Canada Census 2011: Immigrants and newcomers drive population growth


 Feb 8, 2012 – 9:28 AM ET
Aaron Lynett / National Post / Files
Aaron Lynett / National Post / Files
Tommy Su rises and signs the national anthem with fellow new Canadians during the Canadian citizenship ceremony on Canada Day, July 1, 2010 at Queen's Park in Toronto. The ceremony welcomed thirty candidates from eighteen different countries.
By Tobi Cohen
Harpreet Rehlan and his wife, Ravinder Kaur, are emblematic of a new trend that has come to define the changing face of Canada — two-thirds of the country’s population growth is now fuelled by immigration.
Moreover, newcomers aren’t necessarily going to Central Canada in the same numbers, and are instead moving to other cities in the West, such as Regina, where the couple landed a little more than two weeks ago after saying goodbye to their families in India.
“I heard Regina is a good place to live,” said Rehlan, who learned about the Saskatchewan capital from a friend who is there on a work visa.
While they both have master’s degrees, they came to Canada under the federal skilled worker program — Rehlan as an automotive technician and Kaur, as a school librarian.
They’ve already found an apartment, a decent curry restaurant, and Kaur has enrolled in English classes at a local immigration centre.
Rehlan said they’ve had several job interviews and he’s optimistic about their future.

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It appears, for good reason.
Saskatchewan recently reported some of the highest job vacancy rates in all of Canada and, according to the latest census figures released Wednesday, newcomers are flocking there like never before.
Since 2006, Saskatchewan welcomed nearly three times as many immigrants as it did in the previous five years, while the number of immigrants who settled in Manitoba doubled, according to Statistics Canada.
Meanwhile, Ontario — which was hit harder by the economic downturn and has struggled with an ailing manufacturing sector — saw 96,000 fewer immigrants settle in the province during the most recent census period.
“People go where the jobs are. That’s always been the case,” said Susan McDaniel, a sociologist and demographer with the University of Lethbridge, noting growth in the oil and gas sector, the potash industry and high tech fields are fuelling population spikes in places such as Saskatchewan.
“With Ontario, there’s been a huge hollowing out of the industrial base there.”
Nationally, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has identified immigration reform as a necessary prerequisite to building a stronger Canadian economy for the future. He has signalled the government will put a greater emphasis on accepting immigrants into Canada who have a particular skill that is needed in the workforce.
Prince Edward Island, another province that has embraced Citizenship and Immigration’s provincial nominee program, which gives provinces and territories greater say over the selection of immigrants, has also experienced a massive influx of newcomers with more than 8,100 settling there since 2006 compared to just 1,100 between 2001 and 2006.
It’s a trend that won’t last, said Godfrey Baldacchino, a sociology professor and Canada Research Chair in Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Much of the immigrant-fuelled Maritime population spike since 2006 — it occurred to a lesser extent in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia — was due to abuse of the provincial nominee program, which is now under investigation in those provinces.
In a bid to attract wealthy immigrant investors, the provinces expedited the visa process and before long allegations of bribery and corruption followed, along with scathing auditor general’s reports, lawsuits and police investigations.
Noting unemployment rates in P.E.I. are among the highest in the country, Baldacchino said there is already evidence that many of those immigrants who came through the program have since moved on to other parts of the country, in some cases without ever even stepping foot in P.E.I.
“I think we’ve hit the maximum,” he said. “The numbers will start going down.”
Unlike the United States, where growth is still driven by natural increases in population — the difference between births and deaths — only a third of Canada’s growth is due to fertility.
It’s a trend that’s been going on for about a decade due to the rapid decrease in fertility that began in the late 1960s and 1970s and the increase in the number of deaths due to an aging population.
“As a result, the numbers of births and deaths have converged since the end of the Baby Boom in Canada, and migratory increase has taken on an increasingly important role in recent Canadian population growth,” Statistics Canada’s census report concluded.
Population projections suggest the trend will continue as baby boomers die off and that by 2031, immigration will account for more than 80 per cent of Canada’s overall population growth.
“Without a sustained level of immigration or a substantial increase in fertility, Canada’s population growth could, within 20 years, be close to zero,” the report found.
With an immigration system that’s placed a greater emphasis on temporary foreign workers and student visas combined with huge backlogs in applications for permanent residence, it also raises questions about whether Canada may not just become a country of immigrants, but whether it may also become a country of non-Canadians.
While it’s not clear exactly how many of the 33,476,688 people enumerated in the 2011 census are landed immigrants, refugees or people here on study or work permits, all are included in Canada’s total population.
Asked about the possibility of a Canada comprised of mostly non-Canadians, Rick Dykstra, the parliamentary secretary to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said the government is looking at ways to expedite the citizenship process, but is also being careful to ensure those who take the leap are worthy.
“If you’re going to be a Canadian citizen, you have to treat it with the type of honour and dignity and respect that it deserves,” he said.
“We think you should really have to achieve a high level of understanding of this country in terms of its history, what it’s all about, to accept the values that we practise in this country, the democracy that we have and obviously the ability to be able to speak one of the official languages at a capacity that enables them to be able to interact with other Canadians,” he said.
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Immigration bolsters Eastern Canada's population ranks, census numbers show

