Census 2001 Highlights: Factsheet 5: Immigration to Ontario

Proportion of Foreign-born Highest in Ontario

• Data from the 2001 Census show that Ontario has the highest proportion of people born outside Canada, followed closely by British Columbia.
  
  
• In 2001, 3 million people or 26.8% of the population of Ontario were foreign-born, up from 23.7% ten years earlier. In 2001, British Columbia had one million people who were foreign-born, representing 26.1% of its total population.
  
  
• About one million of Ontario's foreign-born population arrived in the past 10 years, between 1991 and 2001. These individuals accounted for 9% of the Ontario population.
  
  

Immigrants to Ontario Increasingly from Asia

• Immigrants from Asia represented 58% of all immigrants to Ontario in the 1990s, and 45% in the 1980s. Before 1961, just 2.3% of immigrants who came to Ontario were Asian-born.
  
  
• In comparison, European immigrants accounted for the vast majority (92.7%) of the immigrants who came to Ontario before 1961. Since then, the proportion of European immigrants has declined steadily, falling to 20% in the 1990s.
  
  
• In the first 6 decades of the last century (prior to 1961), European nations, in particular the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, were the primary sources of immigrants to Ontario. Combined, these 4 European nations accounted for 64% of all immigrants to Ontario before 1961. However, in the 1990s, they accounted for just 3.1% of immigrants.
  
  
• Of the one million immigrants to Ontario who arrived between 1991 and 2001, 14.6% came from the Americas, up from 4.4% before 1961. In the 1990s, more than 80% of these came from Central America, the Caribbean or South America.
  
  
• Immigration from Africa also increased significantly in recent decades. People born in Africa made up 6.8% of immigrants to Ontario in the 1990s, up from 0.4% of immigrants who arrived prior to 1961.
  
  

China Leading Country of Birth for 1990s Immigrants

• China (and its Special Administrative Regions - Hong Kong and Macau) was the leading country of birth among people who immigrated to Ontario in the 1990s. It accounted for 16% of all immigrants who came to Ontario in the past decade.
  
  
• India was the next leading country of birth of immigrants to Ontario. Between 1991 and 2001, Indian immigrants accounted for 9% of total immigrants to Ontario. The third leading country of birth of immigrants was the Philippines (6%), followed by Sri Lanka (5.2%) and Pakistan (4.5%).
  
  
• Among European immigrants who arrived in Ontario during the 1990s, the most frequent countries of origin were Poland (3.1%), Yugoslavia (2.1%) and Russia (2.1%).
  
  
• Of immigrants to Ontario from the Americas, Jamaica was the leading country of birth among those who arrived in the 1990s with 2.7% of all immigrants to Ontario, followed by the United States (2.3%), and Guyana (2.2%).
  
  
• Among African immigrants, Somalia was the leading birth country of immigrants to Ontario.
  
  

Toronto: One of Highest Proportion of Immigrants

• The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area** (CMA) had one of the highest proportions of foreign-born of all major urban centres in the world.
  
  
• About 44% of Toronto's population in 2001 was born outside Canada, higher than Miami (40%), Los Angeles (31%), and New York City (24%).
  
  
• Toronto CMA was home to 77.5% of Ontario's immigrants in the 1990s, compared to its 41% share of Ontario's population. Toronto CMA was home to 69% of the immigrants who came to Ontario in the 1970s.
  
  
• Vancouver was an even greater magnet for immigrants to British Columbia. About 325,000 or 87.6% of the 1990s immigrants to British Columbia settled in Vancouver compared to the CMA's 51% of the province's population in 2001.
  
  

* The Toronto CMA includes all of Toronto, Peel and York Census Divisions and parts of Durham and Halton.