The debate on the future of the French language has caused much ink to flow and it will continue to do so for decades to come. My work on the decline of French ancestry in the Quebec population sheds light on this blind spot that is often overlooked by Quebec demographers. These generally pay particular attention to the decline of the French language without presenting that of French ancestry. However, it is quite reasonable to postulate that the decline of French ancestry could have an effect on the decline of the language.
Recently, Michel Paillé, a retired demographer from the Office québécois de la langue française, criticized my work in a text entitled “Quebec’s baby boomers are not 95% ‘pure wool’”, which appeared in these pages.
On the merits, Michel Paillé seeks to invalidate my thesis that French ancestry in Quebec becomes a minority before the end of the middle of the 21st century.e century by attacking my methodology. Paillé’s critique has serious shortcomings since it is based on a superficial reading of my article published in 2020 and a seriously erroneous interpretation of my methodology. I will therefore take a few lines to respond to this criticism by responding on the merits, that is to say by demonstrating that French ancestry will decline considerably over the coming decades.
First of all, the reader should know that my demography work shows that French ancestry, which was 79% of the Quebec population in 1971, according to the census, dropped to 64.5% in 2014, and will continue to decline. to reach 45% in 2050. My work has also established that the migratory thresholds are so high that even an increase in fertility from 1.6 to 2.6 children per woman would not prevent the decline. This last point alone shatters the myth that the decline of French ancestry is mainly the fault of Quebec couples, whose fertility is below the renewal threshold. For this myth to be true, our migration thresholds would have to be considerably lower.
The best way to know if the results of a study are plausible is often to analyze similar and independent studies, when such studies exist. Fortunately, in September 2022, Statistics Canada demographers released projections for the 2016 to 2041 range for the ethnocultural demographics of Canada and its provinces. Taking into account the 2011 census, we can extend the comparison over 30 years. In 2011, according to the census, immigrants from 1D and 2e generations made up 21.6% of the Quebec population.
According to Statistics Canada projections, these same immigrants will make up 38.0% of the Quebec population in 2041; it is therefore a growth of 16.4 percentage points that is observed. According to my work, French ancestry will drop from 66.2% in 2011 to 50.8% in 2041, a decrease of 15.4 points. The concordance is therefore fairly good given the very different methodologies.
Another study of interest, older, is that of the founder of Quebec demography, Jacques Henripin. This showed in 1987 that Quebecers whose ancestors all arrived in Canada before 1981 will only form between 25% and 35% of the population in 2081. In his projections, Henripin shows that the descendants of Quebecers from 1981 in the Quebec population will decline by 22% between 2011 and 2041. Compared to Henripin’s projections, the decline obtained by my projections is conservative.
From a purely demographic perspective, my population estimates for 2014 and 2041 are in line with historical values and Statistics Canada projections. In 2014, Quebec had 8,214,000 inhabitants (8,208,000 for my projections), and it will have between 8.8 and 10.3 million, according to Statistics Canada (9.2 million for my projections), in 2041.
Thus, the decline of French ancestry as presented in my work is real. And I think that this phenomenon should be part of our process of collective reflection in this great historical debate that is that of French.
I believe that basically, out of an anti-racist reflex, several intellectuals like Michel Paillé refuse to reflect on the impact of ethnicity on the decline of the language. When French ancestry will be no more than the heritage of a minority of Quebecers, the language risks becoming an instrument of communication with no emotional, cultural or identity charge. And if the language becomes only a means of expression, then we can bet that Quebecers will turn to the one that is most practical in North America: English.