By: Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press



HALIFAX - After decades of losing its young people to the lure of high-paying work in Ontario and Western Canada, the Atlantic region is showing signs of having turned things around, the latest census figures show.
Despite the ever-present prospect of better jobs outside the region, the four Atlantic provinces managed to grow their ranks during the past five years by placing a greater emphasis on attracting and retaining immigrants from abroad.

Census 2011

Census figures released Wednesday show Eastern Canada with a growth rate of 1.9 per cent, led by Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick at 3.2 per cent and 2.9 per cent, respectively. Growth was modestly higher in Nova Scotia — 0.9 per cent, up from 0.6 for the previous five-year period.
Even Newfoundland and Labrador, long a perennial population loser, managed to post its first positive growth rate since 1986 — 1.8 per cent.
Some, of course, come for love, not money.
Lured from her native China by the charms of Adam White, a foreign exchange student from Lower Sackville, N.S., Lurace Lee arrived last year armed with two university degrees, three years of work experience at an aerospace firm in Beijing and a firm grasp of English.
She was exactly what Canada’s long-suffering Atlantic provinces had been looking for.
Before leaving China, Lee visited discussion sites on the Internet that were teeming with Chinese migrants abuzz about the Atlantic provinces — particularly Prince Edward Island and its wildly successful immigrant nominee program.
"I went a lot to these websites to talk to other people and share opinions," Lee said. "A lot of people were talking about the P.E.I. program."
P.E.I. attracted more than 2,500 new immigrants in 2010, up from fewer than 500 in 2005. Both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick attracted more than 2,000 immigrants in 2010. Newfoundland and Labrador was fourth at about 700 — a figure that hasn't changed much in the past 20 years.
What’s more, they’re staying longer than they used to, said Ather Akbari, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.
“All of the Atlantic provinces have been successful at retaining immigrants,” Akbari said, citing the example of Nova Scotia, where the retention rate jumped to 65 per cent by 2007, up from 40 per cent only a few years earlier.
“More of the immigrants coming to this region are job-focused in that they have a job before coming here. The provincial nominee programs have played an important role in this.”
Lee knew going in that finding work in Halifax would be difficult.
"Even for local people, it's not easy to find your ideal job," she said. "Nova Scotia is a small province."
But the province was ready to help. She took classes at Immigration Settlement and Integration Services, where she improved her English, learned about resumes and cover letters and received training in basic accounting.
And she networked, mainly with the help of the Greater Halifax Partnership, which offers several programs to help immigrants prosper.
While Nova Scotia has welcomed immigrants for centuries, it was only in 2005 that the province introduced a formal strategy to draw more people to the province.
Last April, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter said his government planned to attract 7,200 immigrants a year by 2020, up from the current goal of 3,600. To do that, he added $790,000 to the province's $5.1-million immigration budget.
In December, all four Atlantic premiers called on Ottawa to increase the caps on each province's nominee program.
In New Brunswick, the province's Population Growth Secretariat set a goal in 2008 of growing the population by 100,000 by 2026. By 2009, the secretariat reported it had almost reached its first interim goal of adding 6,000 residents that year alone.
But the process of boosting the region's population has not come easily. All of the Maritime provinces have had problems with their nominee programs, including allegations of mismanagement and bribery.
The region is also still dealing with the legacy of a declining birth rate.
Today, Nova Scotia has the oldest population in Atlantic Canada. By 2019, the province's working age population — those from 18 to 64 — is expected to shrink by 36,000. Business leaders have long complained they can't find enough skilled workers to fill jobs.
However, there are signs of further change on the demographic front.
As Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador prepare to tackle some large industrial projects, there are signs that the long-standing problem of out-migration is finally slowing down, thanks to a stronger economy.
In October, Nova Scotia won a $25-billion federal contract to build Canada's next fleet of warships over 30 years, creating about 11,000 jobs for the region. Last month, the province crowed about awarding Shell Canada offshore exploration rights under a $970-million, six-year agreement.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick's onshore natural gas industry is poised for growth as exploration continues for conventional sources and shale gas deposits. There’s also talk of expanding the province's potash industry.
And though Newfoundland hasn’t attracted immigrants the same way its neighbours do, a booming offshore oil and gas industry has fuelled strong job creation and economic growth.
The province is also counting on a flood of jobs from a tentatively approved plan to build the $6.2-billion Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador. Under the plan, Halifax-based Emera Inc. would pay for a subsea-transmission link between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland at a cost of $1.2 billion.
“That will also play an important role in keeping people here,” Akbari said. “The policies and initiatives that have been adopted by the governments ... have played an important role in retaining people.”
The flow of people leaving for greener pastures slowed after the recession started constraining oilpatch growth in 2008, said Patrick Brannon, a research analyst at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council.
“A lot of people did come back from Alberta,” Brannon said, citing Atlantic Canada’s net increase of 3,000 people from other provinces in 2009. Out-migration has been on the rise since then, though not at the rate seen during the Alberta oil boom in 2006, he added.
“The pace of economic activity in the Maritimes has been very modest in comparison to some of the western provinces," he said. "Newfoundland has been the exception, where there has been some big projects going on there.”
As for Lee, she and her new husband plan to stay in Nova Scotia, where a good job and the natural setting are big draws.
“There's a lot of nature around ... and the people are more friendly,” she said. “So I prefer it here.”

