Figure 3 Mother tongue of recent immigrants, 1981 to 2006

Note:

'Recent immigrants' refers to landed immigrants who arrived in Canada within five years prior to a given census.

Sources: Statistics Canada, censuses of population, 1981 to 2006.

Description

This figure shows the mother tongues of recent immigrants by census year. Recent immigrants refers to landed immigrants who arrived within five years prior to a given census year.

In the last 25 years, the proportion of recent immigrants whose mother tongue is neither English nor French has increased. In 1981, slightly over one-half (52%) of the recent immigrants at the time reported a mother tongue other than English and French and this proportion has increased steadily since then and has reached almost 80% of all newcomers in 2006.

In contrast, the proportion of recent immigrants who reported English as their only mother tongue has declined, from 36.2% in 1981 to 20.6% in 1991, to 14.3% in 2001 and to 13.3% in 2006.

A small proportion of recent immigrants reported French as their only mother tongue. In 1981, 4.6% of all recent immigrants reported French as their only mother tongue. The proportion decreased in 1991 to 2.7%, but it has been increasing gradually since then. In 2006, 3.9% of all newcomers reported French as their only mother tongue.

The percentage of recent immigrants in 1981, who claimed multiple languages with at least one official language as their mother tongue was 6.8%. The proportion declined to 2.7% in 1991. Since then the proportion of recent immigrants speaking multiple languages with at least one official language has remained unchanged.

Sources: Statistics Canada, censuses of population, 1981 to 2006.