Half of Toronto is now foreign immigrants

[Asher]

Wow, multi-cultural indeed.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/282360

Half of GTA foreign-born


OTTAWA – The Toronto region has experienced substantial growth in its immigrant population over the last five years, according to new census data released Tuesday.

Statistics Canada released information from the 2006 census which gives a snapshot of people who came from other countries to live here. It reveals most people moving to Canada are generally flocking to large urban centres, especially Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Demographic experts have predicted that Canada's population growth will be almost entirely dependent on immigration by 2030 and communities that don't attract new Canadians may see steady declines in population.

A shrinking population can have a host of economic and social consequences, including a fragile local economy starved for workers that, in turn, discourages much-needed investment. Business and school closures can result, and as the declining population ages the delivery of social services such as health care becomes strained.

Some communities find it difficult to attract immigrants because new Canadians tend to choose large cities where their families have already settled and where they can access the services they will need.

The latest census stats show that immigrants make up 45.7 per cent of the Toronto area. Five years earlier, immigrants represented 43.7 per cent of the population. In terms of recent immigration, the number of immigrants who lived in the region increased to 2,320,160 from 2,032,960 between 2001 and 2006.

During the same five-year period since the 2001 census, the overall population of Toronto region increased by 9.2 per cent – compared to a provincial gain of 6.6 per cent and a national growth rate of 5.4 per cent.

The immigration figures shows that about one out of every five Canadians was born in another country. In the Toronto region the ratio is almost one out of every two, while for Ontario, it's more than one out of every four.

The national figures are skewed by the concentration of immigrants in the metropolitan regions of Toronto, Vancouver (39.6 per cent) and Montreal (20.6).

In terms of the country of origin for foreign-born people in the Toronto area, the highest proportion came from India, followed by China and then Italy.

Statistics Canada also released data Tuesday on languages spoken by Canadians, including those born here and those who came from other countries.

English remains the dominant language in Toronto region. It is the mother tongue – the first language learned – by 54.1 per cent of the population. Canada's other official language, French, is the mother tongue of 1.2 per cent of people in the community.

(Census metropolitan areas do not conform to established municipal boundaries. Statistics Canada determines its own geographic definition of a metropolitan area with a population of at least 100,000, but it also includes surrounding urban and rural communities based on analysis of commuting patterns and other factors. Looking at metropolitan areas this way takes in to account the growing impact of suburban areas on Canada's largest cities.)

In terms of what Statistics Canada refers to as "non-official" languages, Chinese (all dialects) was the first language of 8.1 per cent, followed by Italian (3.7) and Panjabi (Punjabi) (2.6).

The census is conducted every five years by Statistics Canada and is based on information filled out by Canadians on May 16, 2006. The data released Tuesday on immigration and language follows information released earlier this year on overall population growth, families, as well as the age and sex breakdowns of the population.

Future census information to be released over the coming months will give demographic breakdowns of a variety of topics, including the aboriginal population, visible minorities, labour force activity and education.

[Riesstiu IV]

Immigrants

[Japher]

Must have some awesome take-out

[Lorizael]

Grand Theft Auto

[LordShiva]

In terms of the country of origin for foreign-born people in the Toronto area, the highest proportion came from India, followed by China and then Italy.

Russell Peters

[Alinestra Covelia]

Wasn't half of Toronto's city council of Overseas Chinese descent? I remember reading that a few years back so it may not be true now if it ever was in past.

[Spec]

Immigrants

Immigrants that dont adapt and whine to have their laws of their countries applied in ours Why did you leave your country? Because its better here! And we would like to keep it that way.
Spec.

[LordShiva]

I would have thought that Quebecers comprise teh largest immigrant population in Toronto.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
Wasn't half of Toronto's city council of Overseas Chinese descent? I remember reading that a few years back so it may not be true now if it ever was in past.

I'd have to check to give a definitive answer, but no I don't think so.

Olivia Chow yapped enough for at least three people but she was only one person in actuality.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Spec
Immigrants

Immigrants that dont adapt and whine to have their laws of their countries applied in ours Why did you leave your country? Because its better here! And we would like to keep it that way.
Spec.

What's awesome is you replace "immigrants" with "Quebecois" and you've got a whole can of hypocrisy.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I would have thought that Quebecers comprise teh largest immigrant population in Toronto.

They may have been a higher percentage in the 80's but not now. Most newcomers to TO stay long enough to see how awful the city is then they move out (also helps explain the % in the OP btw).

[Spec]

Originally posted by Asher


What's awesome is you replace "immigrants" with "Quebecois" and you've got a whole can of hypocrisy.

Spec.

[Spec]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I would have thought that Anglos comprise teh largest immigrant population in Montreal.

Fixed.

Spec.

[Wezil]

What bizzaro world do you live in Spec?

[Asher]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071204.wcensusmain1204/BNStory/census2006/home

Canada's tenuous French connection


Just a day after the Prime Minister appointed Bernard Lord to head a committee on bilingualism, newly released census figures suggest that Canada's official-languages policy and the vitality of the French language are under increasing pressure outside Quebec.

There are nearly as many Canadians with a non-official language as their mother tongue as there are francophones, while the peak rate of bilingualism for anglophones living outside Quebec has dropped again.

The new figures on immigration, language and mobility, gleaned from the 2006 census, paint a dramatic picture of Canada's changing demographics. Among the highlights:

• One in five Canadians – 19.8 per cent of the total population – was born outside the country, a rate not matched since 1931, when the percentage of foreign-born citizens peaked at 22.2 per cent. Only Australia has more foreign-born residents.

• More than 60 per cent of immigrants live in the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; only about 5 per cent live in rural parts of Canada.

• Most of the recent newcomers to Canada are from Asia – 58 per cent when those from the Middle East are included. Europeans, the dominant immigrant group for most of the 20th century, represented only 16 per cent of those who moved to Canada between 2001 and 2006.

• Canada's foreign-born population increased by 13.6 per cent, four times greater than the growth rate of 3.3 per cent for the Canadian-born population.

But it is the language numbers released Tuesday that will likely make headlines, following as they do on the heels of Mr. Lord's appointment by Stephen Harper to head a high-profile committee on bilingualism in Canada.

The former premier of New Brunswick will travel to seven cities across the country during the first two weeks of December to speak to members of English and French minority communities and provide advice and guidance to the federal government.

Mr. Lord will then report to Official Languages Minister Josée Verner in January.

What Mr. Lord will find outside Quebec and New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province, is increasingly isolated French-language communities, the census suggests.

One indicator is mother tongue, defined as the first language learned at home and still understood at the time of the census.

For the first time, allophones – those who speak neither English nor French as their first language – represent fully one-fifth of the population. The numbers jumped to 20.1 per cent from 18 per cent in the last census, driven primarily by immigration. Conversely, the proportion of francophones and anglophones decreased slightly after population growth is taken into account.

This will be no surprise for Canadians in many parts of the country. For several years, Chinese has topped French as a first language in Ontario, Alberta and B.C.

The 2006 census reaffirmed the position of Chinese languages as Canada's third most common mother tongue group. More than one million Canadians reported one of the Chinese languages as their first language, a jump of 18.5 per cent.

Experts are quick to note that allophones speak about 200 languages and are not a homogeneous group. Francophones still represent about one-quarter of the population; people who report Chinese as their mother tongue represent 3.3 per cent of the total population.

Moreover, the census showed that nine out of 10 Canadians speak English or French most often at home: Just over one-fifth spoke French, 67.7 per cent spoke English, and 11.9 per cent spoke a non-official language at home. It is important to note, however, that the English and French numbers dropped from the previous census, while the non-official language numbers increased by 1.5 per cent.

Even in Quebec, the percentage of people who spoke French most often at home dropped to 81.8 per cent from 83.1 per cent.

The bilingualism rate is another indicator of the tenuous French connection. Because more anglophones learn French at school, the peak bilingualism rate for anglophones outside Quebec occurs in the 15-19 age range. That rate has slipped over the past decade, to 13 per cent in 2006 from 16.3 per cent in 1996.

The ability of young anglophones to maintain their knowledge of French as a second language appears to decline with time. In 2001, 14.7 per cent of anglophones aged 15 to 19 were bilingual. Five years later, only 12.2 per cent of that same cohort reported being bilingual.

The numbers are disappointing, considering that one of the chief objectives of Ottawa's $787-million plan on official languages – launched by the previous Liberal government in 2003 – is to double by 2013 the percentage of young bilingual Canadians to 50 per cent.

Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies and advocate of official bilingualism, warned against an “ethno-local” reading of the numbers, which he said could foster tensions and challenge public support for French in areas where other languages dominate.

“When you start breaking things down locally, then you risk tearing away at the fabric of national unity. ... That's the Canada of multiple parts, not the Canada with a national vision both of its demographic reality and its history,” he said.

“Bilingualism is the fundamental feature of a strong Canadian identity to the extent that more than a quarter of the country, nationally, consists of people who are French speakers.”

Others suggest, however, that such sentiments are antiquated in a multicultural Canada and ignore the demographic reality of much of the country, especially urban areas such as Toronto or Vancouver.

“Nobody's asked any longer what is the place of French. Now I walk on hot coals to even say that out loud,” said Heather Lotherington, associate professor of multilingual education at York University.

“We're living in a global society. We have this influx of people who speak the languages of the world, and we're not doing a damn thing with these languages. We're just letting them go to waste.”

Ms. Lotherington, whose research is focused on Toronto-area schools, advocates for the inclusion of students' mother tongues in the curriculum. She said decades of research shows that if you maintain the languages children know, they learn other languages better, fast and more easily.

“French immersion needs to be looked at critically,” she said. “I do not want to throw it out. Canada is a world leader in immersion education. But you have to think about the way we learn languages and the possibility of learning more.

"It's a very colonial stance to say that English and French are the languages of Canada.”

Concerns about official bilingualism and the impact of immigration on the French language inside and outside Quebec are not new.

In September's Throne Speech, the Prime Minister pledged to extend official bilingualism programs for minority communities.

The appointment of Mr. Lord is seen as the first step in that commitment and a response to the critical report by Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser, who accused the Harper government of having “directly undermined” the official languages plan with budget cuts and by eliminating the Court Challenges program, which financed minority-rights court cases against the government.

Citizenship and Immigration recently set targets through 2011 to attract between 8,000 and 10,000 French-speaking immigrants a year to francophone communities outside of Quebec. Driving these targets are demographic data showing that for every new immigrant whose mother tongue is French, there are 10 whose mother tongue is English, and that the vast majority of newcomers adopt English upon arrival in Canada.

Meanwhile, the debate over immigration and language continues in Quebec, where the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation of minorities heard last week from a prominent Parti Québécois strategist that only an independent Quebec could protect the French language. The commission also heard from French-speaking immigrants to Quebec who said their lack of English was impeding their ability to get jobs.

And in October, PQ Leader Pauline Marois caused a small furor when she proposed the Quebec Identity Act, which would require all new immigrants to the province to learn French within three years. Those who failed a language test would not be permitted to hold public office, raise money for a political party or petition the National Assembly. The bill was widely condemned.

The Official Languages Act, first passed in 1969 and updated twice since, stipulates Canadians' right to receive federal government services in either English or French where numbers warrant, the right of public servants to work in either language in certain areas, the right of either English or French speakers to advance in the public service, and that the government must promote bilingualism.