Since the 1970s, where have most immigrants to Canada come from?

Canada describes itself in Discover Canada as a country built and renewed by immigration. The guide states that Canada is often referred to as a land of immigrants because, over the past 200 years, millions of newcomers have helped to build and defend our way of life. Each generation of arrivals has shifted the make-up of the population, and the most recent shift is captured in a single, exam-relevant sentence.

Discover Canada writes plainly: Since the 1970s, most immigrants have come from Asian countries. Before the 1970s, the dominant flows were European — the guide lists the long-established largest groups as "English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Ukrainian, Dutch, South Asian and Scandinavian." Since the 1970s, that pattern has changed and Asian-origin newcomers have led arrivals.

This shift is visible in the country's largest cities and on the West Coast. Discover Canada notes elsewhere that the Port of Vancouver is our gateway to the Asia-Pacific, and that British Columbia's "large Asian communities have made Chinese and" other Asian languages part of daily life. The picture the guide paints is consistent: a country still being shaped by immigration, with the leading sources now in Asia rather than Europe.

The answer matters because it is one of Discover Canada's clearest statements about modern Canada. The test is checking whether new citizens know that contemporary Canadian diversity is, in significant part, a story of Asian immigration over the last several decades — not a continuation of the older European pattern.

The guide ties this to a wider point: "the majority of Canadians were born in this country and this has been true since the 1800s," but newcomers continue to refresh that majority. Knowing that Asia is the leading source since the 1970s is part of understanding the Canada of today, including the makeup of cities like Vancouver and the role of the Asia-Pacific in the national economy.