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Immigration has been central to the nation building of Canada. In the 17th and 18th centuries, traders and settlers from France and Britain established settlements in Canada. The Constitution Act of 1791, which divided the country into Lower and Upper Canada, institutionalized the governance of the two immigrant societies under British rule, firmly established after the British conquest of 1760.

Throughout Canada’s history, many immigrant groups have arrived, propelled by conditions of desperation at home and attracted by opportunities in the New World. The Irish exodus in the middle of the 19th century was driven by the potato crop failure in Ireland in 1845 and 1846. This “famine migration” brought approximately 140,000 Irish to Canada in 1848, 200,000 in 1852 and 280,000 in 1861. Non-British and non-French immigrants too have enriched Canada. Ukrainians began coming in significant numbers in 1896, mainly to homestead and to farm. They contributed not only to the settlement of western Canada and the expansion of prairie agriculture, but also to the nation’s political and cultural life.

Visible minorities have also been a part of Canada throughout its history, despite their small numbers. For example, Blacks have been in Nova Scotia since the 18th century, and Chinese migration to British Columbia began in the middle of the 19th century. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 was facilitated by labour from China. Over 10,000 Chinese came to work on the western section of the railroad between 1881 and 1884, and between 1886 and 1904, another 45,000 Chinese immigrants paid a Head Tax, levied only on the Chinese, in order to work in Canada and escape poverty at home. Together with the British and the French who came before them, successive waves of immigrants to Canada have helped to transform what began as a settler society of mainly Europeans to a mosaic of many cultures. The history of Canada is a testimony of how immigration has enriched the linguistic duality and cultural diversity of the nation.

The post-Second World War period witnessed a sustained population growth in Canada that was produced by both natural increases and migration gains. Net migration, that is, the difference between in and out migration, accounted for 21 per cent of Canada’s population growth for 1941-51, 26 per cent for 1951-61, and 24 per cent for 1971-81 as well as for 1981-91. In 2001, the immigrant population reached 18.4 per cent, making Canada second only to Australia’s 22 per cent foreign-born population. Immigration has been playing an increasingly larger role in Canada’s population growth and in the labour force. Between 2000 and 2005, international migration accounted for 60 per cent of the increase in Canada’s total population and between 2004 and 2005, 65 per cent. In short, about two-thirds of Canada’s population increase now can be attributed to international migration. At the same time, immigrants who landed in Canada in the 1990s and were in the labour force in 2001 accounted for 70 per cent of the growth in the labour force of Canada in the decade.

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