According to Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, Immigrants made up the largest share of the Canadian population in over 150 years, with the largest proportion of new immigrants coming from India.
The census found that almost one-quarter (23 percent) of the population are either immigrants or have landed permanent residency in Canada, making it the highest population of immigrants the country has recorded since 1921.
A shift was observed in the past trend of immigrants coming to Canada from Europe, the census found that Asian-born immigrants had increased accounting 62 percent from 2016 to 2021, while the ones from Europe registered a downward trend from 61.6% in 1971 to 10.1% in 2021.
According to the Census, in 2021 more than half (56.3 percent) of immigrants were admitted into Canada under the economic category. Out of the 748,120 economic immigrants, just over one-third (34.5 percent) were selected through skilled worker programs and another one-third (33.6 percent) through the Provincial Nominee Program.
As in the previous years Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver were the three top cities where immigrants settled. However, the data reported that the numbers of immigrants in these three cities continued to decline, falling from 56.0% in 2016 to 53.4% in 2021. The census showed that an increasing number of recent immigrants have settled outside these key urban centres.
