Census 2001 Highlights: Factsheet 6: Visible Minorities and Ethnicity in Ontario

Visible Minorities Making Canada Increasingly Diverse

• Visible minorities are defined as persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.
  
  
• Almost 4 million Canadians identified themselves as a visible minority in the 2001 Census, accounting for 13.4% of the total population. This was an increase from 1996 when the proportion was 11.2% and a major change from 1991 (9.4%) and 1981 (4.7%).
  
  
• At the provincial level, British Columbia had the highest proportion of visible minorities, representing 21.6% of its population, followed by Ontario at 19.1%.
  
  
• People of Chinese origin are Canada’s largest visible minority group, with a population of more than one million. In 2001, they made up 3.5% of the country’s population, followed by South Asians (3%) and Blacks (2.2%).
  
  

Ontario Home to 54% of Visible Minorities in Canada

• There were 2.2 million visible minority individuals in Ontario in 2001, accounting for 19.1% of the province’s population. They represented 54% of all visible minorities in Canada.
  
  
• Among visible minority groups, South Asians (554,870) accounted for 26% of visible minorities, followed by Chinese (481,505) at 22%, and Blacks (411,095) at 19%.
  
  
• In 1991, Blacks were the largest visible minority group (311,000 or 3.1% of total population), with Chinese second (290,400 or 2.9%), followed by South Asians (285,600 or 2.9%).
  
  

Urban Ontario More Diverse than Ever

• Toronto is by far the most diverse Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) in Ontario. In 2001, 1.7 million people were visible minorities in this CMA, representing 36.8% of its population, 80% of the province’s visible minorities, and 15% of the total population of Ontario. In Canada, only Vancouver (36.9%) had the same high proportion of visible minorities.
  
  
• Among other Ontario CMAs, Hamilton (9.8%), Kitchener (10.7%), Windsor (12.9%) and the Ontario part of Ottawa-Gatineau (17.3%) also had high shares of visible minorities. Greater Sudbury (2%) and Thunder Bay (2.2%) were the least diverse CMAs in the province.
  
  
• South Asians were the largest minority group in the Toronto, Kitchener and Hamilton CMAs, but Blacks were the largest group in all other CMAs except Kingston where Chinese was the main visible minority.
  
  

Visible Minorities 55.5% of Markham’s Population

• Among Ontario cities, the municipality of Markham was the most diverse, with 55.5% of its population part of visible minority groups.
  
  
• The cities of Toronto (42.6%), Richmond Hill (40.4%), Mississauga (40.3%) and Brampton (40.2%) also had high shares of visible minorities.
  
  
• In the rest of Canada, the cities of Richmond (59%), Burnaby (49%) and Vancouver (49%), all in British Columbia, had higher proportions of visible minorities.
  
  

Canadians Named More than 200 Ethnic Origins

• Ethnic origin, as defined by the Census, refers to the ethnic or cultural groups to which an individual’s ancestors belonged.
  
  
• About 11.7 million people, accounting for 39% of the population, reported Canadian as their ethnic origin in 2001, an increase from 31% in 1996.
  
  
• Among other ethnic origins, English (20%), French (16%), Scottish (14%) and Irish (13%) were most often reported.
  
  
• In Ontario, 29.7% identified as Canadian, 24% as English, 16.3% as Scottish, 15.6% as Irish, and 11% as French. German (8.6%), Italian (6.9%), Dutch (3.9%), Chinese (4.6%), and East Indian (3.7%) complete the top 10 ethnic origins reported in Ontario.
  
  

Aboriginal Share of the Population Rising

• Aboriginal peoples made up 3.3% of Canada’s population in 2001, up from 2.8% in 1996. Statistics Canada attributes about half of the increase to the higher birth rate among natives, and the remaining increase to other factors such as an increased tendency to identify as Aboriginal.
  
  
• In 2001, 976,305 people identified as Aboriginal in Canada. Ontario had the largest number (188,315), followed by British Columbia (170,025) and Alberta (156,220).
  
  
• However, Manitoba had the highest proportion of people identifying themselves as Aboriginal among provinces (13.6%), followed by Saskatchewan (13.5%). In Ontario, 1.7% of the population reported being of Aboriginal origin.
  
  
• Among the 188,315 Aboriginal people in Ontario, 131,560 identified as North American Indian (69.9%), 48,345 as Métis (25.7%), and 1,380 as Inuit (0.7%).
  
  
• Aboriginal people have a significantly younger median age (24.7 years) than the rest of the Canadian population (37.6 years).