The history of immigration to Canada details the movement of people to modern-day Canada. The modern Canadian legal regime was founded in 1867, but Canada also has legal and cultural continuity with French and British colonies in North America that go back to the 17th century, and during the colonial era, immigration was a major political and economic issue with Britain and France competing to fill their colonies with loyal settlers. Until then, the land that now makes up Canada was inhabited by many distinct Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples contributed significantly to the culture and economy of the early European colonies to which was added several waves of European immigration. More recently, the source of migrants to Canada has shifted away from Europe and towards Asia and Africa. Canada's cultural identity has evolved constantly in tandem with changes in immigration patterns.
Statistics Canada has tabulated the effect of immigration on population growth in Canada from 1851 to 2001."Population and growth components (1851-2001 Censuses)." Statistics Canada (2005). Government of Canada. Archived from the original 8 January 2008. On average, censuses are taken every ten years, which was how Canadian censuses were first incremented between 1871 and 1901. In 1901, the Dominion Government changed its policy so that census-taking occurred every five years subsequently to document the effects of the advertising campaign that was initiated by Clifford Sifton.
In 2018, Canada received 321,035 immigrants. The top ten countries of origin, which provided 61% of those, were India (69,973), the Philippines (35,046), China (29,709), Syria (12,046), the United States (10,907), Pakistan (9,488), France (6,175), Eritrea (5,689), and the United Kingdom and its overseas territories (5,663)."2019 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, for the period ending December 31, 2018, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada" accessed 2nd January, 2021
History of Canadian nationality law
In 1828, during the Great Migration of Canada, Britain passed the Act to Regulate the Carrying of Passengers in Merchant Vessels, the country's first legislative recognition of its responsibility over the safety and well-being of immigrants leaving the British Isles. The act limited the number of passengers who could be carried on a ship, regulated the amount of space allocated to them and required for passengers to be supplied with adequate sustenance on the voyage. The 1828 act is now recognized as the foundation of British colonial emigration legislation."Right of Passage." Moving Here, Staying Here: The Canadian Immigrant Experience. Library and Archives Canada. 2006.
Canadian citizenship was originally created under the Immigration Act, 1910, to designate those British subjects who were domiciled in Canada, but all other British subjects required permission to land. A separate status of 'Canadian national' was created under the Canadian Nationals Act, 1921, which defined such British subjects as being Canadian citizens, as well as their wives and children (fathered by such citizens) who had not yet landed in Canada. After the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution. As result, Canadians, just as all others living among the Commonwealth realms, were known as subjects of the Crown, and the term "British subject" continued to be used in legal documents.
Canada was the second nation among what was the British Commonwealth to establish its own nationality law in 1946, with the enactment of the Canadian Citizenship Act, 1946, taking effect on January 1, 1947. To acquire Canadian citizenship from then forward, one would generally have to be a British subject on or before the act took effect; an 'Indian' or 'Eskimo'; or to have been admitted to Canada as landed immigrants before the act took effect. A British subject then was anyone from the UK or its colonies (Commonwealth countries). Acquisition and loss of British subject status before 1947 were determined by United Kingdom law (see History of British nationality law).
On February 15, 1977, Canada removed restrictions on dual citizenship. Many of the provisions to acquire or lose Canadian citizenship that existed under the 1946 legislation were repealed. Canadian citizens are in general no longer subject to involuntary loss of citizenship barring revocation on the grounds of immigration fraud or criminality. The term "Canadians of convenience" was popularized by thé Canadian politician Garth Turner in 2006 in conjunction with the evacuation of Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the 2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict. It refers to people with multiple citizenship who immigrated to Canada, met the residency requirement to obtain citizenship, obtained Canadian citizenship, and moved back to their original home country while they maintained their Canadian citizenship, with those who support the term claiming they do so as a safety net.
Regional history Atlantic Region
There are a number of reports of contact made before Columbus between the first peoples and those from other continents. The case of Viking contact is supported by the remains of a Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. No archaeological traces of the settlement described by Icelandic Norseman Leifur Eiríksson as Vinland around the year 1000 have been found.
The presence of Basque cod fishermen and whalers a few years after Columbus has also been cited, with at least nine fishing outposts having been established on Labrador and Newfoundland. The largest of the settlements was the Red Bay station, with an estimated 900 people. Basque whalers may have begun fishing the Grand Banks as early as the 15th century.