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P.E.I. learns to attract newcomers, but keeping them may prove the hard part

By: Melanie Patten, The Canadian Press



CHARLOTTETOWN - The latest census numbers suggest Prince Edward Island has figured out how to attract skilled immigrants. The question now is whether Canada's smallest province can hold on to them.
P.E.I.'s growth rate increased to 3.2 per cent during the latest five-year census period, Statistics Canada said Wednesday, an increase fuelled largely by an influx of immigrants — more than 8,100 of them between 2006 and 2011, compared with just over 1,100 during the previous five years.
The problem is, they don't all stay.
Two years after trading the busy streets of Tianjin, China, for P.E.I.'s leisurely pastures, Alex Yin and Juan Du wondered if there might be better opportunities for their young daughter in a more cosmopolitan city.
So the family of three left their adopted home in 2009 and settled in Toronto, where they bought a house and enrolled Kitty, now 13, in private school. But it wasn't long before they began pining for the charming red-sand province on Canada's East Coast.
“Toronto is really a big city, but it made us feel we really missed this tiny island,” said Du, 37, whose family has since grown to include toddler Max and a soon-to-be sibling. “We thought ... here is the best place, especially for us to raise our kids.”
Yin, Du and Kitty are among more than 5,000 people who immigrated to P.E.I. between 2005 and 2009. They, like the vast majority of immigrants, came to the island through the provincial nominee program, which welcomed more than 2,700 newcomers to P.E.I. in 2008 and 2009 alone.
Like most newcomers, they chose to settle in the historic capital city of Charlottetown, which boasts a quaint downtown, a harbour, post-secondary schools and the province's largest hospital.
The changing multicultural face of Charlottetown is apparent on the city's streets, where several ethnic restaurants and Asian grocery stores have cropped up in recent years. Last year, a local realtor launched a Mandarin-language newspaper.
Immigrants have also helped to jump-start Charlottetown's economy by snapping up and vehicles and houses. Yin and Du, for example, own several rental properties. Yin, 41, also works as a settlement worker at the P.E.I. Association for Newcomers to Canada.
“I truly believe that Prince Edward Island avoided the recession that much of the country went through in 2009 because of the number of newcomers who moved (here) in the past five years,” says Kathy Hambly, executive director of the Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce.
There's no doubt immigrants are making an impact, but the question remains: for how long?
Six months ago, the chamber launched P.E.I. Connectors — a program that aims to connect newcomers with business contacts.
“An awful lot of immigrants were coming to P.E.I., but we had the impression that many of them were not staying very long," said program co-ordinator Don MacCormac.
Language is usually the biggest barrier facing new immigrants looking for work.
Byoung Choi worked as a high school teacher in Seoul, South Korea, before moving to Charlottetown in July 2007. Limited by his poor English, the married father of two found himself working part-time at a convenience store for a year.
Driven by his desire to teach again, Choi, 52, enrolled in English classes at a local college and worked as a translator at the Chameleon Language Centre. When the school's owner moved on last year, Choi took over the small business.
It was Charlottetown’s welcoming atmosphere that endeared him to a province he had never heard of before applying to the nominee program.
“Charlottetown is very quiet, it's a cosy town," says Choi, 52. “There are so many old buildings and especially the residents everywhere ... we have eye contact, they always say hello.”
The provincial government insists its efforts to attract immigrants have been successful. But its nominee program hasn't been without controversy.
During last year's provincial election campaign, a former government employee accused senior provincial officials of accepting cash bribes in order to expedite applications from China.
Innovation Minister Allen Roach, whose department administers the program, said he doesn't believe the allegations have hurt the province's immigration strategy.
“The program has gone through growing pains right across the country, not just Prince Edward Island,” he said. “We're not immune to those growing pains.”
Still, the immigration influx of the past five years isn't likely to repeat itself any time soon.
The program’s rules were tightened last year, which the province expects will curb the numbers. The federal government has also lowered the limit on the number of immigrants P.E.I. can accept.
And while the provincial government does not know how many recent immigrants to the island have left, Roach said emerging job opportunities in the aerospace and bioscience sectors, among others, should boost retention.
Those efforts are key for new immigrants, said MacCormac.
“They love the quality of life that's here,” he said. “As long as there's an opportunity to make a living or get involved in business, they'd love to stay.”
Yin and Du echo that sentiment.
“We are happy here,” said Yin. “This is the best place ever, here in Canada, we believe.”
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Canada’s future is in the West: 2011 Census

