TORONTO – “These groups cannot be ignored by marketers, and the most effective way to reach them is online,” Ipsos Reid, a Canadian marketing firm, said in a recent report about new Canadians. “According to Statistics Canada, nearly eight-in-ten (78%) immigrants who have arrived in Canada in the past ten years use the Internet.”
At a multicultural marketing conference last year, panel experts offered advice that businesses overlooking “ethnic consumers are missing a huge opportunity,” according to Marketing magazine.
“All the bad news about the economy is making everyone shell shocked,” Albert Yue, managing director of Dynasty Advertising and Communications, said in the magazine. “It’s clear that many marketers are starting to cut their budgets. But if you can see through the fire and smoke, the ethnic markets are more resilient than mainstream ones.”
According to Ramesh Nilakantan, account director at Publicis Diversite, corporations that underestimate the ethnic sector’s buying power do so at risk.
“There are many Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who’ve spent the last 15 years of their lives in Dubai and southern India in tax-free markets,” Nilakantan said in the magazine. “Those markets are collapsing. They don’t want to go back home. They’re coming here not just with an education, but with loads of money.”
With the many headlines about new Canadians and their wealth, education and eventual success stories, this is really a city of two kinds of immigrants divided by class and social circumstance.
As a member of the British Commonweath of nations, Canada has for decades been a destination for people leaving the English-speaking Caribbean. And over the years the Caribbean community here has produced a goodly share of renowned artists, writers and thinkers.
“In 2000, people of Caribbean origin aged 15 and over had an average income from all sources of $26,000, almost $4,000 less than the national figure,” according to the report.
Many people of Caribbean descent have reported instances of discrimination, according to Statistics Canada. “In 2002, 41% indicated they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment based on their ethnicity, race, religion, language or accent in the past five years, or since they arrived in Canada. As well, 89% of those who had experienced discrimination said that they felt it was based on their race or skin colour,” according to the report.
Some communities of working-class immigrants in the metro area also report obtrusive policing that they believe is unwarranted. Among other things, they point to a May 5 incident in the Jane-Finch neighborhood in which 18-year-old Junior Manon died of a heart attack, according to police, that occurred after witnesses saw him being beaten on the ground by seven police officers.
Hundreds of people demonstrated outside police headquarters. More than 1,800 joined a Facebook page demanding justice for him.
The Third Person 