The next European explorer acknowledged as landing in what is now Canada was John Cabot, who landed somewhere on the coast of North America (probably Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island) in 1497 and claimed it for King Henry VII of England. Portuguese and Spanish explorers also visited Canada, but it was the French who first began to explore further inland and set up colonies, beginning with Jacques Cartier in 1534. Under Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, the first French settlement was made in 1604 in the region of New France known as Acadie on Isle Sainte-Croix, which now belongs to Maine, in the Bay of Fundy. That winter was particularly long and harsh and about half of the settlers that had accompanied Sieur de Mons died of scurvy. The following year, the French decided to move to a better-sheltered area and established a new settlement at Port-Royal. In 1608, Samuel de Champlain, established a settlement at Donnacona thaï would later grow to become Quebec City. The French claimed Canada as their own, and 6,000 settlers arrived, settling along the St. Lawrence River and in the Maritimes. Britain also had a presence in Newfoundland and, with the advent of the settlements, claimed the south of Nova Scotia as well as the areas around the Hudson Bay.
The first contact with the Europeans was disastrous for the first peoples. Explorers and traders brought European diseases, such as smallpox, which killed off entire villages. Relations varied between the settlers and the Natives. The French befriended the Huron peoples and entered into a mutually-beneficial trading relationship with them. The Iroquois, however, became dedicated opponents of the French, and warfare between the two was unrelenting, especially since the British armed the Iroquois in an effort to weaken the French.
Quebec
After Samuel de Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France. While the coastal communities were based upon the cod fishery, the economy of the interior revolved around beaver fur, which was popular in Europe. French voyageurs would travel into the hinterlands and trade with the natives. The voyageurs ranged throughout what is now Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba and traded guns, gunpowder, textiles, and other European manufacturing goods with the natives for furs. The fur trade encouraged only a small population, however, as minimal labour was required. Encouraging settlement was always difficult, and some immigration occurred, but by 1760, New France had a population of only some 70,000.
New France had other problems besides low immigration. The French government had little interest or ability in supporting its colony, which was mostly left to its own devices. The economy was primitive, and much of the population was involved in little more than subsistence agriculture. The colonists also engaged in a long-running series of wars with the Iroquois.
Ontario
Étienne Brûlé explored Ontario from 1610 to 1612. In 1615, Samuel de Champlain visited Lake Huron, and French missionaries then established outposts in the region.
Prairie provinces
In the 18th to 19th century, the only immigration that Western Canada or Rupert's Land had was early French Canadian North West Company fur traders from eastern Canada and the Scots, English Adventurers, and Explorers representing the Hudson's Bay Company who arrived via Hudson Bay. Canada became a nation in 1867, Rupert's Land became absorbed into the North-West Territories. To encourage British Columbia to join the Canadian Confederation, a transcontinental railway was proposed. The railway companies felt it was not feasible to lay track over land on which there was no settlement. The fur trading era was declining; the buffalo population disappeared, and the nomadic buffalo hunters left, which presented a possibility to increase agricultural settlement. Agricultural possibilities were first expounded by Henry Youle Hind. The Dominion government, with the guidance of Interior Minister Clifford Sifton, in charge of immigration, (1896–1905)Impressions: 250 Years of Printing in the Lives of Canadians , URL accessed 26 November 2006 enacted Canada's homesteading act, the Dominion Lands Act, in 1872. An extensive advertising campaign throughout Western Europe and Scandinavia brought in a huge wave of immigrants to "The Last, Best West." (In 1763, Catherine the Great issued manifesto, inviting foreigners to settle into Russia,Impressions: The NDSU Libraries: Germans From Russia , URL accessed 26 November 2006 and in 1862, the United States enacted the Homestead Act, inviting immigration.)Imp Homestead Act of 1862, URL accessed 26 November 2006
Ethnic or religious groups seeking asylum or independence no longer travelled to Russia or the United States, where lands were taken or homestead acts were cancelled. The Red River Colony population of Manitoba allowed it to become a Canadian province in 1870. In the 1880s, fewer than 1,000 non-Aboriginal people resided out West. The government's immigration policy was a huge success since the North-West Territories grew to a population of 56,446 in 1881, almost doubled to 98,967 in 1891, and exponentially jumped to 211,649 by 1901.Home Page – Town of Davidson, URL accessed 26 November 2006 Ethnic Bloc SettlementsSaskatchewan Gen Web Project – SGW – Saskatchewan Genealogy Roots, URL accessed 26 November 2006 dotted the prairies, as language groupings settled together on soil types of the Canadian western prairie similar to agricultural land of their homeland. That way immigration was successful; new settlements could grow because of common communication and learned agricultural methods. the Canadian Pacific Railway transcontinental railway was finished in 1885.