The evolving linguistic portrait, 2006 census

Due to increased immigration since the mid-1980s, and the tendency of most immigrants to have a mother tongue other than English or French, the share of the allophone population has grown rapidly: from 13% in 1986 to 17% in 1996 and to 20% in 2006. [...] The rapid growth in the allophone population is due to immigration The rapid growth in the allophone population is attributable to the increase in the number of recent immigrants whose mother tongue is neither English nor French. [...] The increase in allophones caused a decline in the official language groups The rapid rise in the proportion of allophones in the Canadian population pushed the share of the English mother-tongue group down from 59.1% in 2001 to 57.8% in 2006. [...] English as home language declines slightly As is the case for English as a mother tongue, the use of English as the language spoken most often at home is continuing the decline that began in 1986 due to a sharp increase in the allophone immigration since the mid-1980s. [...] In sharp contrast to the age distribution for the population of Canada, the number of children under age 5 is roughly the same as the number of people aged 75 to 79, and is three times smaller than the number of people aged 45 to 49.