“If you look in the 1990s, in every one of the 50 states, non-Anglo Hispanic populations grew faster than Anglo populations,” said Steve Murdock, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau. “It’s a very pervasive pattern.”
TORONTO – In this city of big buildings and big dreams, a big hope slipped away last week when the Canadian sister city of Montreal missed out on sport’s premier event.
And when the Montreal Canadiens, as the National Hockey League team is known to English speakers (or the Habs, as it’s known to French speakers) were checked by the Philadelphia Flyers from getting into the Stanley Cup finals, the entire nation was disappointed.
But among those suffering the biggest letdown were Arabs and South Asians. When, you wonder, did ice hockey become a thing with Arabs and South Asians?
When they moved from their homelands to Canada.
While about half of all Canadians express interest in professional hockey, the level of interest among immigrants is much higher.
“Perhaps as they come to Canada, they want to be part of the fabric of Canadian society, and hockey is one of the things they latch on to,” according to Doug Norris, of the survey firm of Environics Analytics and Research Now.
Like its neighbor to the south, Canada has been built by immigrants. But unlike its southern brother, the ethos here is palpably different.
Indeed, from this city’s motto, “Diversity is our strength,” to newcomer-friendly laws, to pronouncements by public officials and corporate displays of multicultural acceptance, foreign immigration in Canada is viewed in a different context.
Having been shaken less by the three-year international economic downturn, Canada is springing back. While the commercial real estate sector is in the tank in other advanced countries, some two dozen building cranes dominate Toronto’s downtown skyline.
The greater Toronto area has about 5 million residents. Twenty-five percent of the area’s population is South Asian, and 42 percent is comprised of visible minority groups.
“China has been the leading country of birth among individuals who have immigrated to Canada since the 1990s, followed by South Asian countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” according to a report by Ipsos Reid, a Canadian marketing firm.
It landed 19 leading researchers from Britain, France, Brazil, Germany and the United States in a $200-million recruitment drive that critics charged could leave other nations with a brain drain.
Researchers in virology, fish-stock management, neuroscience, biomedicine and other disciplines were among the experts accepting the invitation to move to Canada. “Canada has to become more than ever a magnet for talent,” Tony Clement, Canada’s industry minister, said in a statement.
But Sumitra Rajagopalan, a professor of biomechanics at McGill University in Montreal, saw hidden motives behind the government move. She noted in the May 21 Globe and Mail that one of the world’s leading nanomaterial scientists, Dr. Thomas Thundat, a fellow at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, was attracted not to shape the future of Canadian nanoscience, but instead was given the mandate to “find better ways of extracting oil from tar sands.”
It has erected posters and billboards around Toronto and other Canadian cities showing off its pride in Canada’s multiculturalism. A transnational giant, it has banking operations in more than 50 countries. It is Canada’s most international bank and has a vice-president of multicultural banking.
Plunging deeper into the current in which Canada is moving, two years ago Scotiabank kicked off its StartRight program of services to potential immigrants and new Canadians, including help with settlement agencies, and direction in education and employment opportunity. Its ATM machines are in five languages, and it boasts that toll-free callers to the bank may speak to multilingual representatives. Its Web site is in eight languages.
Scotiabank executives regard its outlook as more than just a smart-business approach, according to Chemi Nanglu, a corporate spokeswoman. They see it as part of the changing times. For example, she pointed to federal statistics showing that by 2030 immigration will account for 100 percent of Canadian population growth. Immigration is currently feeding two-thirds of the population growth.
Nanglu said the bank’s Startright program won the Visionary Award of Canadian Newcomer magazine in June 2008, and was recognized by Marketing magazine in October of that year.
The Third Person 