Bilingualism in the two official languages – English and French – has recently gone back to being a subject of interest in Canada. The topicality of the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism is certainly a factor in this, while new identity issues seem to be closely related to the symbolic and practical rise of bilingualism among Francophones.

Yet the evolution of individual bilingualism seems to be slowing down within the Canadian population1 as a whole and even stagnating, if not decreasing, in certain parts of the country, including New Brunswick. This historical change, exacerbated in this province, justifies further examination of this matter in this preliminary analysis. New Brunswick is the only province in Canada with legal bilingual status, where English and French have been the official languages of the provincial government since 1969 and where, in addition, the equality of the two linguistic communities was recognized in 1981.

The first two sections of this report take a more detailed look at the changing historical data on bilingualism and knowledge of official languages in the language groups in New Brunswick, which we recently profiled.2 The third section presents and discusses the possible impact of schooling on the bilingualism levels of the language groups and, more specifically, the effect of immersion programs among the province’s Anglophones.

For the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick