November 7, 2019 | Fenfang Li & Alex Ross
Northern Ontario will be experiencing an increase in the number of seniors in the coming years, at a higher proportion than provincial levels. This will mean future labour market shortages, and a greater need for youth retention and migration to the North. With a need for more migration in general, the demographic composition of future migrants should also be considered, in order to prevent a faster decline of specific subgroups of the population that are following the overall aging population trend. Specifically in Greater Sudbury, French-speakers make up more than one third of the population, and Francophones comprise of over one quarter of the total population. This paper estimates how many future French-speaking migrants should be targeted for Greater Sudbury, as a proportion of total future migrants, in order to maintain the current proportions of French-speakers in the city.
The paper finds that in order to maintain the 2016 proportion of French speakers in Greater Sudbury, it is estimated that between 32% and 35% of future migrants would need to be French speakers. French-speakers, in general, are younger than the non-French speaking population. In contrast, when analyzing the Francophone population, the authors found that this demographic subgroup is older than the non-francophone population, meaning that a higher proportion of in-migrants would be needed in future years in order to maintain the current proportion of Francophones in Greater Sudbury.