Minorities in Canada
Definition Racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
segments of the Canadian population
The population of Canada, about 26 million at the begin-
ning of the 1990’s, reached about 31 million by the end of
- Visible minorities accounted for 3.5 million people at
the end of the decade, or 13 percent of the total population.
Under the Employment Equity Act of Canada
adopted in 1986, minorities are identified as “visi-
ble” minorities, people whose race is non-Caucasian
and who are not white. Ten such groups constitute
visible minorities in Canada: Arabs, blacks, Chinese,
Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Latin Americans, Pa-
cific Islanders, South Asians (Indians and Pa-
kistanis), Southeast Asians, and West Asians.
Aboriginal peoples—American Indians, Inuit
(known colloquially as Eskimos), and Metis (per-
sons of mixed native and Old World genetic heri-
tage)—were guaranteed unique rights under the
Constitution Act of 1982, part of the Canadian Char-
ter of Rights and Freedoms. Because aboriginal pop-
ulations were the first peoples occupying Canada,
they are not considered minorities but are accorded
a separate status in Canadian legislative processes.
The Role of Immigration Between 1991 and 2000,
Canada welcomed 2.2 million immigrants, the high-
est number for any decade during the twentieth cen-
tury. While European nations such as the United
Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands were
the most common sources of immigrants to Canada
up to the 1960’s, immigration from Asia had become
increasingly important, with 58 percent of all immi-
grants to Canada in the 1990’s arriving from Asia,
and with only 20 percent coming from Europe, 11
percent from Central and South America and the
Caribbean, 8 percent from Africa, and 3 percent
from the United States. Asian immigrants originated
mostly from the People’s Republic of China, India,
the Philippines, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
and Taiwan. These countries and territories consti-
tuted more than 40 percent of all immigrants to Can-
ada in the decade.
New immigrants to Canada in the 1990’s were
overwhelmingly attracted to large metropolitan ar-
eas, with 73 percent of them settling in or near To-
ronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. This pattern was
probably the result of the greater economic oppor-
tunity that cities provide and the immediate benefit
derived from moving into a community in which mi-
norities were already well established. Toronto was
home to 25.8 percent of the nation’s visible minori-
ties in 1991, and 31.6 percent in 1996. Vancouver
had 24 percent of Canada’s visible minorities in
1991, 31.1 percent in 1996, and by the end of 1999
had overtaken Toronto as the nation’s center of mi-
nority residence.Language and Culture In the process of integra-
tion of new immigrants, communication in one of
the two official languages in Canada, English and
French, is very important. However, because of its
political history—the amalgamation of a dominant
English and an intensely nationalistic French popu-
lation following the French defeat in 1763—Canada
embraces a multiculturalism that also encourages
immigrant minorities to maintain their traditional
cultures and languages. The tension between
these sometimes contradictory goals of integration
and cultural maintenance has resulted in much lin-
guistic diversity. During the decade, the desire to
perpetuate minority group languages was accommo-
dated by the creation of individual language
courses, by having schools teach the minority lan-
guages as part of their curricula, and by the founding
of clubs and organizations in which the language
was spoken.
Census studies during the 1990’s showed that 88
percent of Chinese reported speaking a nonofficial
language at home and 29 percent were unable to
speak an official language, while 15 percent of im-
migrants from India and 13 percent of those from
Taiwan were unable to converse in either English or
French. In the census completed in 2001, three-
quarters of these minorities were able to speak
English, but still one in ten remained incapable of
self-expression in either official language. The non-
official languages spoken by visible minorities were
Chinese (31 percent), Punjabi (7.3 percent), Arabic
(5.1 percent), Spanish (4.7 percent), Tagalog (Fili-
pino) and Russian (4.5 percent), Persian (Farsi) and
Tamil (4.2 percent), Urdu (3.4 percent), and Ko-
rean (3.3 percent).
Chinese, South Asians, and blacks accounted for
almost two-thirds of the visible minorities. The num-
ber of Chinese in Canada approached one million;
Chinese immigration is very old, with the first major
wave beginning during the late 1850’s in British Co-578 Minorities in Canada The Nineties in America