OTTAWA – As student enrolment in immersion French goes up, enrolment in regular French classes in Canada is going down, according to a new report from Statistics Canada. The resulting overall decline in the number of students studying French in any form worries Canada’s commissioner of official languages.
“It is a concern to see that for the first time, we’ve seen a decline in the proportion of Canadians who are bilingual,” commissioner Graham Fraser said, adding that the report shows the status quo on language education in Canada isn’t working.
The report, released Tuesday, coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, whose work led to the Official Languages Act in 1969, which institutionalized bilingualism in Canada.
The StatsCan report, by Jean-François Lepage and Jean-Pierre Corbeil, looks only at official-language bilingualism. It does not include bilingualism in languages other than French and English.
Using census data, the report found that from 1961 to 2011, the net number of Canadians who speak both official languages grew to 5.8 million from 2.2 million, an increase of 164 per cent. But the peak year, proportionally, was 2001, when the bilingual percentage of the overall population was 17.7 per cent. By 2011, the percentage had declined to 17.2 per cent even though the actual numbers had gone up.
The report found that in the 1991-92 school year, more than two million students outside Quebec received French-language training. By the 2010-11 school year, that number had dropped to around 1.7 million.
Paradoxically, in that period, enrolment in French-immersion programs increased to 341,000 from 267,000. But those enrolled in French-as-a-second-language classes, or core French, decreased to 1.4 million from 1.8 million.
“The increase in the enrolment for French-immersion programs cannot compensate for the decrease in the core French programs,” Corbeil said.
This means that, outside of Quebec, there has been an overall decrease since 1991 in the number of students studying French as a second language, regardless of which French program they are taking. Proportionally, in 1991, 53 per cent of students took some sort of French, whereas in 2011, this percentage had declined to 44 per cent.
Fraser said that part of his concern is that the decline in the number of people in core French results from parents believing it isn’t as effective as immersion.
“There is this belief that if your child is not in immersion, then they’re never going to learn French. … That’s very unfortunate, and people should recognize how valuable and important core French can be,” he said.
The report is worrisome, Fraser said, because bilingualism policy is “not effective in giving young Canadians the language-learning opportunities that they should have.”
“It suggests that governments, federal and provincial, need to take action because the current situation is a situation of decline rather than growth. We can’t point to this and say the status quo is working and we don’t have to worry about it,” Fraser said.
Robert Rothon, executive director of Canadian Parents for French, said part of the decline in French studies could be attributed to the structure of language programs across the country, since French is not mandatory as a second language in all provinces and territories.
“The program itself isn’t that popular, so kids don’t stay in it any longer than they have to, or they won’t take it up at all now if they’re offered other options,” Rothon said.
Not only are there fewer students receiving exposure to both English and French in school, but many students that do take French classes lose their language skills over time.
The report uses data from the 1996 census, which shows that 15 per cent of anglophone students aged 15 to 19 were able to hold a conversation in French and English. Fifteen years later, when they were in the 30-to-34 age bracket, the rate was eight per cent.
“What we see overall is that those who went through the immersion program were more likely to be able to maintain their knowledge of their second language over time compared to those who went through the regular programs,” Corbeil said.
The highest rates of bilingualism, the report states, were found in areas where there is a high level of interaction between French and English speakers. This “bilingual belt,” includes parts of Quebec, and the areas where Ontario and New Brunswick share borders with Quebec.
In comparison, less than seven per cent of the population is bilingual in the three westernmost provinces, and in Newfoundland and Labrador.
