Section 1 Definitions of Quebec's English-speaking population

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Data sources

This statistical portrait of Quebec's official-language minority contains information drawn from Canadian census variables. The census includes no fewer than six questions or sub-questions that provide information on official languages, namely knowledge of official languages, language spoken most often at home, other languages spoken on a regular basis at home, mother tongue, language used most often at work, and other languages used on a regular basis at work.

What is the definition of the minority official-language group in Quebec? How do we define an Anglophone? There is no established definition of Anglophone. For historical reasons, Statistics Canada has generally used the criterion of mother tongue, that is, the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time of the census. Statistics based on mother tongue have the advantage of being roughly comparable going back more than half a century.

Other criteria are also used, opening the way for either more inclusive or more restrictive definitions of English-speaking persons. Thus, does the definition of an Anglophone in Quebec apply to some 607,000 persons who reported having English as their mother tongue¹ at the time of the 2006 Census, 995,000 persons with English as their first official language spoken², or 1,275,000 persons³ who speak English most often (more than 835,000) or on a regular basis (more than 439,000) at home? Or should a broader definition be considered? Such a definition might include all of the approximately 3.4 millions English speakers, or indeed more if we include young children who do not speak English, but who have at least one parent whose mother tongue is English.

Also, in choosing a strategy for estimating a language group, it is important to take account of two main considerations. On the one hand, if the objective is to enumerate the population considering all language groups on an equal basis—in other words, treating them symmetrically and creating mutually exclusive categories for estimating them (e.g., English, French, Other), then this implies an appropriate allocation of multiple responses. In which case, Quebec English-mother-tongue population would number 607,160 persons. On the other hand, if the objective is to focus on a single language group (e.g., Anglophones), the criteria for inclusion can be broadened without being concerned about the implicit overlaps between language groups. In this case, the number of English mother tongue persons would reach 640,600.

In this statistical portrait of Anglophones in Quebec, two criteria will mainly be used: mother tongue and first official language spoken. The latter criterion is now used increasingly as a criterion for defining language groups in studies on official-language minorities. The reason for this is that shifts over the years in the composition of the Canadian population tend to call for a redefinition or broadening of the concept of Anglophone group or community, since a significant number of persons whose mother tongue is neither English nor French nevertheless use English either predominantly or commonly in their daily lives.

A number of considerations lay behind the creation of the concept of "first official language spoken." Firstly, the substantial increase in immigration since the mid-1980s has had the effect of increasing the size of the population with a mother tongue other than English or French (20% in 2006). Such persons are often designated by the term "allophones."

Since an allophone cannot become an Anglophone on the basis of mother tongue, but can become one by adopting English as the language used most often at home or in the public sphere, the question arises as to how to designate individuals' first official language, or, more specifically, how to allocate allophones between English and French based on the reported knowledge of one or the other of the official languages.

Questions of this type led to the development of different variants of the concept of first official language spoken (Statistics Canada, 1989)⁴. This concept echoes the spirit of the current version of the Official Languages Act (1988) which specifies, in section 32(2), that the government may consider "the English or French linguistic minority population of the area served by an office or facility, the particular characteristics of that population and the proportion of that population to the total population of that area."

The concept of first official language spoken was chosen by the federal government, in December 1991, in the Official Languages (Communications with and Services to the Public) Regulations. Section 2 of the Regulations describes the method used to determine "the first official language spoken," namely the first of the two variants presented in Statistics Canada (1989) a method that successively takes account of the responses to the questions on knowledge of official languages, mother tongue and language spoken most often at home. The "first official language spoken" variable is thus not a census question but is instead derived from three questions in the language module of the census.

The concept of first official language spoken (FOLS) serves to allocate the Canadian population between the country's two main language groups. Thus, in Canada, just over 97% of the population has either English or French as its first official language spoken. The residual portion is comprised of persons who cannot conduct a conversation in either English nor French (1.6 %) and persons who know both official languages and who cannot be assigned one or the other of the two official languages on the basis of the three census variables used for this purpose (1.1%).

Unlike the population with English as a mother tongue, English as FOLS excludes persons for whom English is the mother tongue who reported being unable to conduct a conversation in English at the time of the census. Also, the Anglophone population (based on FOLS) includes persons with an "other" mother tongue (other than English or French) who speak English most often at home as well as those who, while having a non-official language as the main home language, can also conduct a conversation in English but not in French. It also includes half the persons who can conduct a conversation in English and French who speak an "other" language or both official languages most often at home.

This report will draw a statistical portrait of Anglophones in Quebec, primarily using the FOLS criterion, but when relevant, will also draw from information on mother tongue⁵. Following the practice of the Treasury Board Secretariat, Quebec's Anglophone population will refer here to persons having only English as their first official language spoken (FOLS) and half the population who have both English and French as their FOLS, that is, persons for whom it is not possible to assign either English or French based on responses to the three variables mentioned above.

Lastly, it is also worth noting that Quebec has 218,560 persons with both English and French as first official languages spoken in the last census. Because these persons generally have characteristics and behaviours that may significantly differ from those persons who only have English as their FOLS, this report highlights, when relevant, distinctive characteristics which differentiate the two groups⁶.

Data sources

This portrait of the English-speaking population in Quebec contains information drawn from Canadian censuses from 1951 to 2006 and the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities (SVOLM)⁷ conducted in 2006 by Statistics Canada.

Census: The census data contained in this report are drawn from the long census questionnaire, completed by 20% of households and including 61 questions of which 7 are language-related.

Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities (SVOLM): This is a cross-sectional sample survey. Respondents to the (SVOLM) are selected from the sample of persons who completed the long questionnaire in the 2006 Census.

The survey focuses on Canada's official-language minorities, namely French-speaking persons outside Quebec and English-speaking persons in Quebec. The data can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation of individuals belonging to these two groups on subjects as varied as education in the minority language, access to different services in the minority language (the health care sector in particular), language practices in daily activities both in the home and outside the home, and matters of linguistic identity.

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Notes

1. The number is 640,600 if all single and multiple responses mentioning English are included.
2. This number includes all single responses and half of "English-French" responses.
3. This figure includes all single or multiple responses mentioning English.
4. Statistics Canada, Population Estimates by First Official Language Spoken, Ottawa, Statistics Canada, Housing and Social
   Statistics Division and Language Studies, 1989.
5. In this report we will use interchangeably the terms "Anglophones", "English-speaking" or "Anglo Quebecers". With the exception of when referring specifically to Anglophones by the mother tongue criterion, this report uses the one of first official langue spoken to designate the Anglophone or English-speaking population. In this sense, the target population in this report differs slightly from the one in the report on the first Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities results published in December 2007.
6. It is worth noting, that 66.2% of Quebecers with English as first official language spoken also have this language as their mother tongue, compared to 3.7% of those who have both English and French as first official language spoken.
7. For information on the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities.