Muslims in Canada are the fastest growing group

News East-West

TORONTO: The Muslims are the fastest growing religious community in Canada, according to the latest National Household Survey released on Wednesday.

The Muslim population of Canada has grown by 72.53 percent since 2001, says the survey.

As of now, Muslims are about 3.2 percent of the Canadian population, up from 2 percent in 2001.

Since the 2011 census put the population of Canada at 33,476,688 in total, the current population of Muslims works out to be 1,071,000 – which is above one million.

Much of the growth in the Muslim population has been contributed by immigration from Pakistan since 2006.

Among the other visible minorities, Hindus are about 1.5 percent of the Canadian population, Sikhs about 1.4 percent, Buddhist 1.1 percent and Jewish 1.0 percent.

Which means 502,150 people have identified themselves as Hindus and 468,674 as Sikhs.  Which also means that there are more Muslims in Canada than Hindus and Sikhs put together. Both Hindus and Sikhs have registered over 63 percent growth in their population since 2001.

Interestingly, the median age of Muslims is 28.9 years as compared to 32.8 years for the Sikhs, 34.2 years for the Hindus and 42.9 years for Roman Catholics.

Christians are about 67.3 percent of the Canadian population. Numbering over 12,728,900, Roman Catholics are the largest Christian religious group, making up about 38.7 percent of the population.

On the macro level, the survey showed that 6.8 million Canadian are foreign-born, making Canada the country with the highest foreign-born population (20.6 percent) among G-8 nations. Among other G-8 nations, Germany has foreign-born population of 13 percent and the US 12.9 percent.

Other facts about the survey:

• Over 200 ethnic groups make up Canada.
• 13 ethnic groups reported a population above one million. These ethnic groups are Canadian, English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, First Nations (Native Indians), Ukrainian, East Indians (means all Indians – Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Christians), Dutch and Polish.
• 6,264,800 people identified themselves as visible minorities (non-whites). The three largest visible minority groups — South Asians, Chinese and Blacks — accounted for 61.3 percent of the visible minority population.