Fewer Manitobans speaking French at home, census finds

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This article was published 10/12/2019 (2290 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — As Premier Brian Pallister riles up Quebecers in an effort to lure more francophones to his province, a Tuesday analysis of census data shows fewer Manitobans are speaking French at home.

In 2016, there were less than 41,000 Manitobans with French as their first official language, making up 3.2 per cent of the population, according to a Statistics Canada report.

Comparing census data spanning 2001 to 2016, the agency found a drop of 2,410 Manitobans identifying as primarily French-speaking over 15 years, despite a growing provincial population.

More Manitobans report they hold a conversation in French, yet when factoring population growth, the share of unilingual English-speaking Manitobans has risen.

Still, the head of the Association of Manitoba Bilingual Municipalities said the figures were encouraging.

“It shows that Manitobans are beginning to see the added value of learning both official languages,” Justin Johnson wrote in an email. 

“They want more opportunities to learn both,” he said, noting that polling shows millennials in particular aspire to be bilingual.

While the numbers have been available for years, the document maps out which communities have the most French speakers, which Johnson said amounts to 25 per cent in a handful of places.

It also outlines trends, such as more Manitobans using French at work.

The analysis did not include country of origin, but census data has shown a correlation between the number of French speakers in Manitoba and immigrants from regions such as West Africa.

Official Languages Minister Mélanie Joly told the Free Press she was encouraged to see more Manitobans are speaking French on a raw-numbers basis.

“I think it’s the reflection of a changing society,” she said, adding the census data help Ottawa plan out where to channel funding, such as for French cultural programming or daycare.

“We’re there to make sure that we can continue to support the francophone community.”

In 2016, the Pallister government changed the province’s definition of a francophone from those with French as a mother tongue, to include people “who have a special affinity for the French language and who use it on a regular basis in their daily life.”

The province clusters French-speaking service staff in larger communities, while trying to make sure there are enough to take video calls from people in rural areas.

Joly added Ottawa followed Manitoba’s lead by encoding a similar directive in October 2018, “to make sure that we would increase the numbers of new bilingual offices of the federal government.”

The directive, which takes place in 2023, aims to have 600 more offices provide services such as employment insurance and business loans in both official languages.

Meanwhile, Pallister has been trying to lure Quebecers to fill civil-service jobs that require fluency in both languages, causing an uproar in la belle province with a newspaper ad last month directed at those affected by Quebec’s ban on religious symbols.

The Société de la francophonie manitobaine did not respond to a request for comment on the Statistics Canada report.

— with files from Maggie Macintosh

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

Statistics Canada census report on French in Manitoba