Ten Things to Know About Canadian Metropolitan Areas: A Synthesis
of Statistics Canada's Trends and Conditions in Census Metropolitan
Areas Series
by Andrew Heisz
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Trends and Conditions in Census Metropolitan Areas, June 2005, Catalogue
No. 89-613 No. 9
Context
Statistics Canada has released a series of eight reports shedding light
on economic and social issues of importance for the nation's 27 largest
metropolitan centres.
Based primarily on census data, this series provided substantial information
and analysis on topics such as low income, health, immigration, culture,
housing, labour markets, industrial structure, mobility, public transit
and commuting, and Aboriginal people.
Objective(s)
This final assessment summarizes the major findings of the eight reports,
and evaluates what has been learned. It points out that the series had
three key contributions.
Findings
First, it detailed how place matters. Census metropolitan areas differ
greatly in many indicators, and their economic and social differences
are important factors that define them.
Second, it contributed substantially to the amount of data and analysis
needed to make accurate policy assessments of what may be ailing in
Canada's largest cities and where each problem is most acute.
Third, it provided benchmarks against which future data (most notably
data from the 2006 Census) can be examined.
Among its more important findings, it found an increase in the income
gap between higher- and lower-income families in metropolitan areas,
which was reflected in an increasing income gap between lower- and higher-income
neighbourhoods.
Moreover, while the low-income rate in metropolitan areas did not change
significantly between 1981 and 2001, low income was not shared equally
among demographic groups. Recent immigrants (those who immigrated in
the last decade), Aboriginal people, and people in lone parent families
had much higher low-income rates than others.
The series found that labour markets varied widely from one urban centre
to another in 2001. But while these differences were large, they were
not as great as they had been two decades earlier. This indicated that
a movement towards more labour market equality had occurred among urban
centres between 1981 and 2001.
However, the fact that the unemployment rate in Chicoutimi-Jonquière
in 2001 was 2.5 times the rate in Calgary indicated that the labour
markets in metropolitan areas at the turn of the millennium were still
dominated by differences.
The series also showed that commuting patterns in Canada's largest
urban centres have become more complex as a result of stronger employment
growth in the suburbs than in city core areas. And in most instances,
workers going to suburban jobs have been driving to work rather than
taking public transit. This tendency to commute by car increased the
farther jobs were located from the city centre.
Data source(s)
This report summarizes the data brought
forward by the eight documents previously published in the Statistics
Canada series: Trends and conditions in census metropolitan areas.
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the article in the Daily about this publication.
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the full publication.
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