By Examiner Staff Thu., Oct. 27, 2022
The Peterborough census metropolitan area had nearly twice as many recent immigrants last year than it did five years earlier, 2021 Census statistics released Wednesday by Statistics Canada indicate.
Peterborough had 1,300 recent immigrants in 2021 compared to 750 in 2016, the Census found.
Despite the rise, Peterborough still takes in just a small fraction, about 0.1 per cent, of all the recent immigrants to Canada.
Canada had 1,328,240 recent immigrants in 2021, compared to 1,212,075 in 2016, despite a slowdown of immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census found.
Residents who first obtained their landed immigrant or permanent resident status in Canada in the five years prior to a given census are considered recent immigrants.
The Census also found there has been a decline, from 56 per cent in 2016 to 53.4 per cent in 2021, in the share of recent immigrants settling in the three major cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver as more turned to other cities and communities like Peterborough with cheaper housing, contributing to population growth.
Ottawa-Gatineau’s share of recent immigrants rose from 3.1 per cent in 2016 to 4.4 per cent in 2021, while it almost doubled in Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo from 1.2 per cent in 2016 to 2.1 per cent in 2021, the Census found.
The Peterborough CMA consists of Peterborough city, Cavan Monaghan, Selwyn, Douro-Dummer and Otonabee-South Monaghan townships, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation.