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The South Asians became Canada's largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese for the first time. The populations of both were well over 1 million.
The census enumerated an estimated 1,262,900 individuals who identified themselves as South Asian, a growth rate of 37.7% from 917,100 individuals in 2001. They represented one-quarter (24.9%) of all visible minorities, or 4.0% of the total population in Canada.
In contrast, the number of individuals who identified themselves as Chinese increased 18.2% from 1,029,400 to 1,216,600 during this five-year period. Chinese accounted for about 24.0% of the visible minority population and 3.9% of the total Canadian population.
The number of those identifying themselves as Black, the third largest visible minority group, rose 18.4%, from 662,200 individuals in 2001 to 783,800. They accounted for 15.5% of the visible minority population and 2.5% of the total population in 2006.
Other visible minority groups included Filipinos, who represented 8.1% of the visible minority population, Latin Americans (6.0%), Arabs (5.2%), Southeast Asians (4.7%), West Asians (3.1%), Koreans (2.8%) and Japanese (1.6%). Combined, these groups made up nearly one-third (31.6%) of the visible minority population and 5.1% of the total population in 2006.
There was also a small proportion (4.0%) of individuals who reported that they belonged to more than one visible minority group or other visible minorities such as Pacific Islanders.