OTTAWA-
A new survey finds that more Canadians report a strong attachment to their primary language than to other markers of identity, including the country they call home.
The survey, which was conducted by Leger for the Canadian Studies Association, found that 88 per cent of respondents reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language, while 85 per cent reported the same for Canada.
The increased importance of language was especially noticeable among Francophones and Indigenous Peoples.
Reports of strong attachment to the primary language exceeded all other markers of identity, including geography, ethnicity, racial identity, and religious affiliation.
Of the identity markers considered in the survey, Canadians were the least likely to report a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
Association for Canadian Studies President Jack Jedwab said the survey findings highlight the important role language plays in people’s identities.
“I think many Canadians may be surprised, as they may not intuitively think that language is as important as other attention-grabbing expressions of identity,” he said.
Jedwab said that people should be mindful not to downplay the importance of language given how significant language can be to a community. He said that language has the double function of facilitating communication and being an expression of culture.
“There may be a tendency for people to downplay the importance of other languages,” he said.
“Historically, we haven’t paid enough attention to indigenous languages, which we now see our federal government investing heavily in, trying to help maintain and revive indigenous languages,” he added.
The online survey was completed by 1,764 Canadians between July 8-10. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because online surveys are not considered truly random samples.
For Canadians whose main language is French, 91 percent reported a strong sense of attachment to their language, compared to 67 percent who reported the same feeling for Canada.
In Quebec, more people reported a strong sense of attachment to their mother tongue than to the province.
Only 37 percent of Canadians reported a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
The findings come ahead of Statistics Canada’s latest census release on languages in the country, due out on Wednesday.
Jedwab said the census release will be especially important for Quebec, where there is close monitoring of the status of the French language compared to other languages.
Leger’s survey also found that more than half of French-speaking Quebecers say they know English well enough to carry on a conversation. That contrasts with fewer than one in 10 English respondents in all provinces except Quebec and New Brunswick who say they can carry on a conversation in French.
According to the latest census, English-French bilingualism increased from 17.5% in 2011 to 17.9% in 2016, reaching the highest rate of bilingualism in Canadian history. More than 60 percent of that growth in bilingualism was attributable to Quebec.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 11, 2022.