Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Henry Yu |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400410 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Canada and Asia |
Henry Yu
Global migrants and
the new Pacific
Canada
| International Journal | Autumn 2009 | 1011 |
THE NEW CANADA
In the last quarter of a century, a wholesale shift of immigration patterns
from transatlantic to trans-Pacific flows has created a new Canada. The
changes were quiet at first, beginning after the creation of a the new “points
system” for immigration in 1967, but rising in volume during the 1980s so
that increasingly the voices of the “new Canada” are spoken in various Asian
languages, a powerful new blend of multilingual Canadians that has created
a globally connected Pacific Canada in the last 25 years. We have become a
new nation that remains in conversation with the dominant Anglo-French
society of the mid-20th century, but our future no longer makes sense as a
bilingual dialogue solely bet ween English and French. Our national past,
built on the outer edges of British imperial settlement that displaced societies
already existing in North America, is at the present moment a complicated
Henry Yu is the director of the initiat ive for student teaching and re search in Chinese
Canadian Studies and associate principal of St. John’s College at the University of British
Columbia.
| Henry Yu |
| 1012 | Autumn 2009 | International Journal |
global conversation in multiple languages, and if we are to embrace a future
that builds upon the strength and diversity of this new Canada rather than
silencing the great potential we now possess, we must recognize what we
have become and reconcile with a colonial past that continues to haunt us.
What is the demographic reality of the new Canada? The top 10 places
of birth for immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2006
included only two European countries: Romania, at number seven, was the
origin of just over 28,000 immigrants; the United Kingdom, which was the
dominant sending nation for the first century of Canadian history, was even
lower on the list at number nine, sending just over 25,000 new immigrants.
In contrast, six of the top 10 countries were in Asia, and the top four on the
list alone—the People’s Republic of China, India, the Philippines, and
Pakistan, accounted for two-thirds of all new migrants to Canada in that
period. China sent over 155,000; India over 129,000; the Philippines over
77,000; and Pakistan over 57,000.1
In 2006, 83.9 percent of all new immigrants to Canada came from
regions outside of Europe, and the very moniker “visible minority” to
designate nonwhite Canadians had become a questionable descriptor of
Canada’s ur ban populations. Over 96 percent of Canada’s “vi sible
minorities” live in metropolitan regions. Two main groups—south Asians
and self-identified ethnic Chinese—accounted for half of all visible
minorities in Canada, with each accounting for roughly a quarter of the total.
Ethnic Chinese and south Asians account for eight percent of Canada’s total
population, but because they have settled overwhelmingly in either the
metropolitan regions of Toronto or Vancouver, they have transformed those
cities. Between 1980 and 2001, for instance, the largest proportion of new
migrants to Canada were ethnic Chinese who came from various locations
in southeast Asia (including Hong Kong), along with migrants born in the
People’s Republic of China. Thes e various ethnic Chinese migrants w ent
overwhelmingly (87 percent ) to the five largest cities in Canada, with 41
percent going to Toronto and 31 percent to Vancouver alone.2Chinese
1 “World: Place of birth of new immigrants to Canada, 2006,” 2006 census, Statistics
Canada, geography division, 2007; also, “Immigration to Canada from the Asia Pacific,
1961-1996,” population and immigration statistical reports, Asia Pacific Foundation of
Canada (original source, 1996 census).
2 Shibao Guo and Don Devoretz, “The changing faces of Chinese immigrants,”
research on immigration and integration in the metropolis, Vancouver centre, no. 05-
08, February 2005.
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