Newcomer destinations in Canada
The majority of newcomers plan to settle in one of four provinces:
-
Ontario
-
Quebec
-
Alberta
-
British Colombia
Between 2012 and 2014, between 85.9 and 88.2% of newcomers planned migration to these four provinces combined, with slightly less than three-fifths of newcomers (between 56.1 and 60.1%) choosing to settle in Ontario and Quebec (Martel & D'Aoust, 2016). Large, urban centres are primary destinations for newcomers; 61% of all newcomers to Canada settle in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver (Statistics Canada, 2017d).
Over the past 15 years (2001-2016), however, greater numbers of immigrants have chosen to settle in the Prairie Provinces. During this period, the number of immigrants attracted to the prairies has more than doubled (Ibid.).
Video: Newcomers moving from big cities to big cities
With Dr. Lori Wilkinson (Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba)
The top destinations of immigrants are Toronto and Vancouver by far. Together those two cities account for over 40% of all of the newcomers who are living in Canada followed by Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary. The common factor of all of these top cities of migration is that they're big cities and that speaks to another phenomenon about migration in general: immigrants tend to move from big city to big city. So refugees and immigrants are more likely to come from big cities and move to big cities when they come to Canada. You hear this stereotype about refugees and immigrants coming from rural parts of their country and then coming to Canada and being bewildered by the big city. The actual fact is that it's a big city to big city migration. If you are originating from a large metropolitan city, you're not going to feel comfortable in a small rural area. And if you look at world geography, most people in the world live in cities and so that's why migration tends to be city to city. Smaller centres, by that I mean under 100,000 people, they sometimes have a hard time attracting newcomers because that's not the mode of living that they're used to. So for many newcomers they would not feel comfortable in a city that's under a million people because that's not how they lived in their hometown.
Newcomer destinations by province and territory
