I saw a post with a map of countries where >90% of the population speaks English. Scandinavia was included, but Canada wasn't. Claiming that Canada has <90% English speakers is interesting, and not entirely trivial to confirm or deny from official sources.

I looked up Statistics Canada, data from 2021. They don't say outright how many speak English, and they switch measurements between "mother tongue" and "first official language". But the bounds for English speakers seem to be 76.1% – 88.4%, so the post was correct about Canada. Calculations below.

canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage…

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76.1% speak English as their "first official language" (27 881 228 people)
22.0% speak French as FOL (8 066 633, of which 7 074 328 in Quebec)
18.0% speak both, but could be from either of the two above
1.8% speak neither

Upper bound for English so far is 94.1%, lower bound is 76.1%.

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42.8% of Quebec native French speakers ("mother tongue") speak English
85.0% of other native French speakers speak English

We don't know how many speak English of those 1.8% who have French as FOL (22.0%) but not as mother tongue (20.2%).

The upper bound for Quebec native French speakers is the 7 074 328 people with French as "first official language".
For non-Quebec it's 8066633 - 7074328 = 992305.
The subtotal upper bound for the number of English speakers is 42.8% * 7074328 + 85.0% * 992395 + 27881228 = 31752499.
The total population is 27881228 / 76.1% = 36637618.
The subtotal upper bound percentage of English speakers is 31752499 / 36637618 =
86.6%.

And then we add those 1.8% with French FOL who may or may not all be speaking English, making it 88.4%.

#canada #quebec #EnglishCanada #FrenchCanada
#english #EnglishLanguage