By Mata Press Service

The percentage of permanent residents obtaining Canadian citizenship has plummeted since 2001, according to new Statistics Canada data obtained by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

Despite Canada’s efforts to attract growing numbers of newcomers, the proportion of immigrants who seize the opportunity to become Canadian is in freefall, said the Institute.

Data collected during the 2021 Census reveal that just 45.7% of permanent residents became citizens within 10 years, down from 60% in 2016 and 75.1% in 2001.

This represents a 40% decline in citizenship uptake over 20 years.

These numbers were shared by Statistics Canada with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship as part of ongoing research into declining citizenship rates.

“To go from 75% of newcomers obtaining citizenship to only 45% is simply shocking,” said Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

“It goes against everything we tend to think about Canada being a welcoming country. It raises all sorts of questions that will have no easy answers, but it is certainly a wakeup call,” he said.

“Canada’s future depends on newcomers becoming Canadian and contributing their energy and talents to our shared success. We should be extremely alarmed that newcomers are falling out of love with Canadian citizenship, which has, for decades, been highly desirable.”

“The declining citizenship rate has the potential to harm Canada’s long-term economic, social and democratic resilience. Immigrants are not just workers, but future voters and civic leaders,” said George Carothers, Senior Director, Ideas and Insights at the ICC.

“What’s certain is that the future of Canadian democracy depends on this issue being addressed. The ICC is working hard to identify the causes behind this apparent crash in the market value of being Canadian and we encourage all committed Canadians to join us.”

“We should want those who are contributing to Canada to stay here and become citizens,” he said.

Canada has one of the highest citizenship rates (the percentage of immigrants who become citizens) among major Western countries.

However, evidence indicates that the rate has been falling among recent immigrants to Canada.

According to a StatsCan report immigrants with lower family incomes experienced a much larger decline in citizenship rates than did those with higher family incomes. The decline among lower-income immigrant families largely occurred between 2006 and 2011.

The citizenship rate also declined much more among immigrants with poorer official language skills than it did among immigrants whose mother tongue was English or French. The citizenship rate among immigrants with poorer official language skills has been declining since 2001 and was observed over all intercensal periods.

Education was also a factor, with citizenship rates declining much more among immigrants with lower than higher levels of educational attainment. This was primarily observed between 2011 and 2016.

When all three of these factors—family income, knowledge of official languages, and educational attainment—are combined, the citizenship rate was more or less constant between 1996 and 2016 for the most advantaged group of recent immigrants (i.e., with a high income, university education, and English or French as a mother tongue). In contrast, it declined significantly among the more disadvantaged group (i.e., with a low income, high school or less education and mother tongue, not English or French).

There was also significant variation in the extent to which citizenship rates declined among immigrants from different source regions.

Most striking was the large decline in citizenship take-up among immigrants from East Asia—mainly China.

Meanwhile, another report by Immigration Canada showed most Canadian PRs who landed in 2022 were citizens of India, China and Afghanistan

The top source countries among 2022’s group of new Canadian permanent residents have shifted slightly from last year, with Brazil and South Korea dropping out of the top 10 in favour of Afghanistan and Syria.

India continues to be the leading source of immigration for Canada in 2022, with China in second place again, similar to a year ago, reported CIC News.

However, in a deviation from 2021, the percentage of immigrants from these two countries – 32% and 8%, respectively, last year – has decreased.

In 2022, the following 10 countries were Canada’s top immigration sources according to each immigrant’s country of citizenship.

1. India (118, 095 immigrants)

2.  China (31,815 immigrants) – 7.2%

3.  Afghanistan (23,735 immigrants) – 5.4%

4.  Nigeria (22,085 immigrants) – 5.05%

5.  Philippines (22,070 immigrants) – 5.04%

6.  France (14,145 immigrants) – 3.2%

7.  Pakistan (11,585 immigrants) – 2.6%

8.  Iran (11,105 immigrants) – 2.5%

9.  United States of America (10,400 immigrants) – 2.3%

In 2022, although Ontario remained the top immigrant destination among PRs in Canada, Quebec overtook British Columbia as the second most common initial settlement location among this group.

In 2022, 42.2% of new PRs chose Ontario as their initial destination—a decrease from the nearly 49% who landed throughout the province in the year prior.

This may be a function of Canada’s effort to spread the benefits of immigration further across the country, which is being accomplished as the PNP starts becoming more prevalent than Express Entry over time.

In second place was Quebec, which landed 68,685 immigrants in 2022. This figure represents about 15.7% of all new immigrants, up slightly from just over 12% in 2021.

Finally, British Columbia landed 14% of Canada’s immigrants in 2022, down around three percent from last year. The only other region to exceed 10% of all landed immigrants in 2022 was Alberta, as the province landed a total of 49,460 immigrants throughout the year (11.3%).