“French is at risk” – Jolin-Barrette
Inevitably, the 2021 census finding that linguistic diversity continues to grow in Canada and that usage of French has fallen from 22.2% in 2016 to 21.4% in 2021 is going to spark a huge response, with our dear Simon Jolin‑Barrette first in with the cry that French is at risk.
Update: More detailed analysis from CBC. The numbers of French speakers rose, but not the proportion: “Although the number of people speaking French at home has increased — rising from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021 — they now make up 77.5 per cent of Quebecers, falling 1.5 percentage points in five years.”
Also, those who listed English as their first official language increased by one percentage point to 13 per cent between 2016 and 2021, and for the first time, the total reached 1 million in 2021, mostly in Montreal or the Montérégie.
Kevin 15:21 on 2022-08-17 Permalink
Ron Howard Narrator: French was the first official language spoken by more than 7.8 million Canadians in 2021, up from 7.7 million in 2016. However, since this growth (+1.6%) was slower than the growth of the population overall (+5.2%), the proportion of the Canadian population whose first official language spoken is French decreased.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220817/dq220817a-eng.htm?HPA=1
MtlWeb 16:14 on 2022-08-17 Permalink
Well said Kevin; basic math and percentages not part of the SJB vocabulary.
dhomas 17:00 on 2022-08-17 Permalink
There is no way they wrote this after carefully reviewing the census data. They had a clear idea of what their message was going to be and plugged in the numbers that suited them when the data became available. The census data was released TODAY…
Tim S. 18:15 on 2022-08-17 Permalink
I look forward to hearing about their efforts to recruit more immigrants from Algeria and Haiti.
Kate 18:59 on 2022-08-17 Permalink
dhomas, journalists would have had advance warning of the contents of a StatCan release like this and plenty of time to rough out their articles, even if the exact figures were not yet available.