A third of immigrants arrived in past five years
There were 71,565 immigrants living in Nova Scotia during last year’s census with 30 per cent of those having arrived since 2016, the latest information from Statistics Canada shows.
As Canada continues to increase immigration while trying to deal with labour shortages, the number of people who have moved to make the country their home has reached almost a quarter of the national population.
On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released its data on immigration from the 2021 census, which showed that 23 per cent of the population -around 8.3 million – were, or had been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident. It’s the largest proportion since Confederation, and slightly higher than the previous high of 22.8 per cent a century ago in the 1921 census.
While most of the immigrants to Canada tend to head to large population centres, the share of recent immigrants settling in Atlantic Canada has almost tripled since the 2006 census, from 1.2 per cent to 3.5 per cent. Nova Scotia has the largest share at 1.6 per cent, up from 0.6 per cent. Of the immigrants now living in Halifax, 35.2 per cent have arrived since 2016. Moncton had the highest percentage at 48.4 per cent.
The increase in Atlantic Canada has coincided with the 2017 launch of the Atlantic Immigration Program to increase the growth of Atlantic Canada's economy and to attract skilled immigrants to work in key sectors of the economy.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says the large majority of the thousands of applicants to the program were still living in the Atlantic region after one year.
The 2021 census data also showed that across the country, almost 1.9 million children younger than 15 years had at least one parent born abroad, accounting for 31.5 per cent of all children in Canada. This was up from 26.7 per cent in 2011.
Just under 6.4 million people born in Canada had at least one foreignborn parent in 2021, which was 17.6 per cent of the total population. That is up slightly from the 17.4 per cent in 2011, which was just over 5.7 million people.
Statistics Canada said immigration is the main driver of Canada’s population growth right now as the population continues to age and people are having fewer babies. It says that if those trends continue, immigrants could account for 29 to 34 per cent of the Canadian population by 2041.