The proportion of new immigrants to Canada settling in Toronto dropped to 33 percent in 2010, from 48 percent in 2000. The decade of the 2000s saw a rising share of new arrivals opting instead for other destinations, particularly medium-sized cities on the Prairies.

The information gathered by Statistics Canada was presented in a report titled ‘Changes in the regional distribution of new immigrants to Canada.’ The shifts were attributed to multiple factors, including the growth of Provincial Nominee Programs for Canadian immigration, a stronger economy and labour shortages in Western Canada, a deeper recession in Ontario than in other parts of Canada, and the source countries of new immigrants.

Between 2000 and 2010, the share of new immigrants intending to settle in Alberta increased from 6.3 percent to 11.6 percent, the share intending to settle in Manitoba increased from 2.0 percent to 5.6 percent and the share intending to settle in Saskatchewan increased from 0.8 percent to 2.7 percent.

Meanwhile, the share of new immigrants intending to settle in Toronto declined from 48 percent to 33 percent and the share intending to settle in Vancouver declined from 14.6 percent to 13.3 percent. The outlier among the larger cities in Canada was Montreal, which saw its share of newcomers increase substantially to 18.1 percent in 2012, up from 12.5 percent in 2000.

Shifts in the actual destinations of new immigrants turned out to be broadly similar to shifts in their intended destinations.

The number of new immigrants entering Canada through a Provincial Nominee Program increased from just one percent in 2000 to 13 percent in 2010, with an even greater spike if only the Western provinces are taken into account.

“Changing immigration programs, and particularly Provincial Nominee Programs, accounted for virtually all of the increase in the share of new immigrants settling in Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, and for much of the increase in smaller communities in Alberta,” stated the report, which added that “Because of the small number of destinations that could be reliably examined, the effects of economic conditions and job growth could not be directly examined in the analysis, although they likely played a role in the changing shares of immigrants going to Alberta and Toronto.”