Section 1 Definitions of the French-speaking population of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut

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Data sources

This statistical portrait of the official language minority in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut contains information drawn from variables in the Canadian census, which includes no fewer than six questions or sub-questions that provide information on official languages, namely knowledge of official languages, language spoken most often at home, other languages spoken on a regular basis at home, mother tongue, language used most often at work, and other languages used on a regular basis at work.

What is the definition of the official language minority group in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut? How do we define a Francophone? There is actually no established definition. For historical reasons, Statistics Canada has generally used the criterion of mother tongue, that is, the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time of the census. Statistics based on mother tongue have the advantage of being roughly comparable going back more than half a century.

Other criteria are also used, opening the way for either more inclusive or more restrictive definitions of French-speaking persons. Thus, does the definition of the Francophone population in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut apply to the 2,555 persons who have French as their mother tongue, the 2,615 persons with French as their first official language spoken, or the 2,690 persons¹ who speak French most often (1,335) or on a regular basis (1,355) at home? Or should a broader definition be considered? Such a definition might include all of the 8,455 French speakers, or even more if we include young children who do not speak French, but who have at least one parent whose mother tongue is French. These are only a few examples of the variables that can be used to define language groups.²

Also, in choosing a strategy for estimating a language group, it is important to make a major distinction. On the one hand, if the objective is to enumerate the population considering all language groups on an equal basis—in other words, treating them symmetrically and creating mutually exclusive categories for estimating them (e.g., English, French, Other), then this implies an appropriate allocation of multiple responses. In this case, the French-mother-tongue population of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut would number 2,555 persons. On the other hand, if the objective is to focus on a single language group (e.g., Francophones), the criteria for inclusion can be broadened without being concerned about the implicit overlaps between language groups. In this case, the number of French-mother-tongue persons would reach 2,670.

In this statistical portrait of Francophones in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, two criteria will mainly be used: mother tongue and first official language spoken. The latter criterion is now used increasingly as a criterion for defining language groups in studies on official-language minorities. The reason for this is that shifts over the years in the composition of the Canadian population tend to call for a redefinition or broadening of the concept of Francophone group or community, since a significant number of persons whose mother tongue is neither French nor English nevertheless use French either predominantly or commonly in their daily lives.

A number of considerations lay behind the creation of the concept of "first official language spoken." Firstly, the substantial increase in immigration since the mid-1980s has had the effect of increasing the size of the population with a mother tongue other than English or French (20% in 2006). Such persons are often designated by the term "allophones." This term also includes persons who have an Aboriginal mother tongue.

In this context , and in the interest of providing official language minority communities with services in their language,³ the question arises as to how to designate individuals' first official language spoken, or more specifically, how to allocate allophones between English and French based on the reported knowledge of one or the other of the official languages. The fact is that an allophone cannot become a Francophone on the basis of mother tongue but can become one by adopting French as the language used most often at home or in the public sphere.

Questions of this type led to the development of different variants of the concept of first official language spoken (Statistics Canada, 1989). This concept echoes the spirit of the current version of the Official Languages Act (1988) which specifies, in section 32(2), that the government may consider "the English or French linguistic minority population of the area served by an office or facility, the particular characteristics of that population and the proportion of that population to the total population of that area."

The concept of first official language spoken was chosen by the federal government, in December 1991, in the Official Languages (Communications with and Services to the Public) Regulations. Section 2 of the Regulations describes the method used to determine "the first official language spoken," namely the first of the two variants presented in Statistics Canada (1989), a method that successively takes account of the responses to the questions on knowledge of official languages, mother tongue and language spoken most often at home. The "first official language spoken" variable is thus not a census question but is instead derived from three questions in the language module of the census.

The concept of first official language spoken (FOLS) serves to allocate the Canadian population between the country's two main language groups. Thus, in Canada, just over 97% of the population has either English or French as a first official language spoken. The residual portion is comprised of persons who cannot conduct a conversation in either English or French (1.6%) and persons who know both official languages and who cannot be assigned one or the other of the two official languages on the basis of the three census variables used for this purpose (1.1%).

Unlike the population with French as a mother tongue, French as FOLS excludes persons for whom French is the mother tongue who reported being unable to conduct a conversation in French at the time of the census. Also, the Francophone population (based on FOLS) includes persons with an "other" mother tongue (other than French or English) who speak French most often at home as well as those who, while having an "other" language as the main home language, can also conduct a conversation in French but not in English. It also includes half the persons who can conduct a conversation in French and English who speak an "other" language or both official languages most often at home.

This report will draw a statistical portrait of Francophones in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, using the mother tongue and first official language spoken criteria. When the Francophone population will be defined by the first official language spoken (FOLS) criterion, it will refer to persons having only French as their first official language spoken and half of persons having both French and English as FOLS, that is, persons to whom neither French nor English can be assigned on the basis of answers to the above-mentioned three variables.

Data sources

This portrait of the French-speaking population in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut contains information drawn from Canadian censuses from 1951 to 2006 and the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities (SVOLM)⁴ conducted in 2006 by Statistics Canada.

Census: The census data contained in this report are drawn from the long census questionnaire, completed by 20% of households and including 61 questions of which 7 are language-related.

Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities (SVOLM): This is a cross-sectional sample survey. Respondents to the SVOLM are selected from the sample of persons who completed the long questionnaire in the 2006 Census.

The survey focuses on Canada's official-language minorities, namely French-speaking persons outside Quebec and English-speaking persons in Quebec. The data can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation of individuals belonging to these two groups on subjects as varied as education in the minority language, access to different services in the minority language (the health care sector in particular), language practices in daily activities both in the home and outside the home, and matters of linguistic identity.

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Notes

1. This number includes all single and multiple responses mentioning French.
2. To cite only one example, in June 2009, the Ontario government adopted a new, inclusive definition of the Francophone population (IDF) (formerly defined according to the mother tongue criterion). This definition is fairly similar to the one based on first official language spoken, except that it also includes French-mother tongue persons who understand French but can no longer conduct a conversation in it.
3. The situation in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut is different, owing to the strong presence of groups with Aboriginal mother tongues, some of which have official-language status. For more details, see Section 2.
4. For information on the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities, the reader is invited to consult the Statistics Canada website.