Citizenship

Canadian-born, naturalized citizens, and non-citizens, mapped by census tract (2021 Census)

Citizenship & nativity, by neighbourhood

Where the Canadian-born, naturalized citizens (immigrants who have become citizens), and non-citizens live, by census tract (2021). Use the dropdown to switch group, and zoom and pan to your area.

How the groups are assembled. The census reports citizenship (citizen or not) and immigrant status (non-immigrant / immigrant / non-permanent resident) on the same population base. We combine them as:

  • Canadian-born: StatCan’s “non-immigrants” (Canadian citizens by birth).
  • Naturalized citizens: Canadian citizens minus the Canadian-born.
  • Non-citizens: direct from the census (permanent residents on track to citizenship, temporary residents, and others).

The three groups sum to 100%.

Non-permanent residents: people on work or study permits or claiming asylum are a subset of non-citizens, shown as a fourth map option. Census citizenship questions are asked of a 25% sample, so small tracts carry more noise than the diversity and language layers.

Becoming a citizen: how Canada compares

This chart shows how many people become citizens each year. Counting acquisitions of citizenship per 100,000 residents enables comparison between countries of different total populations. Canada naturalizes new citizens at one of the highest rates in the peer group, and far above the United States, France, and Japan. The Canadian line is volatile because it tracks processing throughput as much as demand. Grants fell sharply in 2020 when offices closed, then surged in 2022–23 as the pandemic backlog was cleared. Countries also count acquisitions differently. Some include registration and declaration routes that others exclude. This is best read as broad scales, not an exact ranking.

In the most recent year, ranked:

Voting

Citizenship confers the right to vote. Canadians’ turnout at the polls has varied over our 150+ year history of federal elections, ranging from roughly 60% to 80% of registered electors.

Turnout differs sharply by age: Canadians aged 25 to 34 vote at the lowest rates and those in their late 60s and early 70s at the highest.

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