The Commissioner for Official Languages in New Brunswick has released her annual report and outlined several points of concern — including the declining number of people speaking French as their first language at home.
Shirley MacLean said there has been an almost two percentage point decline in the number of New Brunswickers who have French as their mother tongue, which dropped to 29.5 per cent in 2021 from 31.4 per cent in 2016.
“In fact, 29.5 per cent indicated that French is their mother tongue while 63.7 per cent have English as their mother tongue.”
The report also said the number of French speakers who speak their first language at home had also declined.
“The numbers demonstrated some worrying trends for the official linguistic minority as the percentage of New Brunswickers speaking predominantly French at home has dropped,” the report said. “In 2016, 28 per cent of New Brunswickers spoke predominantly French at home and in 2021 this decreased to 26.4 per cent.”
The data she used for her report was contained in the 2021 census.
She said that is concerning to her, adding the trends are worrying for the “erosion of French as a first language in every census.”
In an interview on Thursday, MacLean said 1.6 per cent and 2.0 per cent might not seem like big numbers. “But when you take it over past censuses, which have shown that this decline existed then and it continues to decline, the continuous decline is certainly of concern.”
The number of bilingual New Brunswickers remains steady at 34 per cent, according to MacLean’s report, but she said it would have been more encouraging if the numbers were increasing.
Lack of amendments
MacLean also said she was concerned about the lack of amendments made to the Official Languages Act, which is reviewed every 10 years in New Brunswick.
“New Brunswick has missed a clear opportunity to continue progressing towards the equality of our two official languages, by adopting amendments that would have enhanced these rights,” she said in her report.
MacLean said in all the previous reviews of the act, there were significant changes to the legislation.
“This year I had to express my disappointment that there were very few amendments. The only significant amendment I could look to was the creation of the office of the secretariat of official languages.”
She said there were opportunities to move the dial toward “real equality.” She said she wanted to see nursing homes included under the Official Languages Act.
As well, she would have liked to have seen members of the civil service be able to work and be evaluated in their language of choice with some funding for language training.
“As government institutions that have to provide official language services, if you’re having a workforce that isn’t sufficiently bilingual, then that’s a problem,” she said. “The amendments to the act are very critical in creating positive change.”
Assimilation doesn’t take long
Nicole Arseneau-Sluyter, president of the Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau Brunswick, said assimilation does not take long when many Francophones are surrounded by English influence in their perspective communities.
She lives in Saint John and her husband is English. Her daughter is fluently bilingual, she explained, working at the heart centre at the Saint John Regional Hospital.
“There are a lot of families like us,” she said in an interview. “When you live in a minority city like Saint John, it is not that easy to walk around, to go to restaurants, to live in French. It’s a lot of work.”
She said that up until 1989, there were no French schools in the port city, meaning that at least two generations of Acadians living here were unable to get an education in their first language.
Arseneau-Sluyter said protection of the French language begins with day care and primary education.
“It’s contributing directly into assimilation,” she said. “That’s a huge concern.”
The federal department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced an office in Dieppe to help more French-speaking people immigrate to the province.
Global News reached out to the department for an update on the office’s program and work and is awaiting a response.
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