Moncton - Demography

Demography

Moncton's linguistic majority is English, though the city has an active French-speaking Acadian minority population (34.1%). Almost all Monctonians speak English (64.3%) or French (33.4%) as first languages; 1% speak both languages as a first language, and 1.2% speak another language. About 48% of the city population is bilingual and understands both English and French; the only other Canadian cities that approach this level of linguistic duality are Ottawa, Sudbury and Montreal. Moncton became the first officially bilingual city in the country in 2002. The adjacent city of Dieppe is about 80% Francophone and has benefited from an ongoing rural depopulation of the Acadian Peninsula and areas in northern and eastern New Brunswick. The town of Riverview meanwhile is heavily (95%) Anglophone.

The metropolitan area grew by 9.7% between 2006 and 2011. The census metropolitan area had a population of 138,644 as of the 2011 national census, which makes it the largest metropolitan area in the province of New Brunswick and the second largest in the Maritime Provinces after Halifax. The CMA includes the city of Dieppe (population 23,310), town of Riverview (19,128), Moncton Parish (9,421), Memramcook (4,831), Coverdale (4,401), and Salisbury (2,208).

Historically, the population of the city has been racially homogeneous with almost all residents originating from northwestern Europe. Although diversity has increased in the last decade, the visible minority population remains far below the national average. Migration is mostly from other areas of New Brunswick (especially the north) as well as Nova Scotia (13%) and Ontario (9%). 62% of new arrivals to the city are Anglophone and 38% are Francophone.