Canada's official language communities: an overview of the current demolinguistic situation.

This paper analyzes the major demolinguistic trends that affected Canada's official language communities between 1971 and 1991. This overview of the period 1971-1991 has revealed some broad trends with regard to the demolinguistic structure of the Canadian population. Overall, there was a slight increase in the proportion of the population with English as mother tongue. This increase affected primarily the French mother-tongue population, which declined from 27 percent in 1971 to 24 percent in 1991. International migration has favored the English language community. The low levels of fertility in the Canadian society as a whole had a stronger impact on the French language than the remainder of the population. Finally, language shift toward English affected especially the French peripheral minorities very strongly. A second development noted during this period was the increasing territorial segregation between Canada's official language communities. As a consequence, declining proportions of the total Canadian population were living in minority environments. Between 1971 and 1991, the proportion of the Canadians belonging to the official language minorities fell from 8 percent to 6 percent.