Has B.C. become a province of two solitudes?

That is the implication of research showing that Metro Vancouver has become one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet, while the rest of B.C. remains relatively homogeneous.

Statistics Canada data shows 45.2 per cent of the residents of Metro Vancouver are members of a visible minority, particularly Chinese, South Asian, Filipino and Korean.

In the rest of the province, visible minorities make up only 7.4 per cent of the population.

While Metro Vancouver has become super-diverse, the land beyond its borders remains similar to most places around the world, with one ethno-cultural group, in this case European-rooted whites, predominating.

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“Historically, Metro Vancouver takes about 85 per cent of all immigrants to the province,” Terry Hoff, senior regional planner for Metro Vancouver, said Thursday. “So it’s likely to get even more diverse in the future.”

What are the cultural, economic, educational and political repercussions of such a striking cultural gap, which has more than half B.C’s population, or 2.5 million people, squeezing into one highly ethnically diverse metropolis?

When B.C. Premier Christy Clark recently suggested that Syrian refugees should go to regions outside Metro Vancouver to avoid the city’s astronomical housing costs, critics’ responses revealed just how divergent these two chunks of B.C. have become.

Commentators hastened to say it would be unwise to direct Syrian Muslim refugees to small-town B.C. because they would not find people of the same ethnic background, religion or language. Nor would they have access to Metro Vancouver’s range of immigrant-support services, cuisines or jobs.

Metro Vancouver is growing culturally distinct from the rest of the large province, including the capital city of Victoria, because when it comes to migration “to a certain extent, like attracts like,” says University of B.C. sociologist Richard Carpiano.

Many people seek places where they will find people of the same ethno-cultural background, said Carpiano. For three out of four people who move to B.C. either as foreigners or from other parts of Canada that has meant steering to Metro Vancouver.

UBC geographer Dan Hiebert says there are not only cultural implications to B.C. dividing into one big city set off from everywhere else, there are also political ramifications.

It’s often hard, Hiebert said, for Canada’s ethnically diverse metropolises, such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, to gain the attention of Ottawa or provincial capitals on issues to do with affordable housing, English-as-a-second-language, higher education or transit expansion.

Most people don’t understand how powerless major cities are to respond to the major demographic changes wrought by mass in-migration, says author Michael Kluckner, president of the Vancouver Historical Society.

Metro Vancouver’s municipalities have to go “cap in hand to Victoria to make basic policy changes” in regards to such things as zoning, health care and education, said Kluckner, who sometimes refers to the zone beyond Metro Vancouver by the area code, “250.”

The growing cultural gap between Metro Vancouver and the rest of the province “speaks to the fact so many people moving around the world are economic migrants” who are able to choose the most beneficial place for themselves, Kluckner said,

The National Household Survey, 2011, shows Metro Vancouver has six times as many visible minorities as the rest of the province.

When Vancouver Sun data journalist Chad Skelton measured the chances that two randomly chosen people in a specific region would be of a different ethnicity, he discovered a 65-per-cent likelihood in Metro Vancouver that two people would be from another background. In the rest of B.C., however, there is only a 14-per-cent likelihood two people would have different ethnic origins.

Some of the ethnic imbalances between B.C.’s two regions are remarkable. Almost one in five residents of Metro Vancouver are ethnic Chinese, for instance. In the rest of B.C., that ratio drops to just one in 77. And while one in 20 residents of Metro Vancouver have Filipino origins, outside the city Filipinos make up only one in 143 residents.

Even though Metro Vancouver has a higher proportion of visible minorities and foreign-born residents than almost any city on earth (except Metro Toronto), Kluckner says Metro’s disconnect from the rest of the province reminds him of other gateway cities for migrants, such as Paris and Sydney.

Metro Vancouver has become a big draw because the vast majority of migrants believe gateway cities have the “critical mass of people who might be more like themselves,” says Carpiano.

The challenge is for all politicians to help such cities develop the infrastructure, employment, educational systems, housing and social cohesion that will accommodate such super-diversity.

dtodd@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/@douglastodd

Blog: www.vancouversun.com/douglastodd

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