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The costs of bilingualism in Canada

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Official bilingualism costs $2.4B a year: study



The official languages of Canada are English and French, which "have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada" according to Canada's constitution. (Wikipedia)

Education Rights (section 23 of the Charter and section 59 of the Constitution Act, 1982):

Section 23 provides a limited right to receive publicly-funded primary and secondary-schooling in the two official languages when they are "in a minority situation"—in other words, to English-language schooling in Quebec, and to French-language schooling in the rest of the country.

The debate on whether the 40-year-old policy is still relevant at a time when, for example, Chinese is the mother tongue of 38% of people in Vancouver or Italian is the mother tongue of 9% of those in Toronto, where just 1.7% of the population is francophone.

Ontario spends more than any other province — including Quebec — on minority language services, a Fraser Institute study has found.

As more and more Canadians speak languages other than English and French, the federal and provincial governments are spending $2.4-billion annually on official bilingualism, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.

Ontario spends $621 million a year providing French language services, including education, to 489,000 Franco-Ontarians, which amounts to about $52 per Ontarian.

That’s a far cry from the mere $7 per person Quebec spends on its 575,000-strong English-language minority.

The 10 provinces spend a total of $900-million annually on minority language services, with the bulk going toward French-language education outside Quebec and English-language education inside Quebec. Ontario spends the most, doling out $623-million — or $1,275 for each minority member. While Quebec ranks third in overall spending at $51-million annually, it spends the least per minority member — mostly anglophones — at just $85 a head.

^{(From the news)}