Results from the 2016 Census: English–French Bilingualism among Canadian Children and Youth

A study on English-French bilingualism based on data from the 2006 and 2016 censuses of population. The author’s dataset provides the following information: In 2016, in Canada outside Quebec, the English–French bilingualism rate among youth aged 5 to 17 was 15 precent, up from less than 13 percent in 2006. Among their Quebec counterparts, the rate was 33 percent in 2016, compared with 28 percent in 2006; the English-French bilingualism rate in 2016 was higher among children and youth who, in 2006, were in an official language minority group, had bilingual parents, had parents with a higher level of education, were in a higher income family, and were living in a community with a higher concentration of the official language minority population. The author points out that the retention rate corresponds to the proportion of English-French bilingual people in 2006 who were still bilingual in 2016. Among children and youth aged 5 to 17 who were living in Quebec and who were bilingual in 2006, 94 percent were still bilingual in 2016, when they were aged 15 to 27. In Canada outside Quebec, the corresponding proportion was 65 percent; in Quebec, the retention rate was over 90 percent in almost all demographic groups. In Canada outside Quebec, the retention rates were significantly lower among those whose mother tongue was English, among those who had another mother tongue (neither English nor French), and among those who were aged 14 to 17 in 2006; and among children and youth who were not bilingual in English and French in 2006, 55 percent of those who were living in Quebec had become bilingual by 2016. In Canada outside Quebec, this proportion was 7 percent.

Insights on Canadian Society - Statistics Canada

October 3, 2019

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