In 2021, 98% of Canadians knew English or French, the country's two official languages, while around 10.7 million people, or nearly 3 in 10 Canadians, could converse in a non-official language. The number of people whose mother tongue was a language other than English or French reached 8.5 million, or 23.2% of the population, compared with 1.7 million people (11.8% of the population) in 1951.
Today, Statistics Canada is publishing two infographics as part of a series on the diversity of speakers of non-official languages, highlighting that they are far from being a homogenous group. Using data from the 2021 Census of Population, this series illustrates key facts on the speakers of a wide range of non-official languages widely spoken in Canada.
One infographic compares the age profiles of speakers of some of the non-official languages widely spoken in Canada in 2021. The other categorizes non-official language speakers by whether they were born in Canada, are long-term immigrants or are recent immigrants.
In the coming weeks, within this series, an infographic will be published on the likelihood of a language being spoken in households in which all members know it, and another on the use of non-official languages at work and the main industrial sectors in which they are used.
Contact information
------For more information, contact the Statistical Information Service (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).