According to Mr. Charles Gaudreault, engineer at H2O Innovation, we should expect a collapse of the Quebec population of “French ethnic origin” of up to 45% in 2050. Concerned about the impact of immigration on the populations of host countries such as Canada and its provinces, he developed only one scenario to cover eight decades in the journal Nations and Nationalism.
His inspirations come first from the Briton David Coleman, for whom “the white British population should fall to less than 56% of the population of the United Kingdom in 2056”. They also come from the Americans James Smith and Barry Edmonston, who predicted that the white population of the United States – excluding Hispanics – would be only 51% in 2050.
Wrongly considering that the 1971 census offers the most reliable data on ethnic origin, Mr. Gaudreault carried out his projection based on a Quebec of 6 million inhabitants. At that time, Quebecers of French ethnic origin accounted for 79% of the population. Only 21% remain to include all other origins, including First Nations, British, Italian and Greek communities.
To justify his choice, Gaudreault bases himself on two sources which he read in a distracted way. On the one hand, he claims to have to return to “ethnic demography” after “demographers [sont] geared towards linguistic demography”. On the other hand, it is based on a genealogical study by a group of researchers under the direction of Hélène Vézina.
It is false to affirm that an “ethnic demography” has already existed. If in the past there was a connection between ethnic origin and mother tongue, it was out of interest in the latter. Didn’t Richard Arès point out that “the further west you go, the more the chances of French crumble” among French Canadians?
Then, to affirm “that the ancestors of the baby boomers were 95% of French origin”, is to confuse the ethnic origin of the people listed in 1971 with 2000 genealogies “containing more than five million mentions of ancestors”, most of which arrived in the XVIIe century, thus taking a lead deemed “insurmountable”.
Mr. Gaudreault has broken down his results into three watertight classes, rather than making them permeable to each other, as with demographers. First there are the French Canadians (Ethnic French Canadians). Then, the Aboriginals, the British and all the other ethnic groups listed in 1971 are identified under the name No French Canadians. Finally, all the immigrants who have arrived since 1971, their children and their descendants form a separate class (Immigrants and Descendants – IAD).
Note that the third group (IAD) brings together all immigrants from French-speaking countries (France, Senegal, Vietnam, Haiti, etc.) as well as all the children whom Law 101 has brought to our French schools since 1977! Starting from zero in 1971, the numbers of this group are the only ones to increase under the effect of immigration. The first two groups can only be marginalized over time.
The Achilles heel: the rear projection
The retrospective part already belonging to history, we evaluated the results of Mr. Gaudreault for the IAD group from the demographic facts observed between 1971 and 2001.
Charles Gaudreault asserts that “the IAD subpopulation shows a steady increase, from 0.8 million in 2000, to 2 million in 2020, to 3 million in 2035, then to 4.1 million in 2050”. This sequence of results draws a mathematical equation that does not take into account fluctuations in immigration. Initially, there is an underestimation of 29% (1971-1976), followed by an overestimation of 24% (1977-1988), and so on.
In the 2001 census, there were 510,100 immigrants in Quebec who arrived during the last three decades of the 20th century.e century. Among these people, there were 150,800 women of childbearing age in 2001. All calculations made, among these Quebecers enumerated in 2001, we estimated that 118,500 people aged 30 or less were immigrants of that time. .
According to our calculations, the sum of immigrants from the period 1971-2001 and their descendants is only 617,000 people instead of the 860,000 obtained according to Charles Gaudreault’s projection. It must be recognized that there is an overestimation of 243,000 people in the IAD group. As a percentage, this overestimation is very significant: 39.5%!
The retroactive part of Charles Gaudreault’s projection leads to a proportion ofEthnic French Canadians 64.5% in 2014. Since our calculations give a proportion of 71.2% for an underestimation of nearly 7 points, maintaining the same assumptions until 2050 can only produce, after 35 years, results disproportionate to historical evidence.
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