Country of diversity

MORE AND MORE, ‘AVERAGE CANADIAN’ IS ANYTHING BUT, SAYS LATEST 2016 CENSUS

Increasingly, the face of the average Canadian is anything but average. There was plenty of diversity on display in Wednesday’s deposit of Statistics Canada census data, including 250 different ethnic origins across the country, and hints of more to come: visible minorities could comprise fully onethird of Canadians by 2036 as immigration drives population growth not just in the cities, but across the country.

The release marks just the latest — and second-to-last — in a year-long series of statistical snapshots of the Canadian condition, one that also heralded the return of data from the muchmaligned long-form census for the first time in a decade.

The census portrait began with a population boom out West and a commensurate spike in the number of households. Wednesday’s release showed a similar trend for two groups: the largest overall increase in the Indigenous population was in Western Canada over the last decade, while the share of recent immigrants to the Prairies more than doubled over the last 15 years.

“Immigrants are diffusing across the country,” said Michael Haan, a sociology professor at Western University in London, Ont.

‘“What it’s forcing us to do, collectively, is think about our entire nation as being composed of immigrants, rather than just major cities.”

Nearly half of major metropolitan areas are comprised of visible minorities, noticeably Toronto and Vancouver, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics. But the figures are also on the rise in places like Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, and Calgary, he added.

“Places that people didn’t think were culturally diverse are becoming now culturally diverse.”

Statistics Canada has been saying through the census that Canada is becoming more diverse with the latest data dump showing that more immigrants are arriving from Africa than ever before, placing ahead of Europe for the first time.

“The challenge is to make sure that they fully integrate into Canadian society. So there are challenges coming with this diversity as well,” said Jean-Pierre Corbet, assistant director of the social and aboriginal division at Statistics Canada.