Almost one in four Canadians is now a landed immigrant or permanent resident, according to the latest batch of data from the 2021 Census.
Statistics Canada said 8.3-million people in Canada, or 23 per cent of the population, were born elsewhere and decided to settle here. That broke the previous record set in 1921 when 22.3 per cent reported another country of origin.
Since 2016, 1.3-million people have resettled in the country, and half were admitted under the economic category. Of them, 34.5 per cent gained admittance through skilled worker programs, while another 33.6 per cent came under a provincial nominee program. Two-thirds of all new Canadians are core working age between 25 and 54, and 17.6 are children.
Aerial shot of the city of London courtesy of © Can Stock Photo / SFphoto
The agency said immigration is the primary driver of population expansion, and the Canadian economy is increasingly reliant on newcomers to fill job vacancies. Immigrants accounted for four-fifths of growth in the labour market.
Predictions suggest by 2041, the percentage of Canadians who chose Canada could be between 29.1 and 34 per cent.
Fewer are settling in Canada’s three largest urban centres. In London, immigrants made up just one per cent of the population in 2016, or 11,955 people. Over the next five years, that grew to 20,490 or 1.5 per cent.
Windsor saw similar growth during that period. In 2016, 10,800 residents were immigrants, 0.9 per cent of the total population. Just five years later, at 15,830, they make up 1.2 per cent.
Where new Canadians are coming from has changed dramatically in the past 50 years.
Asia has become the greatest source of new immigration. More immigrants said they were from India than anywhere else in the world. It accounted for 18.6 per cent of immigrants.
By contrast, only one in ten immigrants came from Europe, down from 61.6 per cent in 1971.
African was the second most cited origin of new Canadians.
In the five years between the previous census and the new one, Canada took in 218,430 refugees, including 61,000 from Syria. Another 15,505 came from Iraq, 13,965 from Eritrea, 9,490 from Afghanistan, and 7,810 were from Pakistan.
While the census recorded 450 mother tongues spoken in Canada, 92.7 per cent of those who came here spoke English or French. For most, those are their second languages. Statistics Canada said 69.4 per cent reported they learned another language first.
While immigration is changing many of the religions practiced in Canada, native-born Canadians are fast changing their affiliations too.
For the first time, more than a third of Canadians reported no religious affiliation. That has been dropping in past decades. Some, who had affiliated with a faith in the past, reported no such relationship in the most recent census.
© Can Stock Photo / dotshock
In 2001, only 16.5 per cent reported no religious affiliation. That fell to 23.9 per cent a decade later and now stands at 34.6 per cent.
Christianity is still the most often cited religion. A total of 19.3-million Canadians said they were Christian, but that rate is also falling. Twenty years ago, 77.1 per cent of Canadians said they belonged to a Christian denomination. It was 67.3 per cent in 2011 and is now 53.5 per cent.
At the same time, more Canadians said they were either Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh.
The percentage of Muslims went up to 4.9 per cent in the latest census from 2 per cent a decade ago. Another 2.3 per cent identified as Hindu, up from just one per cent in 2011, and 2.1 said they were Sikh, up from 0.9 per cent.
