Why does the federal government provide services in both English and French?
Serving the Canadian public cannot be done in one language alone. Figures from the 2006 census show that there are about 994,000 Canadians living in Quebec who have English as their first language. Similarly, about 997,000 Canadians living in the other nine provinces and three territories have French as their first language. This means that about 2 million Canadians, a number almost equivalent to the entire population of Manitoba or Saskatchewan, depend on official languages policies to receive services from the federal government in their own tongue.
