Demographics of Quebec

An Inuit inuksuk at the Place de l'Assemblée-Nationale in front of the Parliament of Quebec.

Although they represent today approximately 3% of the Quebec population, the indigenous peoples of Quebec have contributed a lot to Quebec society thanks to their ideals of respect for flora, fauna, nature and the environment as well as thanks to their values of hospitality, generosity and sharing. Economically, through the fur trade and the development of relationships with settlers, including coureurs des bois, merchants, cartographers and Jesuit fathers. In addition to contributing to Quebec toponymy, indigenous peoples also contributed through their more advanced knowledge than settlers in the following areas: holistic medicine, the functioning of human biology, remedies for several diseases, curing scurvy at settlers' arrival (its thought this was done with a cure made from fir, white cedar or anneda), winter clothing (tanning), architecture that insulates against the cold, means of faster transport on snow (snowshoes and dogsled) and on water (canoes, kayaks and rabaskas), l'acériculture (the process of making maple syrup), sports (lacrosse and ice fishing), moose and caribou hunting, trapping, the territory and its components, watersheds and their watercourses and natural resources.[27]

When Europeans arrived in America in the 16th century, the Algonquian-speaking peoples and the St. Lawrence Iroquoians made allies with the French colonists for the purpose of trade. The first connection was made with the arrival of Jacques Cartier when he set foot in Gaspé and met Donnacona, chief of the village of Stadacona (Stadaconé, today, the city of Quebec), in 1534. Moreover, the legend of the Kingdom of Saguenay prompted King Francis I to finance new trips to the New World.

Rather than by conquest and by force, it is by promoting commercial and military alliances, and by concluding numerous peace and friendship treaties that relations between the two peoples solidified.[28]

Nemiscau: the village in Nord-du-Québec home to the Grand Council of the Crees.

In the Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III, the indigenous peoples were stated to have an indisputable right to their lands. However, quickly following the proclamation and after the peace treaties with New France and France concluded, the British Crown decided to institute territorial treaties which allowed British authorities to proceed with the total extinction of the land titles of the Indigenous groups.[29]

Entirely under federal tutelage and direction, indigenous rights were enunciated in the Indian Act and adopted at the end of the 19th century. This act confines First Nations within the Indian reserves created for them. The Indian Act is still in effect today.[30]

In 1975, the Cree, Inuit and the Quebec government agreed to an agreement called the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement that would extended Indigenous rights beyond Indian reserves, and to over two-thirds of Quebec's territory. Because this extension was enacted without the participation of the federal government, the extended Indigenous rights only exist in Quebec. In 1978, the Naskapis joined the agreement when the Northeastern Quebec Agreement was signed. As a result, these three ethnic groups were able to break away from their subjugation to the Indian Act.

In recent times, discussions have been underway for several years with the Montagnais of the Côte-Nord and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean for the potential creation of a similar autonomy in two new distinct territories that would be called Innu Assi and Nitassinan.[31] Moreover, in January 2010, an agreement between Quebec City and Montagnais granted the Mashteuiatsh Band Council the ability to plan out development in the entire Ashuapmushuan Wildlife Reserve, which is located on the Nitassinan of the community of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh.[32][33]

A few political institutions have also been created over time:

• The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador[34]
• The Grand Council of the Crees[35]
• The Makivik Corporation[36]

The following table shows the traditional territories of the First Nations and Inuit peoples who live in Quebec, including the basins of the St. Lawrence Valley and James Bay, as well as on the Labrador peninsula.[37]

Map of the traditional territory and co-territorial area of the Abenakis, which overlaps between Quebec and Massachusetts.

French is the official language of Quebec. Québécois French is the most widely used variant. The Office québécois de la langue française oversees the application of the linguistic policy on the territory jointly with the Superior Council of the French Language and the Commission de toponymie du Québec. Their recommendations then become part of the debate on the standard for Quebec French and are represented in Le Grand Dictionnaire terminologique (GDT), the Banque de dépannage linguistique (BDL) and various other works. Through its linguistic recommendations, the GDT fights against the invasion of Frenglish into the French language. Since the 1970s, scientific research on the matter has been carried out by university organizations, including the Trésor de la langue française au Québec (TLFQ) and the Franqus group.

