![]() ![]() Canada is a settler society, a society historically based on colonization through foreign settlement and displacement of aboriginal inhabitants, so immigration is the major influence on population diversity. In large part this has to do with immigration policy. It will continue to become more diverse in the future. The outcome of these trends is that Canada has become a much more racially and ethnically diverse country over the 20th and 21st centuries. Visible minority groups will make up 63 percent of the population of Toronto and 59 percent of the population of Vancouver (Statistics Canada 2010). Projecting forward based on current trends, Statistics Canada estimates that by 2031, between 29 and 32 percent of the Canadian population will be visible minorities. (Table courtesy of Statistics Canada, 2013). Visible minority population and top three visible minority groups, selected census metropolitan areas, Canada, 2011. ![]() In many parts of urban Canada, it is a misnomer to use the term visible minority, as the “minorities” are now in the majority. In the Toronto area, where visible minorities make up 47 percent of the population, 72.3 percent of the residents of the suburb of Markham are visible minorities (Statistics Canada 2013). Within Greater Vancouver, 70.4 percent of the residents of Richmond, 59.5 percent of the residents of Burnaby, and 52.6 of the residents of Surrey are visible minorities. In Vancouver, almost half the population (45.2 percent) is made up of visible minorities. Ninety-six percent of visible minorities live in cities, mainly Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, making these cities extremely diverse and cosmopolitan. Still, these figures do not really give a complete picture of racial and ethnic diversity in Canada. The 2011 census reported that 78 percent of the immigrants who arrived in Canada between 20 were visible minorities (Statistics Canada 2013). These figures did not change appreciably until after the changes to the Immigration Act in 1967, which replaced an immigration policy based on racial criteria with a point system based on educational and occupational qualifications (Li 1996). The vast majority of the population were Caucasians (“whites”) of British or French ancestry. Aboriginal Canadians made up 1.3 percent of the population. Going back to the 1921 census, only 0.8 percent of population were made up of people of Asian origin, whereas 0.2 percent of the population were black. The three largest visible minority groups were South Asians (25 percent), Chinese (21.1 percent), and blacks (15.1 percent). This was up from 16.2 percent in the 2006 census (Statistics Canada 2013). The 2011 census noted that visible minorities made up 19.1 percent of the Canadian population, or almost one out of every five Canadians. This is a contentious term, as we will see below, but it does give us a way to speak about the growing ethnic and racial diversity of Canada. Visible minorities are defined as “persons, other than aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (Statistics Canada 2013, p.
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