Francophone immigration beyond the Bilingual Belt: wasting a precious resource

Inroads: A Journal of Opinion, Summer-Fall, 2008 by Charles Castonguay

On average, immigrants are slightly less than 30 years old when they arrive in Canada. As a result, the contribution of francophone immigration can best be observed among the population of young francophone adults aged 25 to 34. In 1971, the proportion of immigrants in this population was less than 3 per cent in Quebec and close to 4 per cent in the rest of Canada. By 2001, the corresponding figures were somewhat more than 3 per cent in Quebec and close to 6 per cent in the ROC. During these 30 years, the francophone population outside Quebec almost doubled its advantage over Quebec's in this respect.

Another approach is to see how many francophone immigrants settle inside and outside Quebec. Of the 47,600 francophones who reported that they had immigrated to Canada during 2001-2006, 80.4 per cent were enumerated in Quebec and 19.6 per cent in the ROC. Since Quebec's francophones currently weigh in at 85.8 per cent of the total francophone population of Canada, as far as its share of recent francophone immigration to Canada is concerned, Quebec thus appears shortchanged again. If all periods of immigration are combined, Quebec's share of the Canadian total of 211,000 francophone immigrants in 2006 is even smaller, at 76.4 per cent.

Whichever way one looks at the data, the ROC is already doing better than Quebec in terms of francophone immigration.

The demographic deficit

A population's intrinsic demographic viability can best be gauged by its reproduction ratio. This is calculated by dividing the number of children aged 0 to 4 by the number of adults in the five-year age group most likely to include the children's parents. (8)

According to this ratio, Canada's anglophone population has no problem reproducing itself. Anglicization of francophones and allophones, whose children are normally anglophones, almost fully makes up for inadequate anglophone fertility. The same is true of Quebec's anglophone population, whose reproduction ratio in 2006 is close to 1.

The reproduction ratio of Canada's francophone population is a different matter. In Quebec itself, the francization of allophones is too sparse to make up for the deficit incurred by inadequate francophone fertility. Outside Quebec, the anglicization of young francophone adults, who usually pass on English as mother tongue to their children, makes things even worse. Consequently the deficit between successive generations of francophones at the 2006 census is well over one third in New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba, and of the order of 50 per cent or more in the remaining provinces. (9)

In terms of real numbers, making up for the current intergenerational deficit of Canada's three major francophone populations would require some 5,000 additional francophone immigrants every five years in New Brunswick, more than 10,000 in Ontario and more than 70,000 in Quebec. In view of these needs, francophone immigration to Canada is too precious to squander.

The impact of migration from Ouebec and abroad

Certain provinces such as Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia often enjoy more favourable economic conditions than others. This attracts not only immigrants but a considerable number of francophones from Quebec as well, who help compensate for the francophone minorities' demographic deficits.