By Barbara Yaffe - Recent history has taught us that when francophones in Quebec feel insecure about their language and culture, things get pretty uncomfortable and complicated for the rest of Canada.
Most Canadians believed that, after Quebec's so-called Quiet Revolution and the establishment of the Parti Quebecois provincially and Bloc Quebecois federally, the French in Quebec were feeling more confident about the long term survival of their language.
But a new study by University of Ottawa adjunct professor of statistics Charles Castonguay, which appears in the latest issue of the policy journal Inroads, reveals the dangerously dwindling vitality of French in both Quebec and Ontario.
His research shows that Quebec's anglo exodus has become a thing of the past -- 250,000 anglos left Quebec between 1966 and 1986 while just 8,000 left between 2001 and 2006. And between 2001 and 2006 "the relative weight of the French mother-tongue majority [in Quebec] had dropped as never before in Canadian history.
"Moreover throughout Quebec as well as in the Montreal area, the anglophone minority had grown much faster than the francophone majority."
Data Castonguay derived from Statistics Canada reveals, the English mother-tongue population in Quebec, between 2001 and 2006 grew by 3.4 per cent compared to 0.5 per cent growth for the French mother-tongue population. And of course, in Ontario where English assimilation is a fact of life, the numbers are even more discouraging for the French-language community.
Taken together with the fact that Quebec's over-all population is declining in relation to the Canadian population -- threatening its 25 per cent share of House of Commons seats -- the future looks precarious for the province. Quebec francophones have every reason to once again feel threatened.
The goal of Quebec becoming as French as Ontario is English has not been achieved, concludes Castonguay, remarking that Quebecers increasingly are aware of their situation: "French Quebec appears to be wide awake again. It's not hard to understand why."
Alas, this surely spells trouble for the rest of us.