French and the francophonie in Canada : Français et la francophonie au Canada : langue, Recensement de la population de 2011

An overview of the statistics on mother tongue,2 reported ability to conduct a conversation in French, language spoken at home and first official language spoken3 paints a basic picture of the four key indicators and measures of the presence of French in Canada and in each province or territory.4 Close to 10 million Canadians said they can speak French In 2011, close to 10 million people reported [...] Data from the 2011 National Household Survey, to be released in 2013, will provide information on the contribution of migration between Quebec and the rest of Canada to the growth of the French-speaking population outside Quebec. [...] Presence of French grew in Alberta and British Columbia Of all the provinces, it was in Alberta that the growth rate of the population with French as a mother tongue or language spoken most often at home was the most important between 2006 and 2011 (Table 6). [...] Compared with the change in the share of the Canadian population able to speak French, the decrease in the proportion of those with French as their mother tongue was more notable. [...] French was the mother tongue of 25.7% of the population in 1981, and 21.7% of the population 30 years later.