The Canadian Government is estimating that Filipino immigrants to Canada will reach the one million mark by 2025, a top Canadian official said.

“The number of Filipinos migrating to Canada has picked up in the last five years. We estimate that there will be a million Filipinos migrating to Canada by 2025,” said Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Neil Reeder at the recent opening of the Canada Trade Fair at the Ayala Center Cebu.

“Both countries enjoy very important people-to-people linkages, built up over decades of immigration, travel and study,” Reed said in a press conference.

Apparently, he said, Canada continues to be an important destination for Filipinos wishing to immigrate and live in Canada permanently, work on a temporary basis or to study.

“In fact, ours is the second busiest Canadian visa office in the world,” Reed shared.

Citing official records, he said that as of 2012, the Canadian Embassy has issued permanent resident visas to nearly 33,000 Filipinos, over 8, 000 temporary foreign worker visas, and over 31,000 temporary resident or visitor visas.

He said an estimated 800,000 Canadians are of Filipino origin and Tagalog is the fastest-growing language group in Canada.

A bigger concentration of Filipino immigrants reside in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal.