Chinese is 3rd most spoken language in Canada: Census 2006

StatCan release - Canadians reported more than 200 languages in response to the census question on mother tongue.

TOP LANGUAGES CENSUS 2006
1	English	18,232,200
2	French	6,970,405
3	Italian	476,905
4	Chinese - all other dialects	467,235
5	German	466,655
6	Panjabi (Punjabi)	382,585
7	Chinese - Cantonese	369,645
8	Spanish	362,120
9	Arabic	286,790
10	Tagalog (Pilipino, Filipino)	266,445
11	Portuguese	229,280
12	Polish	217,605
13	Chinese - Mandarin	173,730
14	Urdu	156,420
15	Vietnamese	146,410
16	Ukrainian	141,805
17	Persian (Farsi)	138,075
18	Russian	136,235
19	Dutch	133,240
20	Korean	128,120
21	Greek	123,575
22	Tamil	122,020
23	Gujarati	86,285
24	Hindi	85,500
25	Cree	84,905
26	Hungarian	75,595
27	Creoles	61,380
28	Bengali	48,075
29	Niger-Congo languages	14,380
30	Sign languages	5,780
SOURCE: STATCAN

The 2006 Census counted 18,056,000 Anglophones, up 3.0% from 2001, and about 6,892,000 Francophones, just 1.6% more than in the previous census.

Anglophones still make up for the majority of the population. While the number of Anglophones continued to increase, their share of the Canadian population dropped from 59.1% in 2001 to 57.8% in 2006.

The same is true for Francophones. Their share of the population declined from 22.9% in 2001 to 22.1% in 2006.

The remaining 20% have a mother tongue other than English or French. In 2006, there were 6,293,000 allophones, an increase of 18% since 2001.

The Chinese languages are the third largest mother tongue group – more than a million people (1,034,000) reported a Chinese language as their mother tongue in 2006, an increase of 18.5% since 2001.

Punjabi was the fourth most frequently reported mother tongue and its rate was up 34% from 2001.

Of the 10 largest allophone groups in Canada, Urdu experienced the highest growth since 2001, increasing by 80%, from 87,000 in 2001 to 156,000 in 2006.

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