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—