We ain't what we used to be

Multiculturalism marches on:

The number of visible minorities in Canada has cracked the five-million mark for the first time in history, representing 16.2 per cent of the country's total population, new census data released Wednesday show.

The growth in the visible minority population, driven largely by immigration from non-European countries, soared 26.2 per cent between 2001 and 2006, five times faster than the 5.4 per cent increase for the population as a whole, Statistics Canada reports.

And for the first time, South Asians became Canada's largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese.

Nearly 1.3 million people — a 38 per cent increase over 2001 — identified themselves in 2006 as South Asian, which includes Canadians who hail from such countries as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

In comparison, the number of Canadians who self-identified as Chinese increased 18.2 per cent from the last census to 1.216 million.

Canada's visible minority population has grown steadily over the past 25 years. In 1981, when data on minorities were first collected, the estimated 1.1 million visible minorities represented 4.7 per cent of Canada's total population. If immigration trends continue, visible minorities will account for about one-fifth of Canada's population by 2017, Statscan says.

If those numbers surprise you, it's likely you live in rural or small-town Canada. Just under 96 per cent of visible minorities live in a census metropolitan area, compared to 68.1 per cent of Canada's overall population. Most are concentrated in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Almost half, 46.9 per cent, of Toronto's population is made up of visible minorities. Conversely, for the entire Atlantic region, it's only 2.6 per cent...

Here's a table from Citizenship and Immigration Canada covering 1997-2006:

Canada – Permanent Residents by Gender and Source Area

Some political consequences are noted at this post.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 2, 2008 03:42 PM