S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to S&P Global Mobility's Canadian Automotive Briefing. Today's topic is on the new census. And our team is really busy finishing this year's reporting on geography related to the existing census and reporting on the new census, and we'll provide you some updates on this. Our focus today, of course, is to discuss the census data. And to start with, we're going to recap on population and urbanization trends. And the real focus today is on two new sets of variables. The first one is all around Canadian immigration and ethnocultural diversity. And then the second set [Technical Difficulty] will be focused on the income of Canadians. And so my name is Lesley Rupoli. I'm the Associate Director with the S&P Global Mobility. I'm located in Toronto, and I'm responsible for the sales [Technical Difficulty]. So passions of mine include, I'm a hockey mom to two kids and also scuba diver. Also joining me is a colleague, Ian McIlravey, and Ian is the Associate Director, and he leads up the network planning practice for North America and Ian is also located in Toronto. Ian is an avid skier. So continuing with that, our two spotlight speakers, I'd like to do the introductions at this point. The first one is Nicolas Bastien and he's an analyst for the Center of Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics, and he has this masters in labor market integration of immigrants. And in his free time, he likes to run and keep up to date with international events and politics. Also joining me from StatCan today is Stephen Sartor, and he's an analyst with the Income team. He works for the Centre of Income and Socio-Economic Well-being Statistics. He is currently doing his Ph.D. in sociology at Western University. [Technical Difficulty] traveling and local history. [Technical Difficulty] format, what we'd like to do is do the formal part of the presentation first. Please feel free to type in your questions as we go along, and we'll answer those at the end. So at this point, I'd like to actually pass this over to Ian to kick off and give you an update of the census.

Thanks, Lesley. And yes, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. So just to recap where we are in the census walkover process with S&P Global. You guys probably -- many people on the call have probably been joining us for geography sessions and various other activities related to the walkover of the geography and our automotive data assets. And just at the start of November, we locked down all of the OEM custom geography, trade area geography and upper levels and are currently in the process of beginning to do the actual data walkover that will go live at the start of the new year for year-ended January reporting. So we'll be looking forward to February 2023 when we will have unlocked the geography and implemented all the changes that will be submitted between now and the start of the year. In terms of our approach here for today. So I'm going to just quickly touch on some changes that have occurred between the last census in 2016 and 2021 from a vehicle perspective. So we've seen, obviously, a lot of change in Canada in terms of new vehicle registrations in that time. We saw the peak of new vehicles being registered in Canada back in 2018. And obviously, since the pandemic and the supply shortages that have affected the industry, we've seen some decline. So in that period, we have seen about a 14% decline since 2016 to 2021. And much of that decline has occurred in Ontario, about 136,000 registrations down, about 50% of the national decline. And relatively speaking, Nova Scotia has seen the most relative decline from their peak -- or sorry, from 2016 down about 22%. And you can see only PEI has managed to hold on to their previous registration numbers. But as we move out of the pandemic and out of the supply chain and production environment that we're currently in, we'll likely see a return to pre-pandemic levels coming in the next few years. In terms of Canadian dealer networks, so there's currently around 3,678 light vehicle car dealerships in Canada as of the end of 2021. That's about 110 dealerships more than in the same