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The number of visible minorities in Canada has cracked the five-million mark for the first time in history, representing 16.2 per cent of the country's total population, new census data released Wednesday show.

The growth in the visible minority population, driven largely by immigration from non-European countries, soared 26.2 per cent between 2001 and 2006, five times faster than the 5.4 per cent increase for the population as a whole, Statistics Canada reports.

And for the first time, South Asians became Canada's largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese.

Nearly 1.3 million people — a 38 per cent increase over 2001 — identified themselves in 2006 as South Asian, which includes Canadians who hail from such countries as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

In comparison, the number of Canadians who self-identified as Chinese increased 18.2 per cent from the last census to 1.216 million.

Canada's visible minority population has grown steadily over the past 25 years. In 1981, when data on minorities were first collected, the estimated 1.1 million visible minorities represented 4.7 per cent of Canada's total population. If immigration trends continue, visible minorities will account for about one-fifth of Canada's population by 2017, Statscan says.

If those numbers surprise you, it's likely you live in rural or small-town Canada. Just under 96 per cent of visible minorities live in a census metropolitan area, compared to 68.1 per cent of Canada's overall population. Most are concentrated in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Almost half, 46.9 per cent, of Toronto's population is made up of visible minorities. Conversely, for the entire Atlantic region, it's only 2.6 per cent.

There are also regional differences in the makeup of the minority population, said Rosemary Bender, spokeswoman with Statistics Canada.

"If you look at Quebec, you see a greater proportion that are Blacks and Arabs coming from primarily French-speaking countries," she said. "If you look at Ontario, you'll see a much higher proportion of Chinese and East Indian, and the same of course for Vancouver."

The definition of visible minority is taken from Canada's Employment Equity Act, which refers to "persons, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." The term includes Chinese, South Asians, Blacks, Arabs, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Latin Americans, Japanese, Koreans and other visible minority groups such as Pacific Islanders.

Other highlights of Wednesday's census release:

• There was a 33.1 per cent increase in the number of mixed unions (marriage and common-law), with Japanese, Latin Americans and Blacks most likely to be involved in a mixed relationship, although they still make up a small percentage — 3.9 per cent — of all couples in Canada. South Asians and Chinese were least likely to form a union outside their ethnic group.

• More people than ever are reporting multiple ancestries. "Canadian" remains the most frequently reported ethnic origin, followed by English, French, Scottish and Irish.

• The higher number of visible minorities is due to an increase in immigration from non-European countries. About 75 per cent of recent immigrants — those who arrived after 2001 — were visible minorities.

• The median age of visible minorities is 33 years, considerably younger than the national median of 39 years.

Statscan also released new data on commuters and "work clusters" which could have significant implications for city planners and public transit policy.

The census found more Canadians go to work in the suburbs of major cities than in the past: Nearly 3.5-million worked in suburbs in 2006, a 12.2 per cent increase over 2001 and nearly twice the 5.9-per-cent growth rate in the number of city workers, which were estimated at 2.8 million. Large suburban work clusters include Mississauga and Vaughan in Ontario, Laval in Quebec and Surrey in B.C.

"This is having a very interesting impact for city planners and for those who are creating public transit lines or new routes into the workplace," said Ms. Bender. "Certainly, public transit is used traditionally far more to get to the city core, where the clusters have generally been ... People commute to these [suburban] workplaces by car because there's less access to public transit."

In 2006, Canadians were commuting farther to work than in 2001, but slightly fewer were driving their car to work, when population growth was taken into account. The census also found more Canadians were travelling to work as a passenger or on public transit than in the past, although the increase for each was under one per cent.