Multi-Lingual Canada

Having lived for almost three years in Ottawa, I was getting used to signs and websites being in French and English. On return to Toronto, the city seems bigger and better than ever with more and more languages and communities represented.
Education that can adapt to these multi-lingual capabilities of Canadians could make us an economic power house. The question is whether we can come up with a more palatable way to teach Hindi and Mandarin than the way I was taught French in elementary school.


Canada's tenuous French connection

BRODIE FENLON

Globe and Mail Update

December 4, 2007 at 11:04 AM EST
...
• One in five Canadians – 19.8 per cent of the total population – was born outside the country, a rate not matched since 1931, when the percentage of foreign-born citizens peaked at 22.2 per cent. Only Australia has more foreign-born residents.

• More than 60 per cent of immigrants live in the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; only about 5 per cent live in rural parts of Canada.

• Most of the recent newcomers to Canada are from Asia – 58 per cent when those from the Middle East are included. Europeans, the dominant immigrant group for most of the 20th century, represented only 16 per cent of those who moved to Canada between 2001 and 2006.

• Canada's foreign-born population increased by 13.6 per cent, four times greater than the growth rate of 3.3 per cent for the Canadian-born population.

...
For the first time, allophones – those who speak neither English nor French as their first language – represent fully one-fifth of the population. The numbers jumped to 20.1 per cent from 18 per cent in the last census, driven primarily by immigration. Conversely, the proportion of francophones and anglophones decreased slightly after population growth is taken into account.