JOE FRIESEN AND BILL CURRY

Ottawa— Globe and Mail Update

Power and population are shifting to the Prairies and B.C. as Ontario enters a period of relative decline.
The results of the 2011 census released Wednesday confirm what many Canadians already instinctively understand. The country is re-orienting itself away from Central Canada and toward the Pacific. Oil, gas, potash and other resources are drawing migrants and the region’s political and economic influence is growing as a result.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are booming as both immigrants and native-born Canadians flock to the oil fields and resource industries.
Ontario, long the central engine of growth, was the only province in the country to see its rate of growth drop since 2006. It’s also the first time in 25 years that Ontario slipped below the symbolic threshold of the national growth rate.
Overall the Canadian population increased by 5.9 per cent since the last census to 33.5 million, a slight increase from the 5.4 per cent growth between 2001 and 2006.
Canada is the fastest growing country in the Group of 8 industrialized nations, thanks largely to its immigration program, which accounts for about two-thirds of the increase in population.
But the end is near for that kind of fast growth. The report estimates that population growth could, within 20 years, be close to zero – unless there is a sustained level of immigration or a substantial increase in fertility.
Alberta, in many ways the centre of the Canadian economy today, leads the country in population growth at nearly double the national average. Its two big cities, Edmonton and Calgary, were the two-fastest growing cities in the country. A significant portion of its population increase came from interprovincial migration, as it has traditionally. Alberta also saw a significant increase in immigration from abroad.
Saskatchewan’s turnaround has been stunning. From 1996 to 2006 the province lost more than 1 per cent of its population, an indictment that saw young people leaving for opportunities elsewhere. But as the price of commodities rose over the last five years Saskatchewan grew by 6.7 per cent to pass the 1 million mark, as it did once before in 1986. More than a quarter of that growth was due to Canadians re-locating to Saskatchewan from other provinces.
Manitoba doubled its rate of growth since the last census, to 5.9 per cent. Much of that was due to a doubling of immigration under the provincial nominee program.
When combined with strong, immigration driven-growth in British Columbia, the Western provinces for the first time have a greater share of the Canadian population than the sum of Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The decline of manufacturing in Ontario, which cost the province more than 300,000 jobs over the last decade, was a major contributor to tens of thousands of Ontarians leaving the province for greener pastures, twice as many as between 2001 and 2006. Ontario also welcomed about 100,000 fewer immigrants over the last five years than it did in the first half of the decade. While it’s still growing at a healthy rate, it’s not growing the way it used to.
“What is significant is that all other provinces had higher rates of population growth,” said Laurent Martel, senior demographer at Statistics Canada. “It’s not a huge decrease but it’s the only province showing that kind of trend.”
Quebec saw its share of the Canadian population dip a little further, as it has for several years. It’s now down to 23.6 per cent, from 29 per cent in 1951. All four Atlantic provinces showed higher growth rates than in 2006, but all were still below the national average.
Newfoundland grew for the first time in 25 years, as fewer people moved away.
Wednesday’s data marks the first of four releases from the 2011 mandatory short form census and the information is limited to data on population and dwellings.
Part of the census data released Wednesday looks at population growth from 1851 to 2061 and it underscores many of the demographic trends that are currently at the heart of political debate.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is provoking heated debate across the country with two major policy announcements in recent months. The first is his decision to curb the rate of growth in provincial health transfers over time so that they grow in line with the economy. The second was his decision to open up a debate about raising the eligibility age for Old Age Security, arguing the shrinking ratio of workers to retirees will not be able to support the current age of 65 as an increasing number of baby boomers qualify for the federal program.
The numbers show the aging of Canada’s population will be most pronounced during this decade and the next.
“The aging of the population will accelerate between 2011 and 2031 as baby boomers reach the age of 65,” states the census report. “In 2026, the first of the baby boomers will reach the age of 80, an age when mortality is high. As a result, the number of deaths will increase significantly.”
Statistics Canada projects that the number of births and deaths will be nearly the same in Canada from about 2030 to 2060, meaning any population growth will rely almost entirely on immigration.
On May 29, Statistics Canada will release the second of its four census reports. It will break down the census information based on age and sex. Then data on families, households, marital status, and other dwelling information will come out on Sept. 19, followed by a final report on Oct. 24 dealing with language.
Information in these reports are not affected by last year’s controversy over the long-form census. The Conservative government decided to replace the mandatory long-form census and its more detailed questions with a voluntary household survey. The change prompted the resignation of the head of Statistics Canada amid concern about the reliability of a voluntary survey and the compatibility of the results with previous research.
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By the numbers: How Canada’s cities are changing


