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New Mexico is a bit similar in that it's both Spanish and English speaking (bilingual) on the official level. In fact, the Southwest in general is becoming a bit like New Brunswick and Quebec - English and Spanish or just Spanish as the main language.
I guess on the surface it might appear that there are similarities, what with the minority group (francophones in NB, Hispanics in NM) being around one third of the population in both places.
The two places differ widely in the concentration of the minority population and the legal status of their languages, plus on the “language continuity” of the minorities.
In NB, the French-speaking population is concentrated in the north-west, the north-east and the south-east. In the first two cases, French speakers make up close to 100% of the population in quite large areas. In these places, McDonald’s operates in French, Ford dealerships operate in French. Basically every aspect of public life is in French. By this, I don’t mean that the staff of McDonald’s just speak to each other in French when they’re putting together their order. I mean that everything from the signage in the restaurant to the computer print-out in the cash-register to the buttons they push on it is in French. I mean that the cops talk on the radio in French and write up their tickets and incident reports in French. If you buy a car from a dealership in Tracadie the contract will be written up in French. Now, French is a little less dominant in the south-east, where the largest city Moncton is majority English-speaking (and about one third French-speaking), although many towns east and north of Moncton in this area would be close to replicating the all-French situation I described above.
In this sense, there is a degree of institutional "Frenchness" in certains parts of NB (and across Quebec of course) that you will not find anywhere in the U.S. with Spanish, no matter how high the local % of Hispanics might be.
A large proportion of people listed as Hispanics by the U.S. census are actually English-dominant, and in some cases they may not speak Spanish at all. Whereas in a place like NB, pretty much everyone counted statistically as a “francophone” would be French-dominant. They might also know some English (to varying degrees), but as a second language.
I had to post when I saw your post linking NB and NM. It's funny. I own houses in out of the way spots in both places, so for me, yes, there's a link. One place is green and blue with fog, the other is brown and dry with sun, but they do have a common thread . . . anyway, they work for me though I'm never in NB over the winter
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