Immigration

Immigration has played an important part in shaping Canada's population. Today, immigration in Canada has a far-reaching impact on the country's population growth. It was responsible for two-thirds of our population growth in the period 2001 to 2006. Due to the settlement pattern of the foreign-born in the recent decades, the effect of immigration is mostly felt in Canada's largest urban centres and their surrounding municipalities. The 2006 portrait of the foreign-born population was a diverse one reflecting the waves of immigrants from different regions around the world.

The 2006 Census shows that the proportion of Canada's population who were born outside the country reached its highest level in 75 years (see Figure 1 below). The census enumerated 6.2 million foreign-born in Canada in 2006 from more than 200 countries. They represented virtually one in five (19.8%) of the total population, the highest proportion since 1931, when 22.2% of the population was foreign-born. The proportion of the foreign-born fell during the Great Depression and the Second World War, leveling out at 14.7% in 1951. Since then, it has been rising. In 2001, the foreign-born represented 18.4% of the population. At 19.8%, Canada had a higher proportion of foreign-born than the United States of America (12.5%) and lower than Australia (22.2%).

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Figure 1. Number and proportion of foreign-born in Canada, 1901 to 2006

The census estimated that 1.1 million recent immigrants came to Canada between January 1, 2001 and May 16, 2006. These newcomers made up 17.9% of the total foreign-born population, and 3.6% of Canada's 31.2 million population. Among the more than 1.1 million recent immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006, almost 6 in 10 (58.3%) were born in Asian countries, including the Middle East. The share of recent immigrants born in these areas increased steadily since the late 1970s. But in 2006, the share (58.3%) was virtually unchanged from 59.4% in 2001.

Although the number of immigrants from Europe has declined over the years, they still made up the second-largest group of newcomers. In 2006, they accounted for 16.1% of recent immigrants. However, this was well below the proportion of 61.6% for European-born newcomers back in 1971. The third-largest group of recent immigrants in 2006 was from Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. They accounted for 10.8% of all newcomers, up slightly from 8.9% in 2001. In the 2006 Census there was a slight increase in the share of recent immigrants from Africa to nearly 10.6% from 10% in 2001.

Unlike immigrants who arrived in the past who came in search of good farmland, immigrants today settle in urban areas. In fact, they are more likely to live in a census metropolitan area than the Canadian-born population. In 2006, 94.9% of Canada's foreign-born population and 97.2% of recent immigrants who landed in the last five years lived in either a census metropolitan area or a census agglomeration. This compares with 77.5% of the Canadian-born population. Conversely, only 5.1% of the immigrant population lived in a rural area in 2006, compared with 22.5% of the Canadian-born population.

Canada's three largest census metropolitan areas — Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver — were home to 3.9 million foreign-born people in 2006, who made up nearly two-thirds (62.9%) of Canada's total foreign-born population. In contrast, these three urban areas were home to slightly more than one-quarter (27.1%) of the Canadian-born population.

The text was adapted from Statistics Canada, Immigration in Canada: A Portrait of the Foreign-born Population, 2006 Census, catalogue number 97-557-XIE2006001. Statistics Canada information is used with the permission of Statistics Canada. Information on the availability of the wide range of data from Statistics Canada can be obtained from the Statistics Canada's Regional Offices, its World Wide Web site at www.statcan.gc.ca, and its toll-free access number 1-800-263-1136.

Immigration Map(s)

• Foreign-born Population, 2006 Map | Read about this map
• Canadian-born Population, 2001 Map | Read about this map
• Foreign-born Population, 2001 Map | Read about this map