StatCan revises census data to show decline in English speakers in Quebec
OTTAWA — Quebec’s anglophone population is declining, rather than booming, Statistics Canada said Thursday as the agency officially corrected a census finding that stoked political fires in Quebec’s emotionally charged language debate.
The change is the result of a computer error that recorded some 55,000 people in last year’s census as English speakers, when they really had French as their mother tongue. Correcting the mistake cut the increase in the anglophone population in half and pushed the francophone population up by more than 145,000 between 2011 and 2016.
Statistics Canada officials suggested the revisions did little to change the overall narrative captured in the census that showed an increase in the number of French speakers in the country, largely driven by Quebec.
The country’s revised bilingualism rate dropped to 17.9 per cent from 18 per cent, but remains at an all-time high.