In this week’s EconMinute, we’re talking about Alberta’s ethnocultural diversity.
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The latest release from the 2021 Census shows that more than a quarter (27.8%) of Albertans are part of a racialized group (persons, other than Indigenous persons, who are non-white in colour), and Alberta is the third most diverse province in Canada. Only Ontario (34.3%) and British Columbia (34.4%) have populations with a higher proportion of racialized groups.
Alberta’s population share of racialized groups (27.8%) is slightly higher than the national population share of 26.5% (Figure 1).
In 2021, 1.2 million Albertans reported belonging to a racialized group, up from 933,000 five years earlier. This represents an increase of nearly 25%, compared to just 5% for the population as a whole.
Here’s what the data tells us about Alberta’s ethnocultural diversity:
- South Asians and Filipinos are the two largest racialized groups in Alberta. South Asians represented 7.1% of Alberta’s population, and Filipinos represented 5.2% of the population.
- Alberta has an outsized proportion of Filipinos, with more than one in five (22.6%) Filipinos in Canada living in Alberta.
- Alberta’s most diverse municipality is Brooks, where 48.6% of the population belong to a racialized group. The most prominent is the Black population, representing 22.3% of Brooks residents.
- Calgary and Edmonton are Alberta’s second and third most diverse municipalities. Racialized groups make up 38.8% of Calgary’s population and 33.3% of Edmonton’s population.
- Calgary is the third most diverse major city in the country, following Vancouver and Toronto, where more than half of the population in both cities belongs to a racialized group.