2023-08-22 21:25:52
For the first time in the context of a census, more than half of those residing in Quebec can carry on a conversation in English.
This is one of the data that emerges from a series on ethnicity, language and immigration published by Statistics Canada on Tuesday, entitled “Highlights on the English language in Quebec in 2021”.
It is thus 51.7% of those who resided in Quebec in 2021 who were able to carry on a conversation in English.
“In 2021, 4,344,550 residents of Quebec were able to carry on a conversation in English, which represents a historic high,” notes Statistics Canada, among others.
In fact, the progression has been constant since 1991.
The same cannot be said for French conversation, however. “Among these residents, 445,575 people might converse in English without being able to do so in French. After decreasing in the 1990s, their number has been on the rise since 2001, reaching a higher threshold in 2021 than that observed in 1991,” underline the three authors of the study, Nicolas Auclair, Catherine Frigon and Gabriel St-Amant. .
And the progression is marked for French speakers of mother tongue. Thus, the proportion of Quebec residents who can converse in English and have French as their mother tongue reached 42.2% in 2021, compared to 31.4% in 1991.
And this ability to converse in English is far from being limited to metropolitan France and the Outaouais.
The authors note that in 250 of the 1168 municipalities in Quebec, at least 50% of residents might carry on a conversation in English.
“The municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants with the highest proportion of people knowing English were Bonne-Espérance, a municipality in the Lower North Shore where the entire population might carry on a conversation in English, as well as L’ Isle-aux-Allumettes (99.6%) and Shawville (99.4%) in the Pontiac region, in the Outaouais”, underline the authors.
But the municipalities with the largest number of people who know English were Montreal, with 1,225,790 people, Laval, with 287,340 people, and Quebec, with 233,880 people, it says.
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