Ethnic origins of people in Canada

Listed here are the ethnic groups of Canadian residents (citizens, landed immigrants and non-citizen temporary residents) as self-identified in the 2016 census in which approximately 35,151,000 census forms were completed). The relevant census question asked for "the ethnic or cultural origins" of the respondent's ancestors and not the respondents themselves.
As data were collected by self-declaration, ethnic groups may not necessarily correspond to the true ancestry of respondents. Many respondents acknowledged multiple ancestries. These people were added to the "multiple origin" total for each origin listed. These include responses as varied as a respondent who listed eight different origins and a respondent who answered "French Canadian" (leading to him/her being counted once for "French" and once for "Canadian"). As with all self-reported data, understanding of the question may have varied from respondent to respondent.
Evolution from 1996 to 2016.
As regards combined responses, Canadian is the most common ethnic origin (11,113,965) in the 2016 Census (see above). This was also the case in the 2011 NHS (10,563,805), 2006 Census (10,066,290), 2001 Census (11,682,680), and the 1996 Census (8,806,975). Canadian was also the most common "single" ethnic origin in the 1996 (5,326,995), 2001 (6,748,135), 2006 (5,748,725), 2011 (5,834,535), and 2016 (6,436,940). 