Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are still the top choices for immigration

The face of Canada continues to change according to census figures released Dec 4, by Statistics Canada.

As more and more people migrate to Canada there will be pressure on service delivery and the demands for jobs and training. Policy makers will have to take note, said Anil Arora, director general of the census program branch of Statistics Canada.

The proportion of foreign-born Canadians has reached almost 20 per cent of the total population for the first time in 75 years. Between 2001 and 2006 the number of foreign-born Canadians was four times that of their Canadian-born counterparts.

Every five years StatsCan releases data on immigration, citizenship, language, mobility and migration.

The largest numbers of newcomers to Canada were born in Asia including the Middle East, about 58.3 per cent. For the first time India surpassed China as the country of origin of the highest number on immigrants. Newcomers from Europe had the second largest number at 16.1 per cent. In 1971 European immigrants accounted for 61.6 per cent of the newcomer population.

It is estimated that newcomers from Central and South America and the Caribbean accounted for 10.8 per cent of recent immigrants. Another 10.6 per cent were from Africa.

When it comes to language the number of allophones has reached 20 per cent for the first time. Allophones are people whose mother tongue is other than English or French. The number of anglophones as well as francophones has increased but their share of the population has declined. There were more than 200 languages for the question on mother tongue. But in the five-year period the largest gain was from languages from Asia and the Middle East. Chinese languages are the third most common language after English and French.

Statistics Canada also tables on data for mobility and migration and gives an overview on age, sex, marital status and mother tongue in the five-year period.

The census also shows that the most immigrants still settle in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Toronto is the destination of choice for four out of ten new immigrants. In 2006, 2.3 million foreign-born Canadians lived in that city.

Montreal has the largest number of immigrants coming from countries where French is spoken.

Vancouver saw the second-highest growth in immigrant population according to the 2006 census with 831,000 people born outside of Canada. The newcomer population grew five times as fast as the Canadian-born population. Even though Vancouver has a long history of immigration this census shows a decline in the trend.

But the number of those going to the suburbs and smaller cities is also growing. Cities like Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton and London Ontario accounted for 16.6 per cent of recent immigrant settlement in 2006.