French at work remained relatively stable. Clearly, this is a phenomenon that changes much more slowly and is affected by totally different forces. We are talking here about the language spoken publicly.

The bars at the right side of the chart show that the amount of English spoken at work is higher than the percentage of people whose mother tongue is English. Clearly, this has to do with the importance of English in Quebec. This refers to the amount of English spoken by francophones and allophones.

I wanted to present to you the main points that came out of the census data published in December and March. I would now like to take the opportunity to present the main results that followed the publication last December of the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities. Some of you may know that this survey was funded by 10 federal departments. It looked at a significant sample of francophones outside Quebec and anglophones in Quebec. From this, we see...

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Corbeil, it's going very well. However, I have a special request from the interpreters. Could you slow down a little bit? Thank you very much.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

As I was saying this is a major survey. It's the first time that such a survey has been undertaken by Statistics Canada. The objective was to cover a lot of ground, meaning to go beyond what we can get from a census. That is why this survey contains information on early childhood, school attendance and the use of languages in various areas of the public domain as well as access to health care in a minority language. These themes were considered priorities by the minority official languages communities.

The first objective of the survey was, then, to collect information about areas that are top priorities; the second objective was to disseminate information that will assist in policy development and program implementation; and the third objective was to provide a data base that will allow users to investigate issues identified by researchers in government, university and private sectors with regard to official language minorities.

As you can see on page 11 of my presentation, during the December 11, 2007, release of the first analytical report, four main themes were identified: sense of belonging and subjective vitality; use of language in daily activities; use of the minority language during access to health care services; and school attendance.

First, let's look at the main results with regard to sense of belonging and subjective vitality, in other words, perceptions of a community's vitality. On the first slide on page 12, there is a large proportion of adults who reported that they identify with the two language groups equally in all provinces outside Quebec. On the slide, the red represents francophones, since we must remember that this survey took into consideration not only individuals whose mother tongue is French, but also individuals whose first spoken official language is French. So, we take into consideration immigrants or allophones who have adopted French as their first official spoken language.

By looking at the graph, you can see that in almost all the provinces, except for Quebec, the red represents those who identify with both groups. So, this represents approximately 50% of francophones outside Quebec.

When you look at the situation in Quebec, on the slide below in red, you can see that although it is slightly lower, the proportion of English-speakers in Quebec who identify equally with both language groups is also widespread, meaning that slightly more than 40% of English-speakers in Quebec identify with both the francophone and the anglophone groups.

This survey measured the perceived importance of provincial and federal services being provided in French to French-speaking adults outside Quebec. You can see that the proportion of French-speaking adults who said that it was important or very important to have access to provincial and federal government services in French is nearly 85% outside Quebec.

Likewise, in Quebec, the proportion of English-speaking adults who feel that it is important to have access to provincial and federal government services in English exceeds 90%: 93% of the English-speaking population in Quebec believe that it is very important or important that these services be provided in the language of the minority.

I will now move on to page 14. Questions were also asked of respondents about the perception of the vitality of the francophone community in their municipality of residence.

We can see that, outside Quebec, slightly more than 40% of the francophone population believes—

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Mr. Corbeil, your presentation is going very well. However, I can see that there are still a number of slides left. I would therefore invite you to summarize so that we can move on to questions from committee members. I want to point out to my colleagues that we are a page behind the numbers you are giving. We are on page 12, while you are citing page 13.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

It would be easy for me to summarize.

When we look at these things, there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between individuals' perceptions and their behaviour in their daily lives. On the one hand, they identify with both linguistic groups, and on the other hand, they believe that it is very important to have access to services in the minority language and that community vitality is quite strong. Approximately 40% of the population outside Quebec believes that their community enjoys strong or very strong vitality.

In Quebec, it is interesting to note that the anglophone community seems slightly more pessimistic with regard to the future of their community compared to francophones outside Quebec. This is evidenced by the results.

As you will be able to see in the other slides, the use of English among English-speaking adults in Quebec is quite high, no matter how much of the population of their municipality of residence they make up. Outside Quebec, we see a completely different phenomenon. We know that 42% of French- speaking adults outside Quebec live in their municipalities where they represent less than 10% of the population. However, this situation has a great deal of influence over their behaviour and their perception.

The results demonstrated that the use of French by francophones outside Quebec is directly related to the weight of that population in their municipality. In Quebec, we don't see quite the same situation. No matter what the weight of the anglophone population in their municipality, anglophones use English to a significant extent.

We asked questions about the use of languages with regard to access to health care services. Both francophones and anglophones in Quebec mentioned that it was important for them to have access to health care services in the minority language. In fact, numerous francophones outside Quebec mentioned that it is extremely difficult for them to obtain health care services in their language.

