OTTAWA (CP) — The proportion of people speaking neither of Canada's official languages has increased in Toronto over the last five years, according to information from the 2001 census released today by Statistics Canada.

The latest census figures show that English was the mother tongue of 53.81 per cent of the 2,456,805 people in Toronto, down from 56.69 per cent in the 1996 census. The proportion of people who listed Canada's other official language, French, as their mother tongue increased to 1.55 per cent from 1.45 per cent in the 1996.

The newest census data shows that across Canada, the proportion of people whose mother tongue is neither French nor English continues to rise. The increase in what's known as the allophone population — those with a non-official language as their mother tongue — is a reflection of the growing multicultural nature of the country. Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as the first language learned by a child and still understood by that person when the census survey was taken on May 15, 2001.

Locally, Chinese was the top non-official language named as a mother tongue — 9.16 per cent of Toronto residents, compared with 8.13 per cent five years ago.

The rankings of other non-official languages in Toronto: Italian, 4.04 per cent (4.83 in 1996); Portuguese, 2.75 per cent (2.99 in 1996); Spanish, 2.33 per cent (2.32 in 1996); and Tamil, 2.32 per cent (1.98 in 1996).

Nationally, 59.70 per cent of Canadians listed English as their mother tongue while 23.16 listed French. Among the allophone population, the 10 most prevalent mother-tongue languages were Chinese (2.88 per cent), Italian (1.58 per cent), German (1.48 per cent), Punjabi (0.92 per cent), Spanish (0.83 per cent), Portuguese (0.72 per cent), Polish (0.70 per cent), Arabic (0.67 per cent), Tagalog (Pilipino) (0.59 per cent), Ukrainian (0.50 per cent). The proportion of Canadians with Aboriginal languages as a mother tongue was 0.63 per cent.

In Ontario, English was the mother tongue of 71.95 per cent of residents and 4.73 per cent listed French. The top 10 allophone languages: Chinese (3.58 per cent), Italian (2.62 per cent), German (1.38 per cent), Portuguese (1.35 per cent), Polish (1.23 per cent), Spanish (1.05 per cent), Punjabi (0.98 per cent), Arabic (0.84 per cent), Tagalog (Pilipino) (0.79 per cent), Tamil (0.68 per cent). A total of 0.18 per cent of people from Ontario had Aboriginal languages as a mother tongue.

The census is conducted every five years by Statistics Canada and is based on information filled out by Canadians on May 15, 2001. Besides data on language, the agency also released information Tuesday on the moving patterns of Canadians over the last five years.

The newest census data follows information on overall population growth, age and sex and family structure. Future census information to be released over the coming months will give demographic breakdowns of a variety of other topics, including immigration, labour force activity, education and religion.

Here is a local breakdown of mother tongue information for some communities in the Toronto area:

(Note: Some respondents listed more than one language as their mother tongue. Chinese includes all respondents who listed Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka or other Chinese dialects. Some figures may not add up because Statistics Canada has a policy of randomly rounding numbers up or down to the nearest five or 10 for confidentiality reasons.)


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A Proud Indian Canadian

Still chikas are on top!! God how many of them are on the earth!