French language
French is the second most common language in Canada, after English, and both are official languages at the federal level. It is the first language of 9.5 million people or 29% and the second language for 2.07 million or 6% of the entire population of Canada. French is the sole official language in the province of Quebec, being the mother tongue for some 7 million people, or almost 80% (2006 Census) of the province. About 95% of the people of Quebec speak French as either their first or second language, and for some as their third language. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal, which is the world's 4th-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories (Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, comprising just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario, the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are to be available in the language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario. Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The city of Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it is on the other side of a river from Quebec, opposite the major city of Gatineau, and is required to offer governmental services in French as well as English.
Charter of the French Language
According to Statistics Canada, up to 244,000 English-speaking people have emigrated from Quebec to other provinces since the 1970s; those in Quebec whose sole native language was English dropped from 789,000 in 1971 to 575,555 in 2006, when they accounted for 7.6% of the population. Altogether, in 2006, 744,430 (10%) used mostly English as their home language, and 918,955 (12.2%) comprised the Official Language Minority, having English as their First Official language spoken. When many anglophones relocated outside of Quebec after the introduction of the Charter in the 1970s, several English-language schools in Montreal closed their doors. These school closures may also have been brought about by restrictions on who can attend English schools, which has been another ongoing drain on the English school system. Of the Anglophones between 25 and 44 years old who left the province between 1981 and 1986, 15000 individuals, which was half of this group, had university degrees. The province's unemployment rate rose from 8.7 percent in 1976 to 10.4 percent in 1977, remaining above 10 percent for 19 of the last 23 years of the 20th century. The language barrier has also been regarded as a "soft cap" for population growth; for instance from 2013 to 2014 while Montreal gained around 43,000 immigrants from other parts of the world it lost 10,000 residents to other provinces.