The number of people who said they are of Latin American origin in British Columbia increased significantly between 2016 and 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

Their number in this westernmost Canadian province rose from 44,115 people in 2016, the date of the penultimate official census, to 65,970 people in 2021 when the latest official census was conducted, an increase of 49.54%.

The vast majority of them (78%) reside in the Greater Vancouver area.

Vancouver, on the Pacific coast, is the largest city in British Columbia and its economic capital.

"We hear more Spanish around us," says Lili Vieira de Carvalho, the general manager of the Latin American Cultural Center in Vancouver, who has lived in the city since 2006.

According to the director of the "LatinCouver Cultural and Commercial Association," Paula Murillo, the local Latin American population is better understood and connected with.

"When we started the 'LatinCouver' festival, 500 people came. But today the 'Carnival del Sol' festival attracts up to 80,000 people," says Murillo.

The United States is the top country in terms of the number of Latin Americans who immigrated from it between 2016 and 2021 to settle in British Columbia (8,760 people), followed by Brazil (5,125 people), Mexico (3,045 people), Colombia (1,070 people), Jamaica (1,005 people), and Venezuela (530 people).

Data from the most recent 2021 census show that Spanish is the language spoken at home by 23,225 immigrants in British Columbia, an increase of 21.5% from their number at the previous census five years earlier.

The number of Portuguese-speaking immigrants also rose during the same period, especially thanks to immigration from Brazil.

British Columbia is the third largest of Canada's ten provinces by population (5.32 million people (new window) according to Statistics Canada estimates for the third quarter of 2022) and the fourth largest by economic size.