Nearly 900,000 English and other non-French-speaking Quebecers have left the province since 1966, according to a Statistics Canada report.
The report’s authors said the migration could have been more substantial, but there was a relatively low number of English-speaking people in Quebec to begin with.
“We count 672,903 English speakers and 220,448 people who had a non-official language as a mother tongue such as Greek or Italian who left Quebec between 1966 and 2021,” analysts said, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. “The total of 893,351 might have been higher but for the fact “Quebec’s English-speaking population is smaller.”
The report, “Interprovincial Migration By Mother Tongue,” said 324,761 English speakers have left New Brunswick, Canada’s only officially bilingual province, since 1966. Another 20,551 who spoke foreign languages also left New Brunswick.
In 1966, Quebec accounted for 29 percent of the Canadian population but that number has since dipped to 22 percent, according to StatCan numbers.
Terrorist bombings by the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) were linked to the departure of hundreds of thousands of English-speaking residents in 1963. The Montreal Stock Exchange, RCMP, Royal Canadian Legion offices, and the home of then-Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau were targeted in the attacks and six people were killed.
Non-French-speaking Quebec residents also left the province after the 1970 October Crisis when martial law was invoked in response to FLQ kidnappings as well as after the 1976 election of the separatist government Parti Québécois.
A 2015 StatCan report predicted the populations of Ontario and the Western provinces would continue to grow at Quebec’s expense and that the population share of the Prairie provinces could surpass Quebec’s in less than half a century.
“In the vast majority of Statistics Canada’s most recent population-projection scenarios, natural increase could nonetheless remain positive in all provinces west of Quebec over the next two decades,” said the report. “Conversely, the natural increase would continue to decline in the Atlantic provinces (according to all projection scenarios) and in Quebec (according to most projection scenarios) in the next 20 years.”
In a 2019 report, StatCan said Quebec can expect its population rate to continue to drop.
“The rate of population growth in Quebec would remain lower than that of Canada in most scenarios,” the report said. “As a result, Quebec’s share of the total Canadian population could decrease from 22.6 percent in 2018 to between 20.1 percent and 20.6 percent by 2043.”
While Quebec’s population growth will dwindle, Alberta and Ontario are expected to account for more than half of Canada’s projected growth between 2018 and 2043.
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