After the World War the Empire Settlement Act began to make itself felt, reducing markedly the proportion of immigrants from the United States into Canada while from 1900 onward Ireland began to figure heavily in the immigration statistics.
In 1930 there were, on the other hand, over 1,200,000 Canadian-born, both of British and French stock, in the United States and during the preceding eight years 300,000 had returned to Canada.
Not only have the western provinces, then, been thrown violently into a disequilibrium by the population changes of the last generation, but the stability of the whole Dominion has been menaced. Canada, like the United States, has taken on a great liability in the admission of the hundreds of thousands of non-Nordics, who will be hard to assimilate, even if it be assumed that they would become valuable when assimilated, which is by no means always the case. One of Canada's advantages, on the other hand, is the negligible proportion of Negroes, and it might well erect barriers even now against them, as it has already done against the Asiatics.
With its immense territory and more than 10,000,000 inhabitants, Canada is still to be credited to the Nordics, though, if the population trends that began with this century should continue, the balance would change rapidly. While the United States has contributed by far the largest number of foreign-born, Russia has contributed the second largest number of immigrants, Saskatchewan receiving more of these than any other province. Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba have received about equal numbers, in each case one-third less than went to Saskatchewan. Those of Austrian birth, who are third in the list, are concentrated in the two provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in about equal numbers, each of these provinces having almost twice as many Austrian-born as Alberta or Ontario. The Chinese stand fourth in numbers among the foreign-born of the Dominion, but most of them are concentrated in British Columbia. Ontario has almost as many Italians as all the rest of Canada put together, and it has also the largest number of Poles.
Because of the great body of French-Canadians, the Roman Catholic Church is proportionately twice as strong as in the United States.
The 1921 census showed the population to be made up as follows:
| PER CENT | |
| British origin | 55.40 |
| French | 27.91 |
| Other European | 14.16 |
| Indian | 1.26 |
| Asiatic | .75 |
This computation distributes the immigrants from the United States according to their racial stock; thus the main part would be classified with those of British origin, a smaller part as "other European," and so on.
From the foregoing it is evident that Canada is now less than 60 per cent Nordic—probably less Nordic than the United States.