Portrait of Official-Language Minorities in Canada: Francophones in Ontario

This study paints a general statistical portrait of the official-language minority in Ontario based on data from the Census of Population and the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities in Canada, conducted in 2006. The purpose of such a portrait is to present a set of characteristics, behaviours and perceptions of the official-language minority population, exploiting the analytical opportunities contained in the data. Section 1 of this demolinguistic portrait concerns the choice of criteria for defining the French-speaking population in Ontario, to be used for the purposes of this study. It also provides a brief description of the data sources used. Section 2 presents varied information on how the French-speaking population has evolved and its geographic distribution and concentration in Ontario. This information is accompanied by a series of maps, appendices and a detailed table on the number, relative weight and distribution of the French-speaking population in Ontario. Section 3 concerns the main factors that affect or are affected by changes over time in this province’s Frenchspeaking population: fertility; the transmission of mother tongue and the effect of exogamy; the age structure; intragenerational linguistic mobility; and interprovincial and international migration. It also provides information on the use of French in the public sphere and on how the ability to conduct a conversation in that language has evolved in groups with a mother tongue other than French or English. Section 4 of this portrait looks at a few sectors essential to the vitality of official-language minority communities, as identified in the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality 2008-2013: health; justice; education; and the media, the arts and culture. It also provides statistics on community participation, employment and income characteristics, and the use of French at work. The last section of this portrait presents statistics on Francophones’ identity, their perceptions regarding the presence of French in their community, the provision of services in French by the federal government, the respect for linguistic rights, and the perceived importance that people work on developing the Francophone community.

Number of pages: 109