A land of vast distances and rich natural resources, Canada became a self-governing dominion in 1867, while retaining ties to the British crown. Canada gained legislative independence from Britain in 1931 and formalized its constitutional independence from the UK when it passed the Canada Act in 1982. Economically and technologically, the nation has developed in parallel with the US, its neighbor to the south across the world’s longest international border. Canada faces the political challenges of meeting public demands for quality improvements in health care, education, social services, and economic competitiveness, as well as responding to the particular concerns of predominantly francophone Quebec. Canada also aims to develop its diverse energy resources while maintaining its commitment to the environment.

Economy

One of the world’s largest economies; leading global financier and macroeconomic partner; largest US trading partner; key timber and oil and gas industries; Canada sends over half its development aid to the World Bank; key “blue economy” developer.

Population

The population is 38,516,736 (2023 est.) which consists of Canadian 15.6%, English 14.7%, Scottish 12.1%, French 11%, Irish 12.1%, German 8.1%, Chinese 4.7%, Italian 4.3%, First Nations 1.7%, Indian 3.7%, Ukrainian 3.5%, Metis 1.5% (2021 est.)

note: percentages add up to more than 100% because respondents were able to identify more than one ethnic origin

Black Canadians (French: Canadiens Noirs), also known as Afro-Canadians (French: Afro-Canadiens), are people of full or partial sub-Saharan African descent who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and African immigrant origin, though the Black Canadian population also consists of African American immigrants and their descendants (including Black Nova Scotians). Black Canadian migration from Africa has risen substantially since 2011.

Black Canadians have contributed to many areas of Canadian culture. Many of the first visible minorities to hold high public offices have been Black, including Michaëlle Jean, Donald Oliver, Stanley G. Grizzle, Rosemary Brown, and Lincoln Alexander. Black Canadians form the third-largest visible minority group in Canada, after South Asian and Chinese Canadians.

According to the 2021 census by Statistics Canada, 1,547,870 Canadians identified as Black, constituting 4.3% of the entire Canadian population. Of the black population, 10 per cent identified as mixed-race of “white and black”. The five most black-populated provinces in 2021 were Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba. The 10 most black-populated census metropolitan areas were Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, Oshawa, and Québec City. Preston, in the Halifax area, is the community with the highest percentage of Black people, with 69.4%; it was a settlement where the Crown provided land to Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. Brooks, a town in southeastern Alberta, is the census subdivision with the highest percentage of Black people, with 22.3%. The community there is mainly composed of East African immigrants.

In the 2011 census, 945,665 Black Canadians were counted, making up 2.9% of Canada’s population. In the 2016 census, the black population totalled 1,198,540, encompassing 3.5% of the country’s population.

The 10 largest sources of migration for Black Canadians are Jamaica (136,505), Haiti (110,920), Nigeria (109,240), Ethiopia (43,205), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (37,875), Cameroon (33,200), Somalia (32,285), Eritrea (31,500), Ghana (28,420), and the United States (27,055).

A small amount of Black Canadians (0.6%) also have some Indigenous heritage, due to historical intermarriage between Black and First Nations or Métis communities.^[15] Historically little known, this aspect of Black Canadian cultural history began to emerge in the 2010s, most notably through the musical and documentary film project The Afro-Métis Nation.

At times, Black Canadians are claimed to have been significantly undercounted in census data. Writer George Elliott Clarke has cited a McGill University study which found that fully 43% of all Black Canadians were not counted as Black in the 1991 Canadian census, because they had identified on census forms as British, French, or other cultural identities, which were not included in the census group of Black cultures.

Although subsequent censuses have reported the population of Black Canadians to be much more consistent with the McGill study’s revised 1991 estimate than with the official 1991 census data, no study has been conducted to determine whether some Black Canadians are still substantially missed by the self-identification method.

The Black presence in Canada is rooted mostly in voluntary immigration. Despite the various dynamics that may complicate the personal and cultural interrelationships between descendants of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, descendants of former American slaves who viewed Canada as the promise of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad, and more recent immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa, one common element that unites all of these groups is that they are in Canada because they or their ancestors actively chose of their own free will to settle there.