Canada: A nation of newcomers

Fri Dec 7 13:36:49 UTC 2007

A nation of newcomers
The arrival of 1.1 million migrants gives Canada a population dynamic
not seen since 1931. Most settle in or near major cities and have
mother tongues other than French or English.

ANTHONY REINHART

>>From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

December 5, 2007 at 1:55 PM EST

Canada is now home to its highest proportion of immigrants since 1931
- the year it ceased to be a British colony and stood on its own -
with one in five people born outside the country, new census figures
show. The arrival of 1.1 million newcomers between 2001 and 2006,
during which the national population grew by just 1.6 million, is a
clear sign that the country's growth is increasingly dependent on
immigration. Their sheer numbers also raise questions about Canada's
ability to fulfill the promises that draw so many here.

Growing four times faster than the Canadian-born population, the
19.8-per-cent proportion of immigrants places Canada second to and
gaining on Australia, which has a 22.2-per-cent foreign-born
proportion that hasn't changed in a decade.

People from Asia and the Middle East accounted for the largest number
of newcomers counted in 2006, at 58.3 per cent, followed by Europe
(16.1 per cent), Central and South America and the Caribbean (10.8 per
cent) and Africa (10.6 per cent).

Enlarge Image
Harbans Singh and his son, Harbir, who arrived from India two years
ago, head home after buying their first snow shovel Tuesday in
Brampton, Ont. (Tim Fraser for The Globe and Mail)

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Statistics Canada
Statscan Census Page
 Yesterday's Statistics Canada release of 2006 census figures, dealing
with immigration, citizenship and language, also showed a continuing
slight decline in the proportion of English and French speakers, as an
unprecedented one-fifth of census respondents reported other languages
as their mother tongues.

In all, more than 200 languages were recorded on census forms, with
those from Asia and the Middle East - Chinese languages, Punjabi,
Arabic, Urdu, Tagalog and Tamil - making the largest gains.

As for where the newcomers are settling, Montreal, Toronto and
Vancouver - known as MTV in Statistics Canada circles - remain the
destinations of choice, though their suburbs are gaining in popularity
at the expense of the cities themselves. Smaller non-MTV centres such
as Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and London also took an increased share
of immigration.

In Toronto, the city's share of newcomers fell slightly, to 10.8 per
cent from 11.4 per cent, while neighbouring Mississauga and Brampton -
which are considered part of Toronto's census area - showed respective
gains of 2.2 and 4.6 per cent, fuelled by the lure of larger, cheaper
homes and the welcoming environment of established ethnic enclaves.

"This raises a lot of possibilities and a lot of challenges," said
Myer Siemiatycki, a professor of politics and public administration at
Toronto's Ryerson University, noting that services for immigrants have
typically been concentrated in the cities.

As more and more new arrivals speak neither English nor French and
settle in suburban ethnic enclaves, officials will need to work harder
to integrate them or risk alienating them behind barriers of language
and low-paid work, observers said.

Immigrants in the five years preceding 2006 were also younger on
average than the Canadian-born population, and thus landed in a job
market already struggling to absorb foreign-trained workers.

"It's critically important that, as a society, we need to construct
pathways for people in the various language groups to move in and out
of their own community, as well as make it easier for people who are
outside of those communities to move in," said Tung Chan, head of a
Vancouver-based immigrant settlement agency. "We need to create more
chances for people to interact, for people to dialogue and for people
to understand each other."

A concern, said Prof. Siemiatycki, is that "the suburbs don't have the
kind of public interactive space that the downtown core has. The
subways don't exist, the jam-packed buses don't exist to the same
degree. ... These are going to be important challenges for suburban
municipalities to literally create spaces of interaction."

In Brampton yesterday, Harbans Singh and his son Harbir reported few
problems adjusting to their new lives as they set out on a
quintessentially Canadian task: buying a snow shovel at Home Depot. It
was a first for the father and son, who arrived two years ago from the
Indian state of Punjab.

Aside from the snow, the transition to life in Brampton has hardly
been a transition, says the older Mr. Singh. He describes his
neighbourhood as more than 50-per-cent Sikh-populated with more than
two dozen gurdwaras - Sikh houses of worship - just a short drive
away.

"We're fully connected here," he said. "Social customs, religious
customs and, most importantly, language customs. ... It's all here."

Mr. Singh, his son, his wife, his daughter-in-law and granddaughter
were sponsored by his eldest son, who was already living in Brampton.
He says he didn't have to rely on settlement services since he already
had an established network in the city.

For allophones, however - those without English or French skills -
interaction will be that much more of a challenge.

In 2006, 70.2 per cent of the country's foreign-born population were
allophones, up from 67.5 per cent in 2001. Cantonese, Mandarin and
other dialects made Chinese the most prevalent language among them,
with 18.6 per cent of allophones reporting it as their mother tongue.

That fact came to the fore in Vancouver last month, when the country's
blood-and stem-cell collection agency, Canadian Blood Services,
launched a campaign to boost donations from Asian Canadians. The
problem is, the blood agency demands that all donors be fluent in
English or French.

Agency officials said the policy is crucial to the safety of the blood
supply, by ensuring donors can communicate their medical histories and
understand the donation procedures and their risks, and maintaining
their confidentiality by excluding interpreters from screening
interviews. Chinese Canadians in the Vancouver area, whose numbers
grew by nearly 40,000 during the last census period, see the rule as a
needless and irritating barrier to their participation in society.

"This policy has shut out a lot of people who want to help," said
Alphonsus Hui, a Chinese-born family doctor who has practised in
Vancouver for more than 30 years. "If it was any other business, they
would be happy to accommodate."

Indeed, such a policy is an anachronism in a country where few
businesses bother any more to question the merits of adapting to a
diverse population, said Michael Adams, head of the Environics polling
firm and author of a new book on multiculturalism, Unlikely Utopia:
The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism.

"We've gone beyond the tipping point of debating it, at least in our
cities," Mr. Adams said.

"We have to go beyond reasonable accommodation; this is necessary
accommodation, to survive."

*****

New in town

Immigrants are flocking to Canada's largest cities, as well as smaller
municipalities in their vicinity. The following have the highest
proportions of newcomers.

Arrived 2001-2006

Toronto 8.80%
Vancouver 7.20%
Calgary 5.40%
Montreal 4.60%
Windsor 4.30%
Abbotsford 3.80%
Kitchener 3.80%
Winnipeg 3.50%
Guelph 3.10%
Edmonton 3.10%
Ottawa 3.10%
Hamilton 3.00%
SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071205.wcensusmain1005/BNStory/census2006/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20071205.wcensusmain1005

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