Allison Hanes: Do Quebecers identify as a majority or a minority?

Francophone Quebecers are the group most likely to see themselves as a majority in Canada. It may sound counterintuitive, but after decades of nationalist discourse, perhaps it makes sense.

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In the wake of two national holidays — St-Jean-Baptiste and Canada Day — how do the two solitudes really feel about their multiple, sometimes competing, often overlapping identities?

It’s a question that has interested Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies and chair of the Montreal-based Metropolis Institute, over the last four decades of studying public attitudes. But it’s one he only recently decided to tackle in an opinion survey last winter.

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The results from asking 1,590 Canadians — unprompted — about whether they see themselves as part of a majority or a minority or both surprised even him. Or at least “a little.”

On the basis of language, francophones in Canada were the most likely to describe themselves as being part of a majority, at a rate of 58.9 per cent, while 11 per cent said they felt like a minority and 17.5 per cent identified as both.

This is despite the regular discourse in Quebec about being a tiny French-speaking minority at risk of being submerged in a sea of North American English.

In contrast, only 44 per cent of English speakers across Canada saw themselves as part of the majority, while 19.8 per cent described themselves as a minority and 17.8 per cent said they were both. That’s still a plurality of respondents, but it’s notably lower than the degree of belonging expressed by francophone Quebecers.

Looking at Quebec respondents exclusively, Jedwab’s poll found 60.7 per cent of francophones identified as part of the majority versus 37.8 per cent of anglophones. Just 9.8 per cent of French speakers put themselves in the minority category, versus 27 per cent of English-speaking Quebecers. Some 17 per cent of francophones and 27 per cent of anglophones answered they were both minorities and in the majority.

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The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

“Relatively few people amongst the francophones think of themselves as a minority in Quebec. … In terms of both minority and majority? One in six. That’s not what I would have expected,” Jedwab said in an interview, prior to presenting the data during a webinar last week. “The majority of English-Canadians in this case do not instinctively describe themselves as belonging to a majority. That’s in part because they don’t see their identity through the prism of language.”

Part of what makes the results so fascinating to Jedwab is that he deliberately asked an open-ended question without making any geographic references, to see how respondents interpreted it on the spot.

“I wanted to see how people would react if I didn’t put all those qualifiers,” he said. “It’s just to see after all this positioning and repositioning over the decades, being told you’re a minority or a majority in different contexts, what your reaction is. It’s interesting to see the first reaction in Quebec among francophones, that they’re the only people in the country who see themselves a majority. That’s what was kind of counterintuitive to me in all this.”

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Jedwab called it a “paradox.”

The numbers speak for themselves. The population of the United States rang in at just under 336 million on Jan. 1, 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The population of Canada surpassed 41 million in the first quarter of 2024 — a new record — according to Statistics Canada. Francophones, including minority language communities spread across the country, accounted for just 22 per cent of Canadians in the 2021 census, about 84 per cent of whom lived in Quebec, population 8.4 million. So numbers-wise, French speakers are a minority in North America, though they are concentrated in this province.

It’s also a conundrum given how much time politicians and pundits in Quebec spend telling francophones their language and culture are under threat as a result of their fragile minority status. You’d think it would reinforce a minority mentality. But those same nationalist thought leaders like to have it both ways. Their rhetoric also stokes pride in a Québécois identity, particularly among francophones, resulting in a feeling of confidence and communion.

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“(The discourse) continues to centre Quebecers’ identity around Quebec. That stronger identification with that place where you can conduct yourself as a majority and feel secure in that regard is in Quebec,” Jedwab said. “But at the same time, as confidence is built, as the idea is reinforced that the francophones here are a majority, some of the very same politicians will, when it serves a particular purpose, give the impression to that same constituency that they’re a vulnerable minority.”

That narrative — as well as the politics and policies it is frequently used to justify — in turn makes English-speaking Quebecers (or Indigenous groups, or allophones) feel more like a minority. “Increasingly so,” Jedwab surmises.

“I think (English-speaking Quebecers) increasingly see themselves as a minority and have been on that trajectory for some time,” he said. “And so it becomes a question of when they react strongly in opposition to something they feel constitutes a threat to their identity, then they sometimes will get taxed with behaving like a majority when that’s not the case actually. I think that’s, again, part of the political discourse. If francophones get repositioned as a vulnerable minority, then there’s got to be a majority out there. Very often, the majority paradox in Quebec is that group of non-francophones. So if it’s not the anglophones, it’s ‘the others.’”

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The survey also showed that attitudes among francophone Quebecers belie prominent political tropes, such as that Montreal’s diversity and bilingualism make it difficult for French speakers to recognize themselves in the metropolis, or that the Québécois culture is at risk of being drowned by a surge in immigration.

Most Quebec francophones do not think of themselves as a minority in Montreal, as it turns out. The polling demonstrated just shy of 60 per cent consider themselves the majority, versus 11 per cent who feel like a minority.

The extent to which Canadians in the rest of the country — mainly English speakers — view themselves as a minority is also telling.

“Canada has been described as a nation of minorities and with its rapidly changing demographics and the growing ethnic and racial diversity to which it gives rise, we’re likely to see greater numbers of Canadians identifying themselves as members of minority groups,” Jedwab wrote in his analysis of the data.

From the celebration of multiculturalism to a greater emphasis on intersectionality to awareness of gender or sexual identity, Jedwab said Canadians generally have much more fragmented or layered views of themselves.

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Differences between Quebecers and fellow Canadians can also be found in what facets of their individual makeup respondents said were most important to them.

When asked to rank their attachment to country, province and language, Quebecers placed language at the top and country last.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Quebecers reported the weakest sense of fealty to Canada, with only 58.1 per cent saying it was very or somewhat important to them, compared to 90 per cent for respondents in the Maritimes, 84 per cent in Ontario, 84 per cent in Alberta and 88 per cent in B.C.

Almost 90 per cent of francophone Quebecers indicated being very or somewhat attached to their language, while 83 per cent cited their province.

Among Canadians surveyed outside Quebec, province or language barely registered.

However, the results were less pronounced among younger generations of Quebecers. Some 36 per cent of francophone Quebecers between the ages of 18 and 24 said they are very attached to their language, compared to 50 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds, 54 per cent of 35- to 44-year-olds, 72 per cent of 45- to 54-year-olds, 69.5 per cent of 55- to 64-year-olds and nearly 90 per cent of those 65 and older.

For Jedwab, there is important insight to be gleaned from drilling into people’s perspectives and getting at the contradictions behind them.

“Understanding we’re in a society where there are layered and multiple identities, we need to be able to manage that reality without being fearful of it or without positioning it in ways that misrepresent it,” Jedwab said.

“We have evolved considerably as a society, we look very different, our demographics are continuing to evolve. And we need to be able to deal with it thoughtfully. It actually enriches us as opposed to creating more fear around it.”

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