Finally, some significant results of the survey relate to school attendance, a theme that is addressed on page 18. Among the main results, 53% of children where one parent was French-speaking were enrolled in a French primary school, compared to 44% at the secondary school level. These are people who, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have the right to send their children to the minority schools, but they do not do so for a number of reasons. The survey reveals a number of them. We must remember that approximately 44% of parents whose children attend a majority language school, in a regular program, would have liked to send their children to a minority language school.

As you can also see by looking at the report published on December 11, there is a very close connection between parents' linguistic characteristics. Where both parents are francophones, families tend to send their children to a minority language school. Inversely, the proportion of couples made up of one anglophone or one francophone who send their children to a minority language school is much lower.

In Quebec, it is an entirely different story. A large proportion of English-speaking adults whose mother tongue is neither French nor English are not able to send their children to an English language school.

I have presented a lot of information. I hope I have not created too much confusion. I simply want to say that this survey on vitality contains much more detailed information on the situation of official language minorities, compared to what we have seen coming out of the Canadian census.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Corbeil. I would like to thank you for summarizing so much information, first as regards Statistics Canada, generally speaking, and subsequently some more specific information. I am sure that you will be able to further describe the situation in answering committee members' questions. We will start with the official opposition.

You have the floor, Mr. D'Amours.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing before us once again this morning, Mr. Corbeil. I would like to come back to pages 3 and 4 of your presentation. My first question has to do with francophones outside Quebec. If I have any time left over, I may have some questions about anglophones in Quebec.

When we compare the two groups, it is quite clear that there is a constant reduction in the number of francophones and an obvious stability in the number of anglophones in Quebec. There may be many reasons for that. I may be mixing things up a little, but we do know that certain political events occurred in Quebec between 1976 and 1981 that may have given rise to some fears. How else could we explain such a huge exodus of people? A new government had come to power and there was the issue of separation, and these things may have been part of the picture. I do not know whether you have made an in-depth study of the impact this had.

The statistics on francophones living outside Quebec are quite disturbing. I am one myself, I live in New Brunswick. Is this a trend that could be reversed or is this an ongoing trend that means we can expect to see a constant reduction in the number of francophones? There is no doubt that the population of Canada is growing, but not necessarily because of the number of francophones. When we look at the percentages, we might wonder whether it stays the same, but you said there had been a net loss in the number of francophones.

Then this is no longer a question of percentages, because there are really fewer francophones living outside Quebec. From all your analyses, will this trend continue, or can something be done to try to limit it? I know that I could do my part and have more children, but that means that others are not doing their part. Is birth rate the only consideration, or do other factors come into play in this analysis?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you for your question.

When we try to understand trends in language groups in demographics, we take a number of factors into account. You mentioned the birth rate or what is known as the fertility rate. Francophones are not necessarily having fewer children than anglophones. There are other factors that have an impact on the trends we see in language groups. Among francophones outside Quebec, the factor that has a direct impact is interprovincial migration. You may recall that between 1996 and 2001, the number of francophones outside Quebec increased by 10,000, and most of this growth was attributable to the migration of francophones outside Quebec. Most of these francophones went to Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. So interprovincial migration is a significant factor, as it is for anglophones in Quebec.

For a number of years, francophones outside Quebec had been relying on immigration. The thinking is that if the birth rate is not high enough, they will rely more on immigrants from abroad.

We must remember that outside Quebec, approximately 1% of immigrants speak French as their first official language. So, as you can imagine, any attempt to change the situation is a significant challenge. We know that the age structure, language transfers, that is the non-transmission of the language, the fact that English is the language most often spoken at home and inter-generational language transfer, that is,—whether or not French is passed on to children—also result in a reduced number of francophones outside Quebec. A number of factors come into play, but, outside Quebec, the fact that French is not being passed on to children, the fact that few immigrants outside Quebec speak French and the significant mobility of francophones between the provinces account for this trend in large part.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Let us take the example of the francophone who is goes to Alberta. That province is even more anglophone than Ontario. In any case, there are fewer francophones than there are in Ontario. You spoke about “some provinces”. If a francophone leaves one part of the country to go to a more anglophone province and decides to marry and have children there, even with the best will in the world on the part of the parents, there is no doubt that there may be a language switch. It will be harder to get such people to speak French when the language of the community generally is English. We are not necessarily talking about assimilation, but if these people stay in that province, there is a good chance that the children will marry anglophones. And little by little they lose their French.

Francophones have certain needs, and if they cannot be met, the francophones will have difficulties. If more services were available in the regions, this could reverse the trend.

What do you think about all this?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

From the results we have obtained, from the survey and other sources, we feel that if parents choose to send their children to French-language child care centres, where there is a significant French presence, this has a direct impact on whether the children go to French schools later. That is just one example, but early childhood has often enough been identified as an important area. Clearly, if parents start exposing their children to French at the earliest possible age, this can have a significant impact on the way things turn out.

Going to school in French has an impact on children's attitudes and perceptions, and this may ultimately have an impact on behaviour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. D'Amours.

We will now go to the Bloc Québécois representative, Mr. Richard Nadeau.