Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I believe that all deputy ministers are bilingual. They certainly were when I was working with them during my time.
This study that we're undertaking here today is to better understand the root causes why French is on the decline in Canada, both in and outside Quebec. So I think your testimony has been useful. I think the other reason why we're undertaking this study is to better understand what we can do to arrest this decline.
According to the 2006 census, there are nearly as many Canadians with a non-official language as their mother tongue as there are francophones in this country. I have no doubt that in the subsequent census in 2011, we'll see for the first time in Canadian history the number of francophones exceeded by the number of Canadians with a non-official language.
Clearly there are big demographic changes going on in our country. In fact, the number of people with Chinese as their first language now exceeds the number of francophones in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia. In fact, in Quebec, the number of people who speak French at home as their first language has declined from about 83% in the 2001 census to 82% in the 2006 census. So even in Quebec, the French language is under pressure.
The rate of bilingualism of anglophones outside of Quebec is declining among young people especially—and this is the worrisome statistic. This is one of the reasons why we're focusing in this study on the educational aspects of language policy. We know from StatsCan that the number of bilingual high school students outside Quebec has declined in the last number of years, from about—