Canada's immigrant population share hits 23% record: What it means for Indians

Canada Immigration: Statistics Canada forecasts that Canada’s immigrant population will continue to rise, as high as 34% by 2041.

23 per cent of Canada's population is, or has been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident of the country, a new report showed. The report, titled “Portrait of Immigration to Canada”, shows that Canada has a total of 8.3 million immigrants, making it the largest immigrant share of Canada’s population ever.

Canada Immigration: A Canada flag flies in Hamilton, Ontario. (Reuters)

Statistics Canada forecasts that Canada’s immigrant population will continue to rise, as high as 34% by 2041. Between 2016 and 2021, over 1.3 million new permanent residents settled in Canada and over half of these arrived under the economic class.

Of these, over one-third lived in Canada before gaining permanent residence. Between 2016 and 2021, immigrants accounted for about 80% of Canada’s labour force growth, the data showed.

Asia has been the top source of immigrants to Canada, the report showed.

Some 62% of the recent immigrant arrivals were born in Asia, with 18.6% coming from India alone while the Philippines accounts for 11.4% of newcomers, followed by China at 8.9%.

As more than one in five Canadians are near the age of retirement, about 10.9% of the new immigrants that arrived in Canada between 2016 and 2021 were young -aged 15 to 24. The vast majority were core-aged workers who were between 25 to 54 years old. Children below 15 represented 17.1% of newcomer arrivals.

In 2022, Canada is looking to welcome some 432,000 new immigrants in the country.