Canada's bilingual population on decline for first time in 50 years

The bilingual English-French portion of Canada's population is on the decline, as the number of immigrants whose first language is neither English nor French grows, the country's statistics agency said.

Statistics Canada reported that English-French bilingualism declined over the past decade to 17.5 per cent of Canada's population, down from 17.7 per cent.

It was the first drop in the five decades that the government has tracked the statistic.

English and French are Canada's official languages. In 1969, the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau passed the Official Languages Act, making government services available in both languages across Canada.

The agency noted that outside of French-speaking Quebec, the proportion of primary and secondary school students enrolled in French courses has declined, while the number of immigrants whose mother tongue was neither English nor French has increased.

"Canada as a country welcomes 250,000 immigrants every year and it is impossible to maintain the same level of French-English bilingualism when you are welcoming that number of newcomers every year," Canada's commissioner of official languages Graham Fraser said on Wednesday.