TAMARA BALUJA

OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update


THE WEST: LEADING THE COUNTRY IN GROWTH

Saskatchewan’s population saw an increase of more than 65,000 people from 2006, the first time in census history since 1986 that the province's population has topped 1 million.
The four Canadian cities with the highest rates of population growth since 2006 are in Western Canada – Calgary, 12.6 per cent; Edmonton, 12.1 per cent; Saskatoon, 11.4 per cent; and Kelowna, 10.8 per cent.
Fuelled by the resource and energy sectors, these Western cities have lured people from other provinces as well as new immigrants with the promise of jobs. In Saskatoon, population growth increased from 3.5 per cent between 2001 and 2006 to 11. 4 per cent between 2006 and 2011. Kelowna, in contrast, is a retirees haven with a warm and dry climate, and a growing wine industry.

TORONTO: THE STORY OUTSIDE THE CITY

Toronto is pushing its boundaries with population growth concentrated in the northern and western ends of the GTA, as well as the downtown core along Lake Ontario.
While the city’s population growth rate increased by 4.5 per cent, the real change was in Brampton, which jumped by 20.8 per cent fuelled by an influx of immigrants from South Asia and, in particular, growth in the Sikh community.
To the north, municipalities such as Newmarket and King City initially saw high population growth rates, but now suburbs closest to Toronto, such as Richmond Hill and Markham, are leading the pack, perhaps due to commuters feeling the pinch of rising gas prices.
Barrie saw the biggest changes: Initially the growth of Barrie led the way from 1996 to 2001 with a rate of 25.1 per cent, but has been steadily declining since, falling to 5.6 per cent between 2006 and 2011 – slightly below the national average of 5.9 per cent.
In contrast, Milton was the municipality with the fastest rate of growth at 56.5 per cent.

THE EAST: TURNING IT AROUND

Population growth for Newfoundland and Labrador was positive for the first time since the period from 1981 to 1986, with fewer people leaving the coast for job markets in central Canada and the Prairies. That faster growth was also present in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, which both saw higher numbers of immigrants.
At the city level, Fredericton’s population growth rate was one of the highest in the Atlantic provinces at 11.3 per cent, followed by Moncton at 7.7. per cent and St. John’s at 5.5 per cent.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/video/video-the-rise-of-western-canada/article2330798/
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