2.4 $ billion dollars a year for being a “Bilingual”country!

This current year 2012 the Fraser Institute, conducted a report discovering how much money Canada spends a year for being a Bilingual country.When we are talking about “Canada”we are talking of “taxpayers” so every single law abiding citizen who pays his own taxes!!

 This annual cost includes language services (also English language services in Quebec) such as education,translation and bilingual signage.

"The issue we examine in this study is not whether bilingualism is good or bad policy, but the costs above and beyond that of providing education and other services in the majority language,” Francois Vaillancourt, a Universite de Montreal economics professor, said in a statement.

 According to one of the authors of the study claim, a way to reduce the costs for tax payers would be making greater use of the private sector for translations therefore public taxes shouldn't be payed at least in translation.And also an additional point would be that in the last three decades French in most of the Canadian cities is being outpaced by other languages such as Italian,Chinese and German.

  

Check out how much!!!!!

 Ontario spends the most: $623 million annually

New Brunswick:$85 million, followed by Quebec at $50 million.

Alberta:spends $33 million on bilingual services ($534.70 per francophone),

B.C. spends $23 million ($426.90 per francophone),

Nova Scotia spends $18 million ($540.10 per francophone),

Manitoba spends $16 million ($410.20 per francophone),

Saskatchewan spends $9.65 million ($640.50 per francophone),

Prince Edward Island spends $5.1 million ($946.20 per francophone)

 Newfoundland and Labrador spends $3.4 million ($1780.30 per francophone).

Sources:

-http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/bilingualism-costs-taxpayers-2-4-billion-173241373.html

-http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/01/16/bilingualism-canada-cost-french_n_1209205.html

English and French in Canada

English and French are the most talked languages in Canada. The 75% of the population speak in English ( 24,8 millions of people) and the 23% of the population speak in French (7,7 millions of people).

English is estimately the mother tongue of 58% of Canadians (19,1 millions of people), and the 22% of the population used to have French language as mother tongue (7, 2 millions of people).

Most of the French speakers live in Quebec.  According to the language talked at home, the 66% of  the Canadians use English and the rest 21% use French as usual language.

The 17,5% of the population speak English and French ( 5,8millions of people) and bilingualism has increased since 2006.The increase of bilingualism comes from the Quebecers who make sure that they can have a conversation in English and French at the same time. Quebec has contributed the 90% of the bilingual people’s increase in Canada between 2006 and 2011. 

In Canada the population use more than 200 languages to communicate.

The ten most used languages in Canada are:

• Punyabí: 1,3% (430.705 people)
• Chinease: 1,28% (425.210 people)
• Spanish: 1,24% (410.670 people)
• German: 1,23% (409.200 people)
• Italian: 1,23% (407.485 people)
• Cantonese: 1,12% (372.460 people)
• Arabic: 0,98% (327.870 people)
• Mandarin: 0,75% (248.705 people)
• Portuguese: 0,63% (211.335 people)
• Polish: 0,57% (191.645 people)

Carmen

"Canadian Bilingualism"

Good afternoon everybody!!! 

 As we said we are going to deal with the English language spoken in Canada, a North American country which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

 Canada is a country where two official languages are spoken, one is French and the other one which we will study is Canadian English.

Both languages have got equality of status and equal rights and privilege in the country.The Official Languages Act in 1969 gave these languages equal status, rights and privileges in matters of federal jurisdiction, so we can consider Canada as an official bilingual country.

Among all Canadian cities, Quebec is the only Canadian province where French is the only official language at a provincial level, and to be considered so a monolingual French-speaking province.

 In 1982 the Constitution Act was signed and it was provided that the city of Quebec wouldn't have been considered under the list of "Canada's official bilingualism policy".The city of Quebec has been fighting for several years to achieve an independence-status from the same Canada,as they don't feel culturally an linguistically part of it.Canadian speakers can be divided into three groups depending on which there mother tongue is.

 Anglophones are Canadians whose mother tongue is English.

 Francophones are Canadians whose mother tongue is French.

 Allophones are Canadians whose mother tongue is any other language.

 I'll leave you a map where you can have a look at the different areas of Canada where bilingualism is more or less developed. 

Giulia