Ever since questions about visible minorities were added to the census in 1996, people belonging to those population groups have been classified in several ways. Those individuals are lumped together in one group — which Statistics Canada calls “multiple visible minorities” — and are not broken down by the pairs or combinations of groups to which they belong. In the 2016 census, 232,275 people — or 2.7 per cent of the total visible minority population — were identified as multiple visible minorities. “It is not possible to distinguish all the various combinations of the visible minority groups included inside the multiple visible minorities. Any changes would directly impact the way Canada’s census poses questions about race; the purpose of asking people to identify with certain population groups is tied to the act, which necessitates collecting information about visible minorities.

Source: thestar July 15, 2021 22:18 UTC