French losing ground to English, immigrants in Ottawa

Not surprising given that most of Ottawa’s growth (and elsewhere in Canada) is driven by immigration, with immigrants largely integrating into the English language milieu:

The federal study, Portrait of Official Languages Groups in the Ottawa Area, is based on an analysis of Statistics Canada census data. It shows that the city’s overall population increased by more than 330,000 between 1981 and 2011.

Ottawa’s French-speaking community — defined as those whose mother tongue is French — grew by 26.1 per cent during that time span. But the English-speaking community enjoyed much more robust growth (45.9 per cent) as did the population of immigrants whose first language is neither English nor French (225.1 per cent).

What’s more, since immigrants tend to learn English after their arrival, the proportion of Ottawa residents who use English has gone up by 2.7 percentage points during the past three decades, while the proportion of those who use French has gone down by 3.2 percentage points.

Jacques de Courville Nicol, leader of a group dedicated to making Ottawa officially bilingual, said the study shows that the city is headed toward a unilingual future unless more is done to secure the place of the French language.

“Sadly, I think we’re on the road to becoming a unilingual capital, which is not a great signal to send to the rest of the country and the rest of the world,” he said.

De Courville Nicol said English and French must have equal status, rights and privileges within the City of Ottawa. Ottawa has a bilingualism policy that commits the city to offering services in both official languages, but it stops short of the kind of official bilingualism that governs federal institutions.

“I get discouraged when I see so little concern outside of Quebec for the French language and the French community,” De Courville Nicol said.

And while not mentioned in the study, Ottawa is growing much more than Gatineau, and attracting more immigrants as well, with greater diversity as a result:

French losing ground to English, immigrants in Ottawa | Ottawa Citizen.