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Thursday, March 24, 2005

TheStar.com - The way we'll be in 2017

Canada's current wave of immigration will bring a record number of people belonging to visible minorities to the country by the time the nation celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2017, a new Statistics Canada study projects.

By then, people of non-European origin will make up more than half of Greater Toronto's population.

Canada's long history as a nation of immigrants should be helpful to the newcomers, who are expected to represent more than one-fifth of Canadian residents in 2017, government and immigration experts say.

How well they succeed will depend on how fully Canada overcomes systemic problems, such as racism and barriers to employment posed by the difficulty of getting foreign training and skills recognized here. But Canada's traditions of tolerance and peaceful integration should ensure that our core institutions and values remain constant as the face of society changes.

Among the study's conclusions:

People of South Asian origin will cement their status as the Toronto region's most populous visible-minority group. Of Toronto's projected population of 6.6 million, more than 1 million will be South Asian, up from 488,000 in 2001. The second biggest group will be those of Chinese ancestry, at 735,000, up from 420,000.

The influx will, for the first time, be made up almost entirely of visible-minority groups — notably Chinese, Indian, black and, increasingly, Arab and other West Asian groups.

By 2017, people born in a different country will make up a larger percentage of the population than at any time since the turn of the last century, when waves of European newcomers began rolling over western Canada.

"I don't think we have to worry; we have to embrace this as a positive thing," says Raymond Chan, federal minister of state for multiculturalism, whose department commissioned the report.

"The diversity in Canada's population has always been a contributing factor to building our nation, and this is not the first time we've had that kind of influx," Chan said yesterday. Among the report's other findings:

In 2017, about 20 per cent of Canadians — between 6.3 million and 8.5 million residents — will be members of visible-minority groups. In the 2001 census, only 13 per cent of Canadians identified themselves as such.

The rate of growth within non-European immigrant communities will range from 56 per cent to 111 per cent between 2001 and the sesquicentennial year — up to 23 times faster than the rest of the population.

The vast majority of new immigrants — 75 per cent — will congregate in the country's three largest urban centres. In both Toronto and Vancouver, visible minorities will represent half or more of the population by 2017.

Toronto will carry the brunt of the immigration load, settling 45 per cent of all newcomers from visible minorities. Vancouver will get 18 per cent and Montreal 11 per cent.

The visible-minority population of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area — which includes most of Greater Toronto plus Burlington — would range between 2.8 million and 3.9 million in 2017. That's up from 1.7 million — or 36.8 per cent of the area's population — in 2001.

Ontario, which has argued strenuously in recent weeks for more federal money to help settle immigrants, would have a visible-minority population of almost 4.1 million: 47 per cent of the national total.

British Columbia would be home to some 1.4 million people from visible-minority groups, or 20 per cent of the nation's total.

The impact of this influx will probably intensify over coming years, the report says, as children are born to new arrivals.

The newcomers will be a relatively youthful group, with a median age of 35.5 — eight years younger than that of the rest of the population.

University of Toronto demographer David Foot says that the emergent immigrant baby boom — which will account for less than one-third of the expected increase in visible minorities — is a product of the overall younger age of the newcomers, rather than a tendency to have more children.

New Canadians are more likely to be in their prime childbearing years. But immigrants are unlikely to produce more children over their lifetimes than any other group in Canada.

This latest chapter in Canada's long history of immigration may be drawing attention because of its ethnic composition, but it's likely to end in the same, familiar way as past waves of settlement, says Chan.

"In different times in Canadian history, we've had different rushes of immigration," says Chan, himself an immigrant from Hong Kong.

"And they all contributed positively to the economy, to the strength of the country."

University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz agrees that the latest immigrant wave differs little from those that have swept over the country before.

The newcomers will be a relatively youthful group, with a median age of 35.5
"Change is constant. It started with mainly British, then more northern European and Scandinavian, then east European and south European," says Reitz, who specializes in Canadian immigration

"In the '70s we opened it up to the world. Now we say all Europeans are the new `us,' and now there's a new `them,' and it's people who are not European."

Reitz says the modern Canadian immigration flow follows naturally from the previous patterns, in which Canada was always among the world's most welcoming nations.

"Canada's commitment to immigration in this new global era is relatively high compared to other countries," he says.

And most Canadians still support the country's immigration program. Many would even like to see it expanded.

"It's remarkable in Canada how, in general, the public has embraced (immigration) as an affirmation of Canadian identity, rather than a challenge to it," he says.

Aftab Ahmed hopes the future doesn't look entirely like the past.

"I've been here for the past 30 years," Ahmed says. "When I came, the immigrants were usually from the British Isles and Europe. There weren't that many visible minorities around back then. Sometimes, you had to look for a South Asian person to talk to."

The High Park resident hopes the climate for tomorrow's immigrants will have changed. "When I came, there was lots of racism and discrimination."

The business degree he earned in his native Pakistan wasn't recognized here, so Ahmed took to driving a taxi, a job he still holds today for the sake of his children's future.

"I took a bullet for my kids. I sacrificed my life for my kids."

Most experts say the non-European nature of this latest immigrant wave will bring its own unique challenges.

Where past waves of immigrants often came from Europe's poor and working-class populations, many of today's newcomers are specifically recruited for their skills and education, points out Ursa George, director of Toronto's Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement.

Studies have shown that recent minority immigrants are faring worse in Canada, economically, than their European counterparts, despite being better educated.

"And our major challenge will be access to employment and opportunities that are equal," she says. "We especially hear a lot of questioning around (academic) accreditations and access to trades and professions, which has a connotation of racism to it."

George, who is also associate dean of the University of Toronto's department of social work, says it makes no sense to lure skilled workers to Canada only to have them work behind the wheel of a cab.

She says that ensuring a smooth immigrant transition into Canadian society will require that governments "very consciously" deal with such economic roadblocks.

On the other hand, she says, regressive social or religious attitudes that new immigrants might bring to Canada, about issues such as women's rights, can't be allowed to infiltrate the existing culture.

And as visible minorities gradually become the majority in places like Toronto, George says, they must also ensure that they do not deny others access to jobs and services as they achieve some economic power in Canadian society.

"We have to create a society where everyone feels safe and where everyone feels that their opportunities and their chances are not hampered by the presence of another group."

Still, Reitz says purely racist attitudes will no doubt appear as visible minority populations grow.

"I don't mean it's some inter-ethnic utopia in Canada. For some people, they (visible minorities) are less desirable as newcomers, frankly," he says.

"Discrimination is not absent from Canadian society, but relative to other countries we've embraced these changes."

Chan, who was attending an immigration forum in Ottawa yesterday that accompanied the report's release, says that issues of health-care access, language education, cultural transitions and job access must be addressed.

"We just have to understand the challenges and be focused in our efforts."

With files from Christian Cotroneo

~ rebecca 1:18 AM ~ [+]