Using Languages at Work in Canada, 2006 Census: Provinces and territories

Slight drop in the use of languages other than English or French at work across the country

The use of non-official languages at work among Canadians whose mother tongue was neither English nor French was down slightly in all provinces and territories, with the exception of British Columbia. Whereas in 2001, 23% of allophones used a language other than English or French at work (11% most often, 12% regularly), this proportion was 22% in 2006.

The large rise in immigration by allophones in the past five years did not result in an increase in the use of non-official languages at work for allophone immigrants as a whole.

Among the provinces that received the majority of immigrants, British Columbia remained the one with the highest use of languages other than English or French. In 2006, the proportion of allophones in this province who reported using these languages at work was the same as in 2001, that is to say 30%. In Ontario, the province that received the most immigrants in Canada, the proportion of allophones who used non-official languages at work was 20%, compared to 21% five years before.

In Nunavut, the use of another language applied to 85% of allophones (most of whom reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue), which was down from 2001 (88%). The proportion of allophones who reported using a language other than English or French was also down in the other territories.

In the three large census metropolitan areas (CMAs), the rate of use of languages other than English or French, at least on a regular basis, remained more or less the same or fell. In Vancouver, this proportion remained unchanged at 33.1%. In Toronto, it decreased from 22.7% in 2001 to 21.9% in 2006, while in Montréal, 17,3% of allophones reported using a language other than English or French at work in 2006 compared to 19,8% five years earlier.

It is in the Greater Montréal Area that the use of a language other than English or French most often at work saw the most pronounced decrease, mainly because of the strong rise in the group whose mother tongue was Arabic. Workers in this group tended to use mostly French at work.

In 2006, in the Montréal census metropolitan area (CMA) and those of Toronto and Vancouver, the largest allophone groups used a language other than English or French to varying degrees. In Montréal, 34% of people whose mother tongue was Chinese and 27% of those whose mother tongue was Spanish reported using a language other than English or French at least regularly at work. In Toronto, this applied to 39% of people whose mother tongue was Chinese and 31% of those whose mother tongue was Punjabi. Finally, in Vancouver, just over one out of two workers whose mother tongue was Chinese or Korean reported using a language other than English or French at work, compared to 40% of those whose mother tongue was Punjabi.

Just as the use of official languages at home tends to rise the longer immigrants remain in Canada, so does the language used most often at work.

In Vancouver, the use of languages other than English or French is the highest in Canada among allophone immigrants (18% most often, 16% regularly). Among those who arrived in Canada since the mid-1980s, the use of English most often at work tended to rise between 2001 and 2006 for a same cohort of workers. For example, whereas 30% of allophone immigrants who had immigrated between 1996 and 2000 reported using a language other than English or French most often at work at the time of the 2001 Census, this proportion was closer to 24% for the same cohort at the time of the 2006 Census (see Figure 5).

The same situation was also observed in the Toronto and Montréal CMAs, although to a lesser extent. The case of Vancouver, similar in some respects to that of the other two CMAs, is nonetheless unique due to the strong growth in immigration in that metropolitan area since the mid-1980s as well as the highest proportion of people of Chinese origin among its immigrant population. In effect, the immigrant population more than doubled in only a quarter-century, since 1981.

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