French language in Canada French language in Canada French is the mother tongue of about 7.2 million Canadians (20.6% of the Canadian population, second to English at 56%) according to Census Canada 2016. Most native speakers of the French language in Canada live in Quebec, where French is the majority official language. 77% of Quebec's population are native francophones, and 95% of the population speak French as their first or second language. Additionally, about one million native francophones live in other provinces, forming a sizable minority in New Brunswick, which is officially a bilingual province, where about one-third of the population are francophone. There
Official bilingualism in Canada (Attorney General)", universal French-language services are also mandatory. This is despite the fact that the proportion of native French-speakers in the territories is negligible, and they are vastly outnumbered by speakers of indigenous languages. At the 2016 census, there were 1,455 "mother-tongue" speakers of French in Yukon (4.3%), 1,175 in the Northwest Territories (2.9%), and 595 in Nunavut (1.7%). Although no Canadian province has officially adopted English as its sole official language, English is the de facto language of government services and internal government operations in Canada's seven remaining provinces. Service levels in French vary greatly from one province to