In 2021, French was the first language spoken by over 71 percent of the population of Montréal, Québec in Canada. 20.4 percent of the city's residents had English as their first language, 6.7 percent used both English and French as their primary language, and 1.6 percent of the population spoke another language. That same year, 46.4 percent of people living in the province of Québec could speak both English and French.

According to the Canadian government, approximately 2.54 million people residing in Montreal, in the province of Quebec, had French as their mother tongue in 2021. About 474,730 of them had English, the second official language, as their birth language. However, there were more people that year ( 522,255) whose mother tongue was an Indo-European language, such as German, Russian or Polish.

In 2021, most of the population of the city of Montreal, located in the Canadian province of Quebec, could speak both English and French. In fact, approximately 1.23 million men and 1.68 million women were bilingual. Of those who spoke only one of the official languages, the majority (1.43 million people) spoke only French. In addition, more than 68,400 people did not know either language, with women outnumbering men.

Data on the first official language spoken of the population of Canada and Canada outside Quebec, and of all provinces and territories, for Census years 1971 to 2016.

The Quebec general election was held on October 3, 2022 in Canada, to elect the *** members of the **** legislature to the Quebec National Assembly. When asked a month before the election, ** percent of residents of Montreal and Laval (a suburb of Montreal) considered language and Bill ** to be the main issue in the campaign. The issue was most important to those whose mother tongue was English (** percent).

Bill ** is an act relating to the official language of Quebec, which came into effect in 2022, and aims to make French the only official and common language in Quebec.

This data collection is comprised of a one-in-one-hundred sample of persons who completed the long-form census questionnaire (the one-third sample) for the 1976 Census of Canada. To preserve confidentiality, records for this study were selected from geographic areas with populations of 250,000 or more, including Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the Montreal census enumeration area, Quebec, the Toronto census enumeration area, Ontario (excluding Toronto), Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Vancouver census enumeration area, and British Columbia (excluding Vancouver). The data have been organized into three separate files by record type: Household, Family, and Individual. Part 1, Household File, contains information on the age, marital status, number, and primary language of household occupants. Part 2, Family File, contains information on age, educational level, languages spoken, children, and population size of place of residence of the husband and wife (or lone parent). Part 3, Individual File, contains detailed information about individual household residents including educational attainment, marital status, employment status, household relationship, language, and sex.

The Individual File contains demographic and economic data for individuals in the sample along with a few family and housing characteristics. A record, when dealing with the Individual File, refers to one person. This file contains data for the two CMAs in Canada - Montreal and Toronto.

The Family File gives detailed information on the head and spouse of the census family as well as grouped data on other members of the family. A record, when dealing with the family File, refers to data on one family unit. A family consists of a husband and wife (with or without children who have nevered married, regardless of age) or a parent with one or more children with one or more children never married, living in the same dwelling. A family may also consist of a man or woman living with a gaurdianship or ward under 21 years for whom no pay was received. The "Head of the Family" is the husband in a husband-wife family, or the parent in a one-parent family. This file contains data for the two CMAs in Canada - Montreal and Toronto.

This ZIP file contains an IVT file.

Over the past fifty years, the proportion of Quebecers speaking both English and French has increased steadily, from **** percent in 1971 to almost half the population (**** percent) in 2021. The rate of English-French bilingualism, on the other hand, has declined in the rest of the country: outside Quebec, just over ten percent of people were bilingual in English and French in 2001, compared to *** percent two decades later.