2016 census: Highlights of latest data on language, marital status, households

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Statistics Canada released new information from the 2016 census regarding families, households, marital status and language. Here are some of the highlights:

More single-person households

• 28.2 per cent of households have only one person living in them, the highest share in Canada's history.
• 13.9 per cent of the adult population now lives alone, was 1.8 per cent in 1951.
• Single-person households are most common in Quebec.
• 26.5 per cent of households are made up of couples with children.
• 25.8 per cent of households are made up of couples without children.
• 8.9 per cent are single-parent households.
• 2.9 per cent are multi-generational households, the fastest growing type.

• Interactive: How does your family compare to others in Canada?
• Census data shows Canada increasingly bilingual, linguistically diverse
• More Canadians living alone and without children, census data show
• Interactive: Remix your census data

Couples without children growing

• Share of couples living without children grew 7.2 per cent since 2011, compared to 2.3 per cent growth of couples living with children.
• Couples living with at least one child down to a historic low at 51.1 per cent.

• 60.5 per cent of couples between the ages of 25 and 29 are living together with no children.
• 35.1 per cent of couples between the ages of 30 and 34 are living together with no children.
• More than 80 per cent of couples between the ages of 35 and 49 are living with children.

Common law couples more common

• Common law couples make up 21.3 per cent of couples, up from 6.3 per cent in 1981.
• Nunavut (50.3 per cent) and Quebec (39.9) have the highest share of common law couples.
• 42.7 per cent of common law couples in Quebec live with children vs. 11.7 per cent in other Canadian provinces.

More same-sex couples

• There are 72,880 same-sex couples, representing 0.9 per cent of all couples.
• 60.7 per cent growth since 2006 compared to 9.6 per cent among all couples.
• Roughly half of same-sex couples live in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or Ottawa-Gatineau.
• 12 per cent of same-sex couples live with children vs. 51.4 per cent of opposite-sex couples.
• Four-fifths of same-sex couples with children are women.

Young Canadians still living with parents

• 34.7 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 20 and 34 are still living with parents.
• 47.4 per cent of young Canadians in Toronto still live with their parents.
• Young Canadians living with families of their own down to 41.9 per cent from 49.1 per cent in 2001.

4/5ths of single parents are women

• 69.7 per cent of children live with both of their biological parents.
• 19.2 per cent live with a single parent, four-fifths of them being mothers.

7.6 million speakers of non-official languages

• Number of Canadians who speak a language other than French or English at home up 14.5 per cent since 2011 to 7.6 million.
• 22.9 per cent of Canadians have a non-official language as their mother tongue, up from 21.3 per cent.
• 69.9 per cent of Canadians with a non-official language as their mother tongue speak English or French at home.
• 98.1 per cent of Canadians can hold a conversation in either English or French.

Mandarin most spoken non-official language

• 641,100 Canadians speak Mandarin at home.
• 594,705 speak Cantonese.
• 568,375 speak Punjabi.
• 553,495 speak Spanish.
• 525,375 speak Tagalog.
• 514,200 speak Arabic.
• No individual non-official language spoken by more than two per cent of Canadians at home.

Tagalog, Arabic fastest growing languages

• Use of Tagalog has grown by 35 per cent since 2011, more than any other language.
• Arabic grew by 30 per cent, followed by Persian/Farsi (26.7 per cent), Hindi (26.1 per cent) and Urdu (25 per cent).
• Use of languages from earlier waves of immigration dropping: Italian -10.9 per cent, Polish -5.5 per cent, German -3.3 per cent and Greek -2.3 per cent.

Use of English up, French down

• 78.9 per cent of Canadians speak either French or English as their mother tongue, down from 82.4 per cent in 2001.
• 74.7 per cent of Canadians speak English at home, up from 74 per cent in 2011.
• 23.3 per cent of Canadians speak French at home, down from 23.8 per cent.
• 21.3 per cent of Canadians have French as their mother tongue, down from 22 per cent.
• 86.4 per cent of Quebeckers speak French at home, down from 87 per cent.
• 78.4 per cent of Quebeckers have French as their mother tongue, down from 79.7 per cent.

Bilingualism at historic high

• 18 per cent of Canadians are bilingual, the highest on record.

• Two-thirds of growth in bilingual population in Quebec.
• 44.9 per cent of Quebeckers are bilingual, 34 per cent of people in New Brunswick.
• Quebec and neighbouring regions of Ontario and New Brunswick home to 85.8 per cent of bilingual Canadians.
• 46.2 per cent with French as their mother tongue are bilingual, compared to 9.4 per cent of anglophones and 11.7 per cent of those with a non-official language as their mother tongue.

Indigenous languages being learned

• Cree is most common Indigenous language spoken at home, by 83,985 Canadians.
• Inuktitut spoken by 39,025 Canadians at home and 21,800 speak Ojibway.
• 228,770 Canadians speak Indigenous languages at home, more than the number who say an Indigenous language is their mother tongue.
• More young Indigenous Canadians are learning their native tongue as a second language.