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By the numbers: Immigration and Ontario
Census shows 905 home to more immigrants
Toronto still has world's highest rate of newcomers
ELAINE CAREY
DEMOGRAPHICS REPORTER
Ethnic neighbourhoods — once the hallmark of Toronto's inner city — are expanding into the surrounding suburbs. And the immigration influx is changing the very face of the booming 905 regions.
While Toronto used to be the first landing spot for newcomers, Markham has caught up, becoming the first municipality in Greater Toronto where more than half the population is comprised of immigrants. Fully 53 per cent of its residents are foreign-born and 56 per cent are visible minorities, according to new data from the 2001 census released yesterday.
But new immigrants are making their first home in areas all over the GTA. While they comprise just under half of Toronto's population, they also make up more than 40 per cent of the residents of Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and Richmond Hill.
"The portrait of the GTA has always been an ethnic city surrounded by the 905, but that has completely changed," said John Anderson of the Canadian Council of Social Development.
The faces of those immigrants have also shifted rapidly from post-war Europeans to migrants from the People's Republic of China, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Jamaica and Iran.
Of Greater Toronto's 4.6 million people, 1.7 million — or 36.8 per cent — are visible minorities, up from 31.6 per cent five years ago and a quarter in 1991.
That's putting the area on a course where minorities will soon dominate, said Jeffrey Reitz, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto.
"We are seeing a progressive diversification of the Canadian population over time, and eventually Toronto will become a majority minority city," he said.
Over the past decade, Greater Toronto has attracted the bulk of Canada's new immigrants, nearly three times its share of the country's total population. A total of 792,000 people arrived during the 1990s — 43 per cent of all newcomers to the country.
The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, which includes all of the GTA except Burlington and Oshawa, now has 2 million immigrants, two-thirds of the Ontario total. Across Canada, 5.4 million people, or 18.4 per cent of the population, were born outside the country — the highest proportion since the Great Depression. Only Australia has a higher proportion of foreign-born people.
But Toronto leads the way with a higher proportion of immigrants than any other city in the world, according to Statistics Canada, surpassing Miami, Sydney, Los Angeles and New York.
They're largely highly educated, highly skilled newcomers who are increasingly settling in established immigrant communities in the 905 regions, said economist David Baxter, executive director of the Urban Futures Institute.
"Koreans, Chinese from the People's Republic and South Asians are gravitating toward the suburban dream," he said. "They're better off, older, skilled workers, and these people are coming with families looking to settle into the community."
But not all are finding the jobs they hoped for when they get here.
"We haven't solved the issue of recognizing their credentials or the income gap between visible minorities and the rest of the population," Anderson said, and school boards are also struggling.
`Immigrants are a crucial part of the future of Canada, economically and socially.'
John Anderson
Nearly one in five children in Greater Toronto immigrated in the past 10 years and half of them speak a language other than English or French at home, according to the census. That number jumps to one in four in Toronto and is one in five in Markham, Richmond Hill and Mississauga.
"The addition of immigrant children into the educational system is an important issue for educators," StatsCan said. "Concentrations of new immigrant children present challenges to local school boards, as many newcomers come from diverse cultural backgrounds. Hence, the need for instruction in English- or French-as-a-second-language is an integral part of school programs."
But ESL and heritage-language classes are all "on the chopping block," as school boards are forced to cut their budgets, Anderson said.
"This is not a minority issue any more, but it does have consequences for a whole range of social issues," he said.
Just as immigrants have spread from Toronto to the regions of Peel, Halton, York and Durham, they are moving increasingly into smaller cities.
Nearly a quarter of Hamilton residents are immigrants, the third-highest proportion in the country behind Toronto and Vancouver, and Windsor is in fourth place with 22 per cent foreign-born.
Ontario took in slightly more than 1 million immigrants in the 1990s, the largest share of any province at 56 per cent — far ahead of British Columbia, which took in 20 per cent and Quebec's 13 per cent.
Canada "desperately needs immigrants" to deal with its aging population, Anderson said. "Immigrants are a crucial part of the future of Canada, economically and socially."
Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, said newcomers are increasingly moving to the 905 area because there are established cultural communities there, but they lack the social and cultural supports that Toronto provides.
"There are very few settlement services in the outlying areas," she said. "They've seen an explosion in population, but they haven't seen a corresponding growth in services."
Instead, Ontario's Conservative government cut the budget for immigrant settlement services by 50 per cent in 1995, and there haven't been any increases since, Douglas said.
"We're seeing an increase of people starting out in the suburbs, but they still have first-year settlement needs."
Racial issues also exist, Douglas said. The census shows 45 per cent of Canada's black population was born here, but "given the issues of race and policing, we somehow have this image of black young men who have just arrived here. Most were born ... at Toronto General Hospital."
Canadians reported more than 200 ethnic origins on the census, reflecting the ethnic or cultural group to which a person's ancestors belong. But the fastest-growing ethnic group is Canadian, with 39 per cent now identifying themselves that way.
Canadians must remember that while immigrants are at their highest proportion since the 1930s, the rate was even higher at the turn of the century, Anderson said.
"We have to keep things in perspective, that Canada has been able to integrate large numbers of immigrants throughout its history."
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