Official Languages Committee on March 9th, 2021

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Not at all.

On August 4, statistics Canada published a reference document describing the two major approaches for presenting and distributing information about languages. The reference document was approved by members of an advisory committee.

I believe you are alluding to the Statistics Canada report entitled, “English, French and official language minorities in Canada”. In fact, the difference between the two main trends can be explained as follows. There are francophones, anglophones and allophones. There is no option for dividing lines anywhere, because the multiple responses need to be assigned. If we're interested in placing an emphasis on French, it might be useful to know that some people speak only French at home and that others speak French and English equally. This provides a more nuanced portrait of the presence of French. However, the goal is not to distinguish francophones from anglophones.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you Mr. Corbeil and Mr. Beaulieu.

Mr. Boulerice now has the floor for six minutes.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Corbeil, for being with us this evening.

You know how statistics can be weapons in the hands of politicians. The situation is such that it has become an extremely sensitive and complex issue. On the one hand, some people say that everything's going badly, that it's awful and a catastrophe. On the other, people say that everything's fine and that there's nothing to worry about.

My view is that the situation lies somewhere between the two. As you were saying, the subject is complex. From one region, one group or one age segment to another, the realities are varied and different. I'm particularly interested in what you said about the indicators, to the effect that those for the private sphere may not be the most important and that those for the public sphere may be more revealing in view of the demographic changes owing to immigration and other factors. I don't think that the issue of mother tongue should enter into it at all. It even runs counter to the spirit of Quebec's Bill 101, which wanted immigrant children to go to French schools. The second and third generations may not have had French as their mother tongue, but they were able to speak French.

You mention public space indicators. According to you, what are the most revealing indicators here? Is it language of work, the language spoken in stores and restaurants, or the language for cultural activities?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you. Once again, that's a very good question.

Measuring language used in the public space is one of the great challenges. Needless to say, while work is a key sector, it's important to understand that one-third of the population is not in the workforce and therefore does not use French or English at work. However, there are other indicators.

The Office québécois de la langue française carried out investigations in 2010 and 2017, in which people were asked what language they used, generally speaking, outside of their home and their circle of friends. According to the results obtained, some people used English more often at home, though they used French at work. Others used more than one language at work, but spoke their other language at home. Of course the language used for service delivery is important. There is also the matter of languages used at performances or a variety of other activities. Indicators could be developed on the use of languages.

People who speak mostly French at home will usually speak French in public. The same goes for people who speak English most often at home.

Nevertheless, the major challenge is to be able to monitor trajectories if we are to acquire a better understanding of the presence of the French language, without falling into a reductionist approach in which those who do not speak French at home are not considered francophones. I think things can be analyzed in a much more subtle manner.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

There are indeed many nuances. I was listening earlier to Ms. Josée Boileau speak about this topic on Radio-Canada. She was saying that in Quebec, according to the Office de la langue française, 94% of people were capable of carrying on a basic conversation in French. I must admit that this figure surprised me. I had the impression that it was much lower than this.

Have you obtained results like this in your surveys?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Yes, definitely. I must say that this 94% result it has been very stable over time. You're not wrong however, because when we were doing some surveys in which we altered the question slightly to ask whether people could speak about various subjects, the percentage dropped.

Nevertheless, I think that many would agree that being able to engage in a conversation is not a very sound indicator of the state of French in Quebec. What may well be important here, in my view, is the extent to which it's being used. Does it necessarily have to be the main language used?

I gave an example earlier of what is happening in the work environment. Between 2006 and 2016, over a period of 10 years, the people who said they spoke French and English equally at work increased from 4.7% to 7.4%. We don't know much about the factors that explain this increase. We do know that exports abroad of goods and services increased significantly, particularly in the service industries. Of course that's not the only factor to explain the change. We don't know whether it's the outcome of the internal work environment or whether it stems from the fact that Quebec, and Montreal in particular, is a hub for artificial intelligence, high tech, multimedia, aeronautics, and other sectors.

We definitely need to push this analysis further for a better understanding of the situation and perhaps to be able to take more appropriate action that could encourage people to use French at work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Mr. Boulerice, you have 10 seconds left.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

In that case, Mr. Chair, I'll wait for the next round of questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you for your understanding.

Mr. Corbeil, we're going to have a five-minute round of questions, and the first up will be the vice-chair of the committee, Mr. Blaney.

Mr. Blaney, you have the floor.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Corbeil, we are pleased to welcome you this evening. Indeed, after a fashion, you're setting the table for us at a time when we are conducting one of the most important studies that the committee has undertaken since the coming into force of the Official Languages Act more than 50 years ago. What we're doing is preparing a report on the health of one of our two national languages, namely French.

You also gave us a status report on the situation outside Quebec. You mentioned six indicators, five of which showed a decline in French. You gave us various statistics on Quebec, but you never mentioned the data from the 2017 study, which drew attention to the worrisome state of affairs for French in that province.

Could you give us an overview of the 2017 study to supplement the data that you provided this evening? We would like to use it for our study.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Do you mean Quebec, or all of Canada?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

I'd like you to talk about the demographic projections, including the reduction in the pool of francophones. Earlier, Quebec was considered to be 80% francophones, but suddenly, the percentage began to diminish. We've been told that in demographics, a percentage point over a short period is significant. I'd like to hear your comments on this.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Thank you for your question.

Of course the demographic projections are based on hypotheses and scenarios. We have developed a good many such scenarios by factoring in trends observed over the previous 15 years before the 2011 census or the National Household Survey. By using these and closely examining these trends, we can achieve an in-depth analysis through what we call microsimulation. We assign a probability to every Canadian, of experiencing an event in the course of their existence, which is to migrate, learn a language, give birth to a child, or something else. We know, for example, that people who have just had a child are less likely to move to another province for a number of years. All of this is taken into account. It's extremely complex.

However, given that the mother tongue of most of the immigrants who come to Quebec is neither English nor French, it's not surprising to see that French as a mother tongue should be decreasing significantly in that province. That was among the important results we observed. There was a major increase in the number of English-language immigrants in recent years in Quebec. Even taking the relative weight into her account, it would appear that generally speaking, more immigrants tend to adopt English than French. Ultimately, it means that these immigrants will increasingly tend to use English than French.

However, contrary to what many people might think, on Montreal Island, a steady 66% of the population reported their first spoken official language to be French. We are not necessarily expecting a decrease, because there is a growing percentage of migration on Montreal Island tending towards the crown. On the other hand, there is a significant increase in the English-language population in Laval and on the South Shore. This naturally contributes to a decline in the relative weight of French as the language spoken at home.

Don't forget—and this is no doubt the most serious challenge that leads us to examine the various indicators—that the language transfers for the other mother-tongue population is not strong enough to offset the growth of this population over the long term.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

In connection with language transfers, it would seem that we now take into account the attraction of English for francophones, particularly for cultural matters.

In your next censuses, will the indicators enable you to measure the likelihood for a young francophone in Quebec to migrate towards the anglophone culture because of their consumption of cultural content? Are you going to do this kind of analysis?

It would seem that such factors are contributing to the decline, in addition to some of the other factors you summarized for us.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Yes, definitely. If we focus again on the language transfers, an increase in language transfers among younger people has been observed.

We might ask whether these young people, more of whom are attending English-language CEGEPs and universities, tend to be living with English-speaking roommates whose language is that of the institution they are attending.

However, I think that with increasingly diverse data sources at our disposal, including a well-known longitudinal platform in education that enables us to track these students over time and integrate the census data, we will be able to analyze this more thoroughly.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Corbeil.

Mr. Arseneault, over to you now for the next five minutes.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening once again, Mr. Corbeil. We have met several times in the past, on this very committee.

You are always well prepared and excellent at explaining the numbers. You're a true statistician. It becomes almost dizzying, not because you are not being clear, but because you have such a thorough mastery of your subject, which is not necessarily the case for us.

I don't know where to begin. I might ask some questions other than those dealing with the changing francophone landscape in Canada.

In your address, you said right at the outset that immigration was the main driver of growth. Is the fact that immigration has been the main driver of growth in the country something new, or has it always been like that?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Well, we're talking mainly about the late 1990s. That's when immigration became more significant in terms of growth factors than natural growth, which is to say births minus deaths.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

For immigration today, based on what you replied to the excellent questions from my colleagues, simply accounting for those who speak French at home or at work does not of itself provide an accurate picture of the demographic weight of the francophone and anglophone populations, whether one lives in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada.

This, apparently, is a relatively recent phenomenon in the country's history. You mentioned the late 1990s. Is that what you said?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

Yes, because prior to the late 1990s, natural growth was a more significant factor than immigration.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

You told us that according to Statistics Canada, it's outdated to simply do what we did before the 1990s and simply use the usual indicators and do what we did before the 1990s, if we are to develop an accurate picture of the language situation in Canada.

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

I wouldn't say outdated, exactly.

I think that information about the language spoken at home is nevertheless extremely useful insofar as—

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Is it incomplete?

[Jean-Pierre Corbeil]

It's definitely incomplete, particularly when we are welcoming immigrants whose mother tongue is not French and not the main language they use at home.

I believe that other indicators are important. One would be the language of education for children, which will help French penetrate into private space. We need to acknowledge that to obtain a more subtle and complete picture, we need more than language spoken most often at home. It could be the use of a secondary language, but to what extent is there a link between that and the language of work, and between that and the language of education?

And we shouldn't hide the fact that things are not doing so well outside Quebec. That's fairly clear, just because the issues pertaining to the transmission or non-transmission of the language are nevertheless important.

So I wouldn't say that we're outdated. I would simply say that we need something more substantial and more nuanced in terms of information.