Is Quebec Speaking Less French at Home? What the Census Shows

August 2026 update: The numbers analyzed in this post come from the 2021 Census. The 2026 Census has already been carried out. Its official reference date was May 12, 2026, with the main collection taking place throughout that month (and beginning in February in the most remote northern regions). Statistics Canada will begin releasing data on languages spoken at home in 2027. That is when we will know whether the trend described below has continued. I'll return to this post when the numbers are released.

Will this be the end of French in Quebec?

More than half of English speakers live in multilingual families - This was the most recent finding found by Statistics Canada, the body responsible for the Canadian census.

According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of people in Quebec who primarily speak French at home has continued to decline over the years. In 2021, 85.5% of Quebecers reported speaking French at home at least regularly, according to census data published by the government agency in late 2022.

In 2016 this percentage was 87.1%. Since the agency also revised the format of its questions about the languages ​​most commonly spoken at home, it is possible that the result was affected.

Curiosity! I think it's important to open a parenthesis here to say how the census process is done in Canada, as I answered my first questionnaire last year, after a few long minutes in front of the computer. After receiving a letter from the government in the mail, you access the indicated website and enter the code sent in the letter. There are endless questions, especially if you have a large family and are an immigrant, most of which are multiple choice. Unlike Brazil, not responding to the Canadian census implies a huge sum of $ 500 CAD, thus, the consistency of data in Canada is very close to reality, as few risk paying this account.

Although the number of people who speak French (francophones) at home increased from 6.4 million in 2016 to 6.5 million in 2021, they now represent 77.5% of Quebecers, a drop of 1.5 percentage points in five years.

Graph - Proportion of French speakers - Source: Statistics Canada

The proportion of Quebecers who most often speak French at home as well as another language increased slightly, from 3.3% in 2016 to 3.5% in 2021.

The census shows that French remains the first official language spoken by more than 90% of Quebecers. Especially high numbers were reported in Bas-Saint-Laurent (91.9%), Mauricie (97.9%) and Laurentians (93.3%). All cities and regions in the interior of the province.

English in Quebec

The other side of this story is that the number of English speakers (Anglophones) in the province has also risen. The proportion of people who listed English as their first official language increased by one percentage point to 13% between 2016 and 2021.

And for the first time, the number of people in Quebec who cited English as their first official language reached 1 million in 2021, the report shows. More than seven in 10 English speakers (71.7%) lived in Montreal or the Montérégie, the southern region of Quebec closest to the US border.

The number of people in Quebec whose only first language is English increased by 38,000 to 639,000, but their share of the province’s population remained relatively stable, rising from 7.5% in 2016 to 7.6% in 2021.

Graph - Proportion of English speakers - Source: Statistics Canada

Almost one in five people in Quebec (19.2%) spoke English regularly at home, and of those, more than half lived in bilingual or trilingual families. This is our case, as Portuguese is considered a third language.

Factors contributing to the increase in English speakers in the province include migration trends and Quebec’s English-speaking population being younger on average, which corresponds to proportionately fewer deaths.

In 2021, more than half of Quebecers said they could have a conversation in English, a record since the government began collecting data on knowledge of official languages in 1901.

The “vast majority” of these individuals said they could hold a conversation in French, according to the Statistics Canada report.

First official language spoken

In Montreal, 58.4% of the population cited French as their first official spoken language, while the percentage for the nearby city of Laval is 68.9%.

In almost every region of Quebec, from 2016 to 2021, the proportion of the population that listed French as their first official spoken language fell, except for Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, which saw an increase of 1.1 percentage points.

The regions showing the biggest drops are Nord-du-Québéc (-3.6 percentage points), Laval (-3 percentage points), Outaouais (-2.4 percentage points) and Montreal (-2.4 percentage points).

Bilingualism in Quebec

Over the past five years, the rate of English-French bilingualism has grown in Quebec, unlike the rest of Canada. Even though English is not an official language in the province, a fact that sets it apart from the rest of Canada.

In 2021, 46.4% of Quebec’s population reported being bilingual, compared to 44.5% in 2016.

Despite an increase of 53,000 English-French bilingual Canadians, the rate of English-French bilingualism outside the province fell from 9.8% to 9.5%.

Graph - Proportion of bilingual speakers - Source: Statistics Canada

Nearly six in 10 of English-French bilingual Canadians live in Quebec, an increase of 1.5 percentage points, the report says.

The proportion of bilingual English-French speakers was highest among those who listed French as their first language.

Final considerations

As I said at the beginning, the numbers are far from exciting any English speaker, but they prove that it is indeed possible to live in Quebec speaking only good old English, as long as you make some concessions in your daily life, such as the region and neighborhood where you will live, what training you intend to undertake and in which sector you want to work, as not all job vacancies object to the lack of French. Clarifying that there are few.

The truth is, over time, everyone realizes that you can’t live here for many years without developing some ability to communicate in French, at least the basics. After some time in Quebec, you soon discover that there are still a lot of people who don’t speak English and have no plans to learn it.

Soon I will bring more content on how to prepare to come without making common mistakes, such as leaving French in the background in your project.

Read also: 8 practical tips for newcomers moving to Quebec and Important topics about Quebec for newcomers.

Well, that’s what I had to say today. I hope this information helped once again. Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates about life in Quebec and your first steps as a newcomer.

See you in the next post! 😉