Statistics Canada Reports:
TORONTO IS THE MOST DIVERSE CITY ON THE PLANET
 Half the people in the City of Toronto are now foreign-born, according to 2006 Canadian census figures. We are more diverse than Los Angeles, Miami, or New York City.
Statistics Canada: Highlights for City of Toronto
Statistics Canada: Highlights for Metropolitan Toronto
Toronto: Canada's major immigrant gateway
 Table: Toronto Population Statistics 2006 (raw data)
Immigration in Canada: A Portrait of the Foreign-born Population, 2006 Census: Findings
by Tina Chui, H�l�ne Maheux and Kelly Tran, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Highlights:
Ontario: Province of choice for most newcomers to Canada
Ontario continued to be the province of choice for more than half (52.3%) of the 1.1 million
newcomers who arrived in Canada during the past five years. This was down slightly from the
previous cohort of recent arrivals when 55.9% of newcomers to Canada who settled in Ontario
between 1996 and 2001.
In total, the census enumerated 3,398,700 foreign-born individuals in Ontario. They represented
28.3% of the province's population, the highest proportion of all 10 provinces and the highest in
Ontario's history.
Most foreign-born Ontarians lived in the census metropolitan area of Toronto (68.3%). The other
Ontario metropolitan areas that were home to at least 2% of the province's foreign-born
population were the Ontario part of Ottawa - Gatineau (5.3%), Hamilton (4.9%), Kitchener (3%),
London (2.6%) and Windsor (2.2%).
Immigrants in metropolitan areas
Three largest centres attracted 7 out of every 10 newcomers
Among all the major census metropolitan areas, Toronto, Montr�al and Vancouver again attracted most of the new immigrants who came between 2001 and 2006.
Of the 1,110,000 newcomers who arrived in Canada during the past five years, 68.9% (765,000) chose to settle in one of these three census metropolitan areas. About 28.3% spread across the remaining urban areas, while only about 2.8% chose to live in a rural area.
The largest number of newcomers (447,900), went to Toronto, while 165,300 chose Montr�al and 151,700 settled in Vancouver.
Toronto's share of the total recent immigrants was about 40.4%, a slight decline from 43.1% in the 2001 Census.
Vancouver's share between 2001 and 2006 dropped from 17.6% to 13.7%. As a result, Vancouver fell from second to third place among the most popular urban areas for new immigrants.
Montr�al, which rose from third place to second, was home to 14.9% of recent immigrants in 2006, compared with 11.9% in 2001.
The reasons behind newcomers choosing to settle in Canada's three largest census metropolitan areas varied, according to the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada.
The most cited reason for settling in Toronto, Montr�al or Vancouver was to join the social support networks of family and friends. Among newcomers in Toronto, the second-most cited reason was the job prospects that Toronto could offer. Among newcomers in Montr�al, it was language, and among those in Vancouver, it was climate.
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Newcomers put strain on cities
Dec 04, 2007 08:47 AM
by
Colin Perkel
THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO
Canada's three largest cities are struggling to cope with a flood of newcomers primarily from China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan as immigration approaches levels not seen since the end of the "Great Migration."
Statistics Canada said Tuesday that 69 per cent of recent immigrants to Canada resided in the "magnet" or "gateway" cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver � dubbed MTV � in 2006. That's down from 73 per cent in 2001 and 74 per cent in 1996.
Still, 97 per cent of all immigrants in the last five years ended up in large urban areas.
The flood of immigrants has resulted in the kind of vibrant, diversification celebrated as the essence of Canadian multiculturalism. But it has also created a nation of two solitudes: declining rural populations at the same time as bulging big cities struggle to provide services newcomers rely on....
Big cities complain they are left on the hook for providing the vital services that help immigrants feel at home — social housing; libraries; community, recreation and public-health programs and schools.
"We don't get a nickel from the federal government to support the kind of services that actually help people settle successfully in this city," said Toronto Mayor David Miller, where 46 per cent of the city's population was foreign-born in 2006.
"(But) if we don't properly support newcomers . . . there can well be problems."
...Ontario Immigration Minister Michael Chan said the province, which gets half the country's immigrants, spent about $160 million on services for newcomers last year although he complains that Ottawa has shortchanged the province in promised support.
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