The French settlers who settled in New France came largely from the western and northern provinces of France. They generally spoke a variety of regional languages of the Oïl language family.[52] Thus, creating the need for the colonists to "unify their patois" ("unite their dialects") and creating Quebec French. Québécois French became the vehicular language of New France, and it remained as such until the British's conquest of New France.

The King's Daughters were sent to the New World to fix the gender imbalance in the colonies and boost population growth.

Early on, colonists borrowed words from Algonquin, a language they frequently interacted with, often to name and describe new aspects of geography, temperature, fauna or flora not present in the Old World.[53] Then, Quebec French's evolution was affected by the French court due to the arrival of the King's daughters. These 800 women were mostly orphaned girls that had been adopted by the state as part of a program sponsored by King Louis XIV, and been educated in convents to become exemplary settlers and wives. Once their training was complete, between 1663 and 1673, they were sent to New France and married among the colonists, instilling the King's French into the population in the process.[54]

In his 1757 Memoir on the State of New France, Bougainville writes:

"Canadians have natural spirit; they speak with ease, they cannot write, their accent is as good as in Paris, their diction is full of vicious phrases, borrowed from the language of the Indians or from marine terms, applied in the ordinary style."[55]

The British conquest of 1759 turned the evolution of French in Quebec and North America upside down. By having ties severed with France, the French spoken in Quebec definitively separated from the French spoken in metropolitan France. Quebec French was then truly born, retaining the peculiarities of the old languages of Oïl (which were almost extinct in France at that point) and the King's French, and being both influenced and threatened by the language of the new English conquerors. Quebec's French continued to evolve in its own direction, retaining some aspects the non-isolated rest of the French-speaking world lost,[56] and, over time, new influences and remoteness formed the regional accents and different dialects of Quebec French.[57]

Canada is estimated to be home to between 32 and 36 regional French accents,[58][59] 17 of which can be found in Quebec.[60] There are 11 accents exclusive to mainland Quebec; they are the regional accents of Gaspé (Gaspésien), Bas-Saint-Laurent, Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean (Saguenéen), Quebec-Charlevoix, Beauce (Beauceron), the Eastern Townships, Mauricie-Haute-Mauricie (Magoua), Greater Montreal, Eastern Montreal-Laval, Rouyn-Noranda and Côte-Nord. There are 4 accents off the mainland, 1 on the Isle-aux-Coudres, and 3 on the Îles-de-la-Madeleine: the accents of Villages Medelinots, Havre-aux-Maisons, and Havre-Aubert.[61] Finally, there are 2 accents that cross provincial borders: the accents of Outaouais-Eastern Ontario (Outaouais) and Témiscouata-Madawaska (Brayon). There are also people in Quebec who will naturally speak using Standard Québécois or Joual, both of which are considered sociolects rather than regional accents.

The evolution of the proportion of francophones, anglophones and allophones between 1844 and 2006.

During the days of New France, there began to be an extremely pronounced demographic increase of anglophones versus francophones in North America, a trend which continues to this day. In 1700, for every 250,000 English-speakers, there was 16,500 French-speakers.[62]

After the conquest of 1759, this reality became more brutal for Quebec, which now had to avoid assimilation by the British Empire's regime and survive culturally as well as linguistically.[63]

Still today, as French's demographic weight on the continent and in Canada continues to decline, Quebec faces the threat of assimilation. Since 2011, the population with French as their mother tongue on the Island of Montreal, Quebec's metropolis, has fallen below 50%, with only 49% of the population being francophone[64] due to a sharp increase in the immigrant allophone population (whose mother tongue is neither French nor English).

Efforts have been made to preserve the primacy of the French language in Quebec. Such efforts include: instating the Charter of the French language,[65] Quebec's participation in the Francophonie since 1971,[66] French immigration to Quebec,[67] etc. Several institutions seek to protect and promote French such as the Office québécois de la langue française, the Superior Council of the French Language, the Commission de toponymie du Québec, etc.

As of 2011, English is the mother tongue of nearly 650,000 Quebecers (8% of the population).[68] Anglo-Quebecers constitute the second largest linguistic group in Quebec. In addition, in 2001, roughly 50,000 people (0.7% of the population) considered their mother tongue to be both French and English.[69] According to the latest censuses of 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016, the percentage of anglophones in the population has more or less stabilized, but in absolute numbers, they are constantly increasing. Allophones, on the other hand, are increasing sharply in absolute numbers as well as in percentage. According to the 2016 census, 49.1% of people living in Quebec say they can conduct a conversation in English (English as mother tongue or as a second language). As for French-English bilingualism, 44.5% of people in Quebec state that they are bilingual, that is to say, able to conduct a conversation in both French and English.[70]

English made its first appearance in Quebec in 1760, when the British invaded and conquered Canada (New France). Shortly afterwards, the first English and Scottish merchants came to settle in the cities of Québec City and Montreal. In 1784, United Empire Loyalists flooded Quebec following their expulsion from the Thirteen Colonies during the United States' War of Independence. This dramatically increased the number of English speakers in Quebec. These Loyalists, avoiding the French-speaking and Catholic countryside, settled mainly in then underdeveloped regions, such as the Eastern Townships and the Outaouais. The proclamation of the Act of Union of 1840 caused massive immigration from the British Isles to Quebec, which introduced Celtic languages for the first time, and was aimed at the linguistic assimilation of the French-speaking population, which had a considerable impact on French-language culture in Quebec. Today, Anglo-Quebecers reside mainly in Montreal and the Pontiac region.

Anglophones in Quebec have several institutions and infrastructural systems. At the school level, anglophones in Quebec have several school boards grouped together into the Association des commissions scolaire anglophones du Québec.[71] In terms of media, anglophones own, among others, the Montreal Gazette in Montreal, and the Chronicle-Telegraph in Quebec City.[72] Other organisations include the Quebec Writers' Federation, which is a group of English-speaking Quebec authors,[73] and the Voice of English-speaking Quebec, which represents the interests of the English-speaking community in the Québec region.[74]

The term "allophone" is used to refer to people whose mother tongue is neither French nor English.[75] We can distinguish two groups of allophones: people who speak indigenous languages, and those who speak so-called immigrant languages.

In the 2016 census, where one could note more than one language as their mother tongue, Quebec had 1,171,045 people (14.5% of the population) who reported a mother tongue that was neither French nor English, and 1,060,830 people (13.2% of the population) who did not declare French or English as a mother tongue at all.[76] In this census, 47,025 (0.6% of the population) reported an aboriginal language as a mother tongue, while 1,124,020 (13.9% of the population) reported an immigrant language as a mother tongue.[77]

Three families of aboriginal languages exist in Quebec, which encompass eleven languages. Each of these languages belong to and are spoken by members of a specific ethnic group. Sometimes, the language in question is spoken natively by all members of the group, sometimes they are spoken only by a few individuals. These languages are also sometimes sub-divided into different dialects in the indigenous communities.

A multilingual road sign in Mistissini, showing Cree, English and French.

• Algonquian language family
  • Abenaki (spoken by the Abenakis of Centre-du-Québec)
  • Algonquin (spoken by the Algonquins of the Outaouais)
  • Maliseet-passamaquoddy (spoken by the Maliseet of Bas-Saint-Laurent)
  • Mi'kmaq (spoken by the Micmacs of Gaspésie and the Magdalen Islands)
  • the linguistic continuum of:
    • Atikamekw (spoken by the Attikameks of Lanaudière and Mauricie)
    • Cree (spoken by the Crees of Nord-du-Québec)
    • Innu-aimun (spoken by the Innu-Montagnais of the Côte-Nord and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean)
    • Naskapi (spoken by the Innu-Naskapi of the Côte-Nord)
• Inuit-Aleut language family
  • Nunavimmiutitut (Inuktitut dialect spoken by the Inuit of Nord-du-Québec)
• Iroquoian language family
  • Mohawk, also known as "agnier" (spoken by the Iroquois-Mohawks of Montérégie and the Laurentides)
  • Wendat (spoken by the Huron-Wendat of the Capitale-Nationale)

