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Spring 2005 |
| This quarter’s feature article contains information from Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Recent Immigrants in Metropolitan Areas profile series. The profiles have now been updated to reflect the 2001 census. Over the coming months, they will be released on the CIC Web site at www.cic.gc.ca. The profiles present information on recent immigrants living in Canada at the time of the 2001 census, including their origin and background, family and household structure, participation in the economy, income and housing. Profiles are available for Canada as a whole and 13 cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Ottawa, Québec and Halifax. |
The foreign-born proportion of Canada’s population is on the rise and reached a 70-year high at the time of the May 2001 census. In total, 5.4 million people (18.4% of the population) were born outside of Canada, compared to 17.4% in 1996. This compares to 22% of the Australian population and 11% of the population of the United States. A third of these immigrants arrived in Canada in the 1991–2001 decade, totalling about 1.8 million immigrants, or 6.2% of Canada’s population.
One of the most striking differences between recent immigrants and people born in Canada is where they choose to live. More than 90% of immigrants who arrived during the 1990s were living in a metropolitan area, compared to less than 65% of the overall Canadian population. A striking 70% of immigrants resided in Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver. This percentage represented an increase from the 66% of immigrants who arrived in the 1980s as reported in the 1991 census and the 58% who arrived in the 1970s as reported in the 1981 census.
The number of recent immigrants who settle in these three cities is clearly on the rise, with very few making their homes in smaller cities and in rural and small-town Canada. The exception to this is immigrants from Western Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Chart 9—Immigrants and Canadian-Born by Geographic Location, 2001
