English-French bilingualism

According to the 1991 Census, 4.4 million individuals could conduct a conversation in both official languages - in Canada, this is what we mean by ‘bilingua. Forty years ago, there were only 1.7 million individuals who could do so - this is an important increase...

The map shows that the largest number of bilingual individuals can be found in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario. In 1991, these three provinces contained 86% of all bilingual individuals in Canada. If you were to superimpose on this map the layers of English and French linguistic minorities, you will observe that in most cases the minorities are composed of bilingual individuals. Even though this map does not show it precisely, the data indicates that outside Quebec, francophones are more often bilingual than anglophones, whereas the situation in Quebec is reversed - anglophones living there are more likely to be bilingual.

In general, bilingualism is linked to the amount of contact between different linguistic groups. People in a large linguistic group are less likely to become bilingual. However, the contrary is true of small linguistic groups. For example, in Vancouver francophones would be better equipped to integrate into the activities of the area if they learned English as a second language.