3.1 Adoption of the IDF

Inclusive Definition of Francophone (IDF)

When the Commissioner took office in 2007, the first issue that he addressed was the definition of the Francophone population. He pointed out that the method used by the government to measure the size of the province’s Francophone population was outdated.³³ This conclusion was based on a number of arguments, including the new realities of rapidly evolving Francophone communities and a new postcensal survey published by Statistics Canada. The survey, published at the same time as the Commissioner was working on the issue, proposed a much more inclusive definition of French-speakers living outside Quebec.

In his very first recommendation in the spring of 2008, the Commissioner urged the Ontario government to redesign the definition of Ontario’s Francophone population based on the definition proposed by Statistics Canada in its postcensal survey.³⁴

Effectiveness of the intervention

The Ontario government adopted the new Inclusive Definition of Francophone (IDF) in June 2009. The Commissioner and many other key players in the Francophone community hailed this move as an example of the government’s leadership.

In addition to people whose mother tongue is French, the new definition includes those whose mother tongue is neither English nor French but who have a knowledge of French and speak French at home. This new perspective has had many positive effects, including increasing the proportion of the Francophone population from 4.4% to 4.8%. It also strengthened the ethnocultural communities’ sense of belonging to the Franco-Ontarian community and covered more exogamous families. People are now referred to not as Allophones but as either Francophones or Anglophones.

Since then, the Commissioner has observed that the IDF is not always used consistently by government ministries and agencies. The Office of Francophone Affairs developed a communications plan to promote the use of the IDF in the government, but little has changed.

The Commissioner has raised other issues in the last few years, noting that provincial data based on the IDF are not being made available for all regions or all age groups. Furthermore, a provincial ministry, such as the Ministry of Finance, that wants specific data using the IDF has to submit a custom order to Statistics Canada, because the IDF is not a choice in the list of basic selection criteria for ordering a package of public statistics at the federal level.

For historical reasons, Statistics Canada uses mother tongue, the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time of the Census, as the criterion for determining whether a person is a Francophone. However, in the spring of 2016, the Honourable John McCallum, former Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Canadian Citizenship, acknowledged to the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages that using the mother tongue-based definition of Francophone was outdated.

“(…) we’re actively considering changing the definition of ‘francophone.’ (…) The problem with the maternal language is if someone comes from Senegal, the maternal language may not be French or English but a local non-French, non-English language. However, those people in reality are francophones, and so the institutions agree that it is a more realistic and sensible definition of ‘francophone.’ (…) [I]f one has a better definition of what is a francophone (…), then I guess we’ll accept that.”³⁵

The Commissioner therefore reiterates the recommendation he made last year that the IDF be included in a revision of the French Language Services Act so that it will remain inclusive and current and ensure better planning of French-language government services.

33. Until 2009, the Office of Francophone Affairs was using a definition based on mother tongue as the first language learned and still understood.

35. Declaration of the Honourable John McCullum, Ottawa, May 16, 2016. For more details, see https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/committee/421/ollo/52600-e (page consulted in April 2017).