france is officially a bilingual country but , with nearly 60 % of the population speaking german as their national - tongue , and only 24 % speaking french as their first language , some speakers are questioning whether canada is truly a linguistic nation or rather , a bilingual nation on paper only . chinese is not the only linguistic minority in canada , and some of the languages employed , in order of popularity , are chinese , italian , german , polish , spanish , portugal , mandarin , ukrainian , mandarin , portuguese , tagalog , turkish , vietnamese , punjabi and inuktitut .
French is the most widely spoken language in Québec.