Canada’s pattern of immigration spreads east and west – The Globe and Mail

What is rapidly changing is the distribution of new immigrants within Canada.

From 1991 to 2006, Ontario attracted 54.5 per cent of the immigrant population (using Census data for those years). During that same period, the Maritime provinces attracted less than 1 per cent of immigrants, even though the region’s population was more than 5.5 per cent of the Canadian total. Saskatchewan only attracted 0.6 per cent of the country’s immigrants over the 15 year period.

The pattern of immigration in recent years has been changing and not only towards western Canada. In 2011, 2.7 per cent of all immigrants settled in the Maritime provinces and a full 2.9 per cent settled in Saskatchewan.

From 2006 to 2011, the number of immigrants to Prince Edward Island has risen sixfold. While this growth is from a small base, it still means that the Island is attracting more than twice as many immigrants (1 per cent of total immigrants) compared to its share of the total population (0.4 per cent).

New Brunswick has witnessed a 42 per cent increase in immigrants over the past five years and Nova Scotia has also been attracting significantly more immigrants compared to a decade ago.

In many ways this spike in immigration into parts of the country other than Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia was inevitable. Out-migration of young people from the Maritimes for decades to the rest of Canada and beyond coupled with low levels of immigration since the early 1970s has turned what was once the youngest region in Canada (by median age) into the oldest — by a fairly wide margin.

via Canada’s pattern of immigration spreads east and west – The Globe and Mail.