Technical Guide on Demographic Estimates at Statistics Canada
Chapter 6
Immigrants

Canada is a country with a long tradition of immigration. In fact, the country’s demographic growth is increasingly reliant on international migration since fertility has fallen below the replacement level following the end of the baby boom in the late 1960s.

Definitions and concepts

An immigrant is a person who is a permanent resident (landed immigrant). Such a person has been granted the right to live in Canada permanently by immigration authorities. Immigration to Canada has been regulated by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) since 2002.

The process of acquiring citizenship occurs only after obtaining permanent resident status and does not alter the total number of immigrants in the country, as it represents a change in legal status rather than an addition or subtraction from the immigrant component.

Six elements must be specified to define immigrants accurately in the context of demographic estimates:

1. Adoptions through the immigration process are included.
2. When a non-permanent resident (NPR)—permit holder or asylum claimant, protected person, or other related groups—obtains permanent residence, they are removed from the NPR component of demographic growth. They are then recorded as an outflow from this category, decreasing the net number of NPRs while simultaneously increasing the number of immigrants.
3. A small number of immigrants may have been born in Canada: these are the children of foreign representatives. Since they are not Canadian citizens by birth, they will be counted as immigrants only if they are granted permanent residence.
4. Children born abroad to Canadian parents who are only temporarily outside the country are not included among immigrants since they obtain Canadian citizenship at birth.
5. A landed immigrant or Canadian citizen returning to Canada after having previously emigrated from the country is considered a returning emigrant and not an immigrant.
6. People born abroad to a Canadian parent and who come to settle in Canada are not immigrants. Rather, they are included in the returning emigrant component of demographic growth if they have obtained Canadian citizenship by descent.

Note that estimates of the number of immigrants from the Demographic Estimates Program (DEP) differ from census figures. The census, conducted every five years, offers a detailed snapshot of immigrants residing in Canada, including their socio-demographic characteristics at various geographic levels, based on population-wide data collection. In contrast, the DEP is more timely and relies on administrative data to estimate the number of immigrants who have settled in the country over a given period.

Final estimates

Data source 

The collection of immigration statistics in Canada has been regulated by the IRPA since 2002. This statute superseded the Immigration Act, which was passed in 1976 and amended more than 30 times. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) collects and processes permanent residents’ administrative files. It then provides Statistics Canada with information from files from the Global Case Management System (GCMS). The information is used to estimate the number, province or territory of residence, age, and gender of people granted permanent resident status by the federal government on a given date.

The information sent by IRCC to Statistics Canada is transmitted monthly. It includes all permanent resident records for the previous month, along with any additions or modifications to the information previously provided.

Method 

The final estimate of the number of people who become immigrants during a given period is obtained directly from IRCC data and requires no adjustments. This estimate is based on the date of permanent resident admission.

In a small number of cases, the province or territory information is not yet available. These cases are proportionally distributed among the provinces and territories based on the observed distribution of other immigrants.

Preliminary and updated estimates

The difference between preliminary, updated, and final estimates of the number of immigrants comes from the timeliness of the GCMS file used in the calculations. This file is continuously refreshed, and new totals are generated each year to update the estimates of the number of immigrants.

Estimates of the number of immigrants are preliminary or updated in the first year and final the second year.

Immigrant estimates by age and gender

Information on the age and gender of immigrants is included in the GCMS file provided by IRCC and is therefore obtained directly from that source.

However, in a small number of cases, some details are not yet available. In these instances, a proportional distribution based on the characteristics of immigrants with available information is applied.

Subprovincial immigrant estimates

Since 2011/2012,^Note  postal codes from IRCC’s “mailing address file” have been used to determine subprovincial and subterritorial distributions of immigrant settlement. These postal codes are geocoded using the Postal CodeOM Conversion File Plus (PCCF+),^Note  so that they are assigned a census division (CD) and census metropolitan area/census agglomeration (CMA/CA) geographic code. If the postal code is missing, the intended municipality of residence from the GCMS is used. Finally, to ensure consistency, subprovincial estimates are then adjusted to the provincial and territorial totals using two-way raking.

Limitations

The estimates of the number of immigrants are of high quality because they are directly calculated using IRCC data, which are governed by the IRPA. However, for provincial and territorial estimates, the IRCC file indicates the intended province or territory at admission, which does not always correspond to the province or territory where the immigrant ultimately settles.