The population of Canada in the year just ending, 2001, is estimated to be just over 30 million people. Full figures gave not yet been extrapolated from the 2001 census, but in the 1996 census when the population numbered 28.5 million, a breakdown covered citizens of 25 ethnic origins. By July 2001 the population had grown to 31 million. Updated data from the 2000 census will be provided as it becomes available.

Full figures may be accessed at the Statistics Canada web site. Suffice it to say that for the purposes of www.vindicator.ca the top five ethnic groupings in order of total responses were Canadian 8,806,275, English 6,832,095, French, 5,597,845, Scottish 4,260,840, and Irish 3,767,610.

Care should be taken in the interpretation of these statistics, a caution emphasised by Statistics Canada itself, but in raw numbers they go to show that people of Irish descent have found Canada to be a receptive country, one in which they are free to pursue the careers of their choice at a less frenzied pace than might be the case elsewhere.

The other ethnic origins surveyed, in numerical order, were German, Italian, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Chinese, Dutch, Polish, South Asian, Jewish, Norwegian, Welsh, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Hungarian, Filipino, American, Spanish, Greek, and Jamaican.

Included in the South Asian classification were Bangladeshi, Bengali, East Indian, Goan, Gujarati, Pakistani, Sinhalese, Sri Lankan, Tamil and South Asian, all testimony to the wide appeal that Canada has for the peoples of the world.