Throughout Canada, and even francophones in Quebec. There is a slight decrease. The only explanation we have is that an e-mail circulated one month prior to the census that urged or asked francophones not to report themselves as bilingual because they were afraid they would not receive services in their language. Obviously we had a lot of publicity and media interviews to counteract and to give appropriate information to say that was inaccurate. We suspect it might have had some influence.
The fact that francophones in general reported being less bilingual during the last five years influenced the global rate of bilingualism. In 2001 it was 17.7% and in 2006 it's 17.4%. This decrease is mainly due to francophones reporting themselves as being less bilingual.