Population Growth: Population

The Canadian Population Dept: Although the relegation of French to third place in a Statistics Canada table is a potent symbol of the slow but steady change sweeping through the Canadian population, French is still the mother tongue of more than 21 per cent of Canadians. It s followed in third place by what the national statistical agency calls Chinese languages, a lumping together of Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka, which amounted to a little more than 3 per cent of all Canadians in the 2006 census. The next largest groups were German and Italian, followed by Punjabi and Spanish, which were all in the range of 1 to 1.5 per cent of the population, according to Globe and Mail. The trend driving the Canadian demographic shift has been apparent for decades. In 1951, francophones made up 29 per cent of the population. But birth rates declined and, in recent years, immigration has driven most of Canada s population growth and in terms of mother tongue the allophones will almost certainly pass the francophones this time, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics and one of the country s leading census experts. To me, it s just a sign of the growing diversity of our population that we ve seen over a number of years and something that s only going to continue. It s notable that no single immigrant language reached the level of 5 per cent of the population. That s very different from a country such as the United States, where immigrants come primarily from the Americas and have a language in common. Today, about 12.5 per cent of the U.S. population speaks Spanish at home, according to the American Community Survey. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.