Ontario has largest number of Métis people

Population has jumped more than 64% since 2006, according to 2016 census

OTTAWA— Ontario is now home to the largest population of Métis people in Canada, as the booming growth of Indigenous peoples in recent decades continues across the country.

More than1.6 million people identified as First Nations, Métis and Inuit in the 2016 census, a jump of more than 42 per cent from a decade earlier. Indigenous peoples now represent almost 5 per cent of the Canadian population and are increasing at a rate that’s more than four times greater than non-Indigenous people, according to Statistics Canada.

The numbers represent the continuation of a trend that has been detected for more than two decades, as the high birth rate among Indigenous peoples fuels a population boom, Statistics Canada says. The agency also points to an increasing tendency among census respondents to claim their Indigenous heritage as a contributor to this growth.

“There are changes in the way people self-identify,” said Jean-Pierre Corbeil, assistant director of the social and Aboriginal statistics division at Statistics Canada. “There are certainly people who discover that, yes, in fact, they identify themselves be- cause of their ancestry, the community they live in, and so on.”

Métis peoples are growing the fastest. The group’s population increased 51.2 per cent to 587,545 between 2006 and 2016, the census shows. First Nations increased to 977,230 people (a jump of 39.3 per cent) over that time frame, and the Inuit population expanded by 29 per cent to 65,025.

For the first time, the largest number of Métis people live in Ontario, according to the census — an interesting development for a population that’s historically associated with Manitoba and other western provinces. The Ontario Métis population has jumped more than 64 per cent since 2006, the census says.