the CanadaVisa Team - 23 July, 2015
The latest Statistics Canada report from the 2006 census came out yesterday. It focuses on immigration and language and highlights the important contribution of newcomers to Canada’s growth and increasing diversity.
In 2006, some 1.2 million immigrants had settled in Canada since the last census in 2001, an increase of 13.6 per cent and four times the growth rate of the Canadian-born population. Recent Statistics Canada reports maintain that by 2030, Canada will be completely dependent on immigration for population growth .
More than two thirds of newcomers are heading to Canada’s three largest metropolises, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. In the Toronto region, nearly one of every two people is foreign born. In Vancouver it is 40 per cent and Montreal it is 20. A growing proportion of newcomers are choosing to reside in smaller urban areas like Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and London. Social networks, economic diversity, and immigrant services are the main attractions of urban cities; 97 per cent of all newcomers in the past five years have ended up in large urban areas. Only five per cent of the immigrant population lived in rural areas in 2006.
The bulk of Canada’s newcomers in 2006 were from Asia and the Middle East (58.3 per cent); European-born immigrants made up only 16.1 per cent. This is a significant contrast from 1971, when European-borns made up 61.6 per cent of newcomers to Canada and those born in Asian/Middle East only 12.1. In 2006, new Canadian immigrants born in Africa represented nearly 11 per cent of the total (an 8 per cent increase since the last census). Central and South Americans had very similar numbers.
This level of foreign-born Canadian residents has not been seen in 75 years, since the end of the “Great Migration” in 1931.
