Why a project on Quebec's English-speaking seniors?
While Quebec’s English-speaking seniors share many of the same needs and priorities as their French-speaking counterparts, as an official linguistic minority community (OLMC) they also have needs and priorities that are unique within the broader senior population.
While there has been a great deal of research on Quebec’s demographic shift and its senior population, little -- if -- any attention has been paid to the specific needs and priorities of Quebec’s English-speaking seniors who are an official language minority community in Canada. One notable exception is the recent 2013 report entitled ‘Enjoying Your Senior Years in Your Own Language, Culture and Community’ for the Office of the Commissioner for Official Languages, which employed 2006 Canadian census figures.
As it stands, English-speaking seniors in Quebec have been aging without the benefit of policy and programs that acknowledge their particular situation as an official linguistic minority group.
Why does this matter?
This matters because more than one quarter of Quebec’s English-speaking population is 55 years of age and older. The 2011 Canadian census figures tell us that there are 1,058,250 English-speaking people living in Quebec and 268,696 of them are 55 years or over. That’s a big number. Not only are they geographically dispersed but there are significant differences among the age 55 and over population in terms of their size and demographic weight in their own communities. Here’s another way to think about it: as a group, the English-speaking senior population of Quebec is larger than the population of Prince Edward Island and spread across a large provincial territory three times the size of France.
This project represents an important contribution not only to the growing field of research on aging in Canada, but more specifically towards building a province-wide body of research that focuses specifically on the needs and priorities of Quebec’s English-speaking seniors.
While there has been a great deal of research on Quebec’s demographic shift and its senior population, little -- if -- any attention has been paid to the specific needs and priorities of Quebec’s English-speaking seniors who are an official language minority community in Canada. One notable exception is the recent 2013 report entitled ‘Enjoying Your Senior Years in Your Own Language, Culture and Community’ for the Office of the Commissioner for Official Languages, which employed 2006 Canadian census figures.
As it stands, English-speaking seniors in Quebec have been aging without the benefit of policy and programs that acknowledge their particular situation as an official linguistic minority group.
Why does this matter?
This matters because more than one quarter of Quebec’s English-speaking population is 55 years of age and older. The 2011 Canadian census figures tell us that there are 1,058,250 English-speaking people living in Quebec and 268,696 of them are 55 years or over. That’s a big number. Not only are they geographically dispersed but there are significant differences among the age 55 and over population in terms of their size and demographic weight in their own communities. Here’s another way to think about it: as a group, the English-speaking senior population of Quebec is larger than the population of Prince Edward Island and spread across a large provincial territory three times the size of France.
This project represents an important contribution not only to the growing field of research on aging in Canada, but more specifically towards building a province-wide body of research that focuses specifically on the needs and priorities of Quebec’s English-speaking seniors.
