Canada's rich resource of many languages is untapped and underutilized” says Head of Canadian Ethnocultural Council

Ottawa, December 10, 2002        “I am not surprised at the tremendous growth of non-official languages” says Art Hagopian, President of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council (CEC) in reference to the release of the 2001 Census of Population: Language mobility and migration.

The Census reveals that Canada is becoming more and more a multilingual society. Canadians reported more than 100 languages in completing the census question on mother tongue. Chinese is the third most common third language with 2.9% of the total population reporting it as mother tongue followed by Italian, German, Punjabi and Spanish. One in six people reported having a mother tongue other than English or French, up 12.5% from 1996, three times the growth rate of 4% for the whole population. The language groups from Asia and Middle East which recorded the largest gains in numbers in addition to Chinese and Punjabi, were Arabic, Urdu , Tagalog and Tamil.

“The reality is that in major cities across Canada one can hear a richness of diverse languages spoken every day. There is a renaissance, not only here in Canada, but across the world to maintain and revitalize languages. In this country it is an incredible resource which has largely gone unnoticed and which remains underutilized and untapped by our government and by the business community”, commented Anna Chiappa, Executive Director. 

“Language diversity is too often focused in Canada on the two official languages but in today's world, if we want to keep our competitive edge and really excel in innovation, we must make better use of this pool of talent. I call upon the Government of Canada to develop a national vision on third languages, which ties in with the Innovation Strategy recently announced by the Prime Minister. In a knowledge-based economy and society this would give us an added advantage - something which we should be proud of”, concluded Mr. Hagopian.

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For more information contact tel (613) 230 - 3867, fax (613) 230-8051. cec@web.ca

The Canadian Ethnocultural Council is a coalition of 30 national ethnocultural organizations which in turn represent over 2,000 local chapters across Canada and whose mandate is to work towards the elimination of racism and the understanding of the multicultural reality of Canada.