Canada has a well-deserved reputation as a multicultural society. This reputation,
moreover, is not just a self-serving Canadian myth: the 2006 Census discloses some
remarkable statistics about the ethnic composition of Canada. According to the 2006
Census, Canadians reported belonging to more than 200 ethnicities as compared to the 25 ethnicities they reported in the 1901 Census. The proportion of Canadians belonging to visible minorities was 16%, or approximately 5 million (out of a total population of 34
million), as compared to 13%, or slightly less than 4 million, in 2001. That translates into
a five-year growth among visible minorities of 27% compared to 5% growth for the rest
of the Canadian population.