Official language official languages. The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages. All provinces, however, offer some necessary services in both English and French. Canadian advocates of a single official language say it promotes national identity. In Canada, debate has focused on whether the local majority language should be made the exclusive language of public business. In the Canadian province of Quebec, for example, laws restrict the use of the minority English in education, on signs, and in the workplace. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of the republic. Citizens have the right to communicate in either
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