Northern Ontario - Demographics

Demographics

The mining boom of the early twentieth century attracted many francophones to Northeastern Ontario, and French is still widely spoken there. While the Canadian constitution never required the province of Ontario to recognize French as an official language, the government provides full services in the French language to any citizen, resident, or visitor wishing it including communications, schools, hospitals, social services, and in the courts, under the French Language Services Act of 1986. Bilingualism is higher than the Canadian average as 180,020 people, or 24.6% of the population, speak both English and French (as of 2011). As well, there are 8,910 people, or 1.2% of the population, who only speak French. All of Northeastern Ontario, with the sole exception of Manitoulin Island, is designated as a French language service area, as are a few individual municipalities in the Northwest. As well, the government of Canada provides French and English equally in all matters.

The 2011 Canadian Census found that the population of Northern Ontario was 732,914. However, this data does not include 17 incompletely enumerated Indian Reserves across the region. Four reserves were not counted due to permission not being given, and another 13 in Northwestern Ontario were not counted due to evacuations caused by forest fires. The latest census figures for these reserves show a total population of 11,435, which means that the total population for the region is closer to 744,349. The median age for Northern Ontario in 2011 was 43.9.

The region also has a significant First Nations population, primarily of the Ojibwe, Cree and Oji-Cree nations, with smaller communities of Nipissing, Algonquin, Odawa and Saulteaux.

Canada 2006 Census		Population	% of total population
Visible minority group	South Asian	1,700	0.2
	Chinese	2,685	0.4
	Black	2,700	0.4
	Filipino	1,055	0.1
	Latin American	850	0.1
	Southeast Asian	675	0.1
	Other visible minority	2,105	0.2
Total visible minority population		11,850	1.5
Aboriginal group	First Nations	65,860	8.8
	Métis	27,780	3.7
	Inuit	180	0
Total Aboriginal population		95,645	12.8
White		637,800	85.6
Total population		745,320	100

The languages that had at least 1,000 native speakers (single mother-tongue response) in Northern Ontario in 2006 were:

		2011	%	2006	%
1.	English	532,550	74.61%	525,230	70.98%
2.	French	125,675	17.61%	131,450	17.76%
3.	Italian	11,245	1.57%	14,560	1.97%
4.	Ojibwe	6,915	0.97%	10,655	1.44%
5.	Finnish	5,615	0.79%	7,130	0.96%
6.	German	5,125	0.72%	6,275	0.85%
7.	Cree	3,470	0.49%	3,150	0.43%
8.	Oji-Cree	3,010	0.42%	6,120	0.83%
9.	Polish	2,700	0.38%	3,655	0.49%
10.	Ukrainian	2,475	0.35%	3,950	0.53%
11.	Chinese	1,620	0.22%	1,945	0.26%
12.	Dutch	1,400	0.20%	1,790	0.24%
13.	Spanish	1,140	0.16%	1,035	0.14%
14.	Portuguese	1,100	0.15%	1,395	0.19%
15.	Croatian	945	0.13%	1,160	0.16%

Religion in Northern Ontario as of the 2001 census

Religion	People	%
Total	729,210	100
Catholic	370,305	50.8
Protestant	241,145	33.2
No Religion	95,610	13.2
Other Christians	11,825	1.6
Other Religions*	3,540	0.5
Christian Orthodox	3,425	0.5
Muslim	990	0.1
Buddhist	820	0.1
Hindu	535	0.1
Jewish	505	0.1
Eastern Religions	455	0.1
Sikh	65	0.0