In the 2016 census, 50,895 people in Quebec said they knew at least one indigenous language.[78] Furthermore, 45,570 people declared having an aboriginal language as their mother tongue. For 38,995 of them, it was the language most frequently spoken at home. Additionally, 1,195 people who did not have an aboriginal language as their mother tongue reported using an aboriginal language most often at home.[79]

In Quebec, most indigenous languages are currently transmitted quite well from one generation to the next with a mother tongue retention rate of 92%.[80]

In the 2016 census, 1,124,020 people declared having an immigrant language as their mother tongue in Quebec. The most cited languages are Arabic (2.5% of the total population), Spanish (1.9%), Italian (1.4%), Creole languages (mainly Haitian Creole) (0.8%) and Mandarin (0.6%).[81]

Both the number and proportion of allophones have been increasing in Quebec since the 1951 census.[82]

In 2015, the vast majority (89%) of young allophone students in Quebec attended French-language schools.[83][84]

The question on knowledge of languages allows for multiple responses. The following figures are from the 2021 Canadian Census and the 2016 Canadian Census, and lists languages that were selected by at least one per cent of respondents.

Many aspects of life for French-speaking Quebeckers remained dominated by the Catholic Church in the decades following 1867. The Church operated many of the institutions of the province, including most French-language schools,[106] hospitals, and charitable organizations. The leader of the Catholic Church in Quebec was the Bishop of Montreal, and from 1840 to 1876 this was Ignace Bourget, an opponent of liberalism. Bourget eventually succeeded in gaining more influence than the liberal, reformist Institut Canadien. At his most extreme, Bourget went so far as to deny a Church burial to Joseph Guibord, a member of the Institut, in 1874. A court decision forced Bourget to allow Guibord to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, but Bourget deconsecrated the burial plot of ground, and Guibord was buried under army protection.[107] The conservative approach of the Catholic Church was the major force in Quebec society until the reforms of the Quiet Revolution during the 1960s. In 1876, Pierre-Alexis Tremblay was defeated in a federal by-election because of pressure from the Church on voters, but succeeded in getting his loss annulled with the help of a new federal law. He quickly lost the subsequent election. In 1877, the Pope sent representatives to force the Quebec Churchto minimize its interventions in the electoral process.[108]

Lionel Groulx wanted to build a nationalistic French-Canadian identity, in purpose to protect the power of the Church and dissuade the public from popular-rule and secularist views. Groulx propagated French-Canadian nationalism and argued that maintaining a Roman Catholic Quebec was the only means to 'emancipate the nation against English power.' He believed the powers of the provincial government of Quebec could and should be used within Confederation, to bolster provincial autonomy (and thus Church power), and advocated it would benefit the French-Canadian nation economically, socially, culturally and linguistically. Groulx successfully promoted Québécois nationalism and the ultra-conservative Catholic social doctrine, to which the Church would maintain dominance in political and social life in Quebec.[109] In the 1920s–1950s, this form of traditionalist Catholic nationalism became known as clerico-nationalism.

During the 1940s and 1950s Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis party, the Union Nationale, often had the active support of the Roman Catholic Church during political campaigns, using the slogan Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge ("Heaven is blue; hell is red"; red is the colour of the Liberal party, and blue was the colour of the Union Nationale).[110]

The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.

