Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Our language policies are failing to preserve both Canada's English-French linguistic duality and the French character of Quebec itself. My conclusion is based on close to a half-century of census data.
First, I'll say a word on why our language policies are failing us. The more a minority language group is concentrated within a given territory, the better it resists assimilation to the majority language. A language policy aimed at preserving the French-speaking component of Canada's population should therefore have aimed first and foremost at maintaining and promoting the French character of the province of Quebec.
Canada's Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism rejected such an approach. It opted instead for individual freedom of choice between two official languages and for the free circulation of individuals from coast to coast, unhindered by any linguistic measures that might possibly restrict such mobility. This kind of linguistic free trade principle has guided Canada's language policy ever since.
It is a striking fact that at the same time, Quebec's Gendron commission was grappling with how to ensure the free circulation of unilingual French-speaking Quebeckers within Quebec, which was gravely impeded by the domination of English in Montreal's work world. Quebec, therefore, opted for a policy with French as sole official language and with a Charter of the French Language geared to make French the default language of public communication between all Quebeckers, including at work.
Conflict was inevitable between Canada's free trade “official language of your choice” policy and Quebec's protectionist “one official and common language” approach. The outcome was equally inevitable. The courts have left precious little of Quebec's charter intact. This has had dire consequences for French in Quebec, and automatically for French in Canada as a whole.
Now I will turn to some statistics. The French mother-tongue component of Canada's population plummeted from 29% in 1951 to 21%, according to the last census, that of 2016. Since Canada's Official Languages Act, the percentage of Canadians speaking French as their main home language has declined just as rapidly. In contrast, Canada's English-speaking component has just about held its own.
The crushingly superior power of assimilation of English is the principal explanation for this. The assimilation of Canada's French mother-tongue population to English as their main home language increased steadily from less than 300,000 in 1971 to over 400,000 in 2016. At the same time, the assimilation of non-official mother-tongue Canadians to English rose from 1.2 million in 1971 to 2.7 million at the last census, whereas their assimilation to French has reached a mere quarter million, a large number of whom derive from Quebec's selection of immigrants who had adopted French as their main home language abroad before coming to Quebec.
On the whole, the overall gain that English draws from assimilation of all kinds in Canada increased from less than 1.5 million persons in 1971 to over three million in 2016. French, by contrast, still remains mired in an overall loss, due to assimilation, in the order of 180,000 at the last census.
At the level of Canada as a whole, therefore, Canada's language policy and Quebec's sorely weakened charter have, taken together, in no way stopped the erosion of Canada's French-speaking component.
Lately, things are not any rosier for French in Quebec. Indeed, between 2001 and 2016, the last 15 years, Quebec's French-speaking majority has plunged at record speed to a record low. In contrast, in Quebec, for the first time in census history, English has roughly maintained its weight in Quebec as a mother tongue, and increased its weight somewhat in terms of the main home language.
The most stunning development is on Montreal Island, where French mother tongue youth have become more bilingual than their English counterparts and are now adopting English as the main home language at the rate of 6%.
As for the rest of Canada, the anglicization rate of the French mother tongue population outside Quebec has steadily increased, from 27% in 1971 to 40% in 2016.
The most eloquent evidence of the failure of Canada's language policy is, however, the anglicization rate of Francophones in Canada's very capital. It has exactly doubled since Canada's initial Official Languages Act, rising from 17% to 34%. It even topped 40% in 2016 among the capital's younger French mother tongue adults, a proven forerunner of greater anglicization yet to come.
It is high time, therefore, to aim Canada's language policy more squarely at preventing further erosion of Canada's fading linguistic duality.