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.

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.

ObjectiveTo describe how small animal anaesthesia is performed in French-speaking Eastern Canada, and the variations between practices, in particular based on practice type, veterinarian gender and experience.DesignObservational study, survey.Sample156 respondents.ProcedureA questionnaire was designed to assess current small animal anaesthesia practices in French-speaking Eastern Canada, mainly in the province of Quebec. The questionnaire was available through SurveyMonkey, and consisted of four parts: demographic information about the veterinarians surveyed, evaluation and management of anaesthetic risk, anaesthesia procedure, monitoring and safety. Gender, year of graduation, and type of practice were tested as potential risk factors. Chi-square exact test was used to study relations between each risk factor, and the effect of the selected risk factor on each response of the survey. For ordinal data, the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test was used to maximize power.ResultsResponse rate over a period of 3 months was 20.85% (156 respondents). Overall, the way anaesthesia is performed by most respondents does not meet international guidelines, such as patient preparation and evaluation prior to anaesthesia, not using individualised protocols (for 41%), not obtaining intravenous access (12.4% use it for all their anaesthesia in cats, and 30.6% in dogs), lack of patient monitoring at certain intervals for 55% of the responses, and client prompted optional analgesia (for 29% of respondents). Some practices are more compliant than others. Among them, referral centres generally offer better care than general practices.Conclusions and clinical relevanceThe level of care in anaesthesia and analgesia in practices in French-speaking Eastern Canada is concerning, highlighting the need for more sustained continuing education.

About 5 231 500 people reported to the 2001 Census that they were bilingual, compared with 4 841 300 five years earlier, an 8.1% increase. In 2001, these individuals represented 17.7% of the population, up from 17.0% in 1996. Nationally, 43.4% of francophones reported that they were bilingual, compared with 9.0% of anglophones. Within Quebec, the growth in the bilingualism rate from 1996 to 2001 was even greater than in the previous five-year period. In 2001, two out of every five individuals (40.8%) reported that they were bilingual, compared with 37.8% in 1996 and 35.4% in 1991.