The oldest parish church in North America is the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec. Its construction began in 1647, when it was then known under the name Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix, and it was finished in 1664.[111] Its first mass was celebrated by Father Vimont on December 24, 1650. This church obtained the status of cathedral in 1674, when François de Laval became archbishop of Quebec, and then the status of minor basilica in 1874. It was also rebuilt twice after the siege of Quebec in 1759 and the fire of 1922.[112]

The most frequented place of worship in Quebec is the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. This basilica welcomes millions of visitors each year, especially during the novena of Saint Anne, on July 26. The Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré basilica is recognized for its numerous miracles, which is why thousands of crutches can be found at its entrance.[113]

Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest place of worship in the world dedicated to Saint Joseph. Located beside Mount Royal, it is known for its 283 steps, which pilgrims come to climb on their knees every year, reciting a prayer on each of the steps.

Many pilgrimages include places such as Saint Benedict Abbey, Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-du-Cap, Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Marie-Reine-du-Monde de Montréal Basilica-Cathedral, Saint-Michel Basilica-Cathedral, Saint-Patrick's Basilica, etc.

Another important place of worship in Quebec is the anglican Holy Trinity Cathedral, which was erected between 1800 and 1804. It was the first anglican cathedral built outside the British Isles.[114]

In August 2019, the Minister of Culture, Nathalie Roy, announced the allocation of $15 million to preserve the cultural heritage that the churches of Quebec embody, and $5 million for the requalification of places of worship.[115]

The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 1,210,595 persons or 14.6 percent of the total population of Quebec.[119]

Immigrants in Quebec by country of birth

Country of Birth	2021[120][119]		2016[121]		2011[122][123]		2006[124][125]		2001[126][127]
	Pop.	%	Pop.	%	Pop.	%	Pop.	%	Pop.	%
France	93,160	7.7%	81,225	7.4%	67,650	6.9%	59,215	7%	50,140	7.1%
Haiti	86,105	7.1%	80,965	7.4%	69,075	7.1%	56,755	6.7%	47,850	6.8%
Algeria	72,835	6%	59,460	5.4%	47,330	4.9%	29,515	3.5%	16,610	2.3%
Morocco	68,870	5.7%	60,695	5.6%	48,375	5%	33,565	3.9%	20,185	2.9%
China	52,500	4.3%	49,555	4.5%	43,735	4.5%	39,190	4.6%	24,405	3.5%
Italy	43,975	3.6%	51,025	4.7%	57,710	5.9%	65,550	7.7%	69,450	9.8%
Lebanon	42,280	3.5%	39,140	3.6%	38,570	4%	34,875	4.1%	28,765	4.1%
Philippines	31,345	2.6%	24,410	2.2%	22,630	2.3%	16,335	1.9%	13,670	1.9%
Colombia	29,670	2.5%	25,575	2.3%	21,320	2.2%	13,390	1.6%	4,385	0.6%
Romania	27,515	2.3%	28,690	2.6%	25,770	2.6%	26,955	3.2%	14,505	2.1%
Total	1,210,595	100%	1,091,305	100%	974,895	100%	851,560	100%	706,965	100%

The 2021 Canadian census counted a total of 202,740 people who immigrated to Quebec between 2016 and 2021.[119]

Recent immigrants to Quebec by Country of birth (2016 to 2021)[119]
Country of Birth	Population	% recent immigrants
France	20,980	10.3%
Algeria	13,975	6.9%
Syria	13,390	6.6%
China	10,735	5.3%
Morocco	9,510	4.7%
Cameroon	8,835	4.4%
Haiti	8,600	4.2%
Philippines	8,480	4.2%
India	8,460	4.2%
Tunisia	6,640	3.3%
Total	202,740	100%

Since it began being recorded in 1971 until 2018, each year Quebec has had negative interprovincial migration, and among the provinces it has experienced the largest net loss of people due to the effect. Between 1981 and 2017, Quebec lost 229,700 people below the age of 45 to interprovincial migration.[128] Per capita, Quebec has lost significantly fewer people than other provinces. This is due to the large population of the province and the very low migration rate of francophone Quebeckers. However, Quebec receives much fewer than average in-migrants from other provinces.

In Quebec, allophones are more likely to migrate out of the province than average: between 1996 and 2001, over 19,170 migrated to other provinces; 18,810 of whom migrated to Ontario.[129]

Source: Statistics Canada[131]