This fact sheet looks at mother tongue and language information released by Statistics Canada as part of the 2016 Census.
September 2017
These pie charts show the distribution of Ontario’s population by mother tongue in 2011 and 2016. In 2011, 69.3% of Ontarians had English as mother tongue, 4.1% had French and 26.6% had another language. In 2016, 68.2% of Ontarians had English as mother tongue, 4.0% had French, and 27.9% had another language.
These pie charts show the distribution of Ontario’s population by language spoken at home in 2011 and 2016. In 2011, 81.1% of Ontarians spoke English at home, 2.4% spoke French and 16.4% spoke another language at home. In 2016, 80.5% of Ontarians spoke English at home, 2.3% spoke French and 17.2% spoke another language at home.
These pie charts show the distribution on Ontario’s population with non-official mother tongues in 2011 and 2016. In 2011, 15.2% of Ontarians with non-official mother tongues had one of the Chinese languages as mother tongue, 7.7% had Italian, 5.4% had Spanish, 5.3% had Punjabi, 4.7% had Tagalog, and 61.6% had other languages. In 2016, 16.2% of Ontarians with non-official mother tongues had one of the Chinese languages as mother tongue, 6.5% had Italian, 5.5% had Punjabi, 5.3% had Spanish, 5.0% had Arabic, and 61.4% had another language.
These pie charts show the distribution of the Toronto CMA’s population by mother tongue in 2011 and 2016. In 2011, 57.0% had English as mother tongue, 8.2% had one of the Chinese languages, 3.2% had Italian, 3.0% had Punjabi, 2.5% had Tagalog, 2.3% had Spanish, 1.6% had French, and 22.2% had another language. In 2016, 56.0% had English as mother tongue, 9.0% had one of the Chinese languages, 3.2% had Punjabi, 2.8% had Italian, 2.7% had Tagalog, 2.5% had Urdu, 1.6% had French, and 22.2% had another language.
This line chart shows the distribution of Ontario CMAs’ population by mother tongue in 2016. The CMAs with the highest proportion of English mother tongue were Belleville and Peterborough. The CMAs with the highest proportion of French mother tongue were Greater Sudbury and the Ontario part of Ottawa-Gatineau. The CMAs with the highest proportion of non-official mother tongues were Toronto and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo.
This bar chart shows Ontario municipalities of over 5,000 residents with high shares of non-official mother tongues in 2016. The five highest proportions were in Markham (62.3%), Richmond Hill (61.0%), Vaughan (52.0%), Mississauga (50.2%), and Brampton (48.4%).
Contact: Huan Nguyen (416) 325-0816
Office of Economic Policy
Labour Economics Branch