[LINK] "Bilingualism declines for 1st time in 40 years"

[rfmcdonald]

The CBC report on declining rates of bilingualism outside of French Canada--Québec and adjacent areas of Ontario and New Brunswick--isn't very surprising. This might be especially the case since population growth in Canada has been concentrated in western Canada, an area where French isn't common at all (or isn't more common than, say, Ukrainian or Chinese).

The Statistics Canada report referred to is available here.

The proportion of Canadians able to conduct a conversation in both English and French declined for the first time between the 2001 and 2011 censuses after 40 years of growth, Statistics Canada said today.

The English-French bilingualism rate peaked at 17.7 per cent in 2001, after rising steadily from 12.1 per cent in 1961. The 2011 census, however, revealed a slight dip to 17.5 per cent.

[. . .]

In the past decade, the country's overall population rose faster than the number of bilingual individuals, so that while the total number of bilingual Canadians increased to 5.8 million in 2011, their percentage of the total actually edged lower.

In areas of Canada with larger French-speaking populations, however, the proportion of bilingualism being reported is steady or growing.

In 2011, 42.6 per cent of Quebec residents reported being able to converse in both English and French, up from 40.8 per cent in 2001. And in New Brunswick, which has a significant French-speaking population, 33.2 per cent of residents similarly said they could use both official languages.

Bilingualism rates in Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia varied between 10 per cent and 12 per cent.

Rates were lowest in Western Canada and in Newfoundland and Labrador: 8.6 per cent in Manitoba and between five per cent and seven per cent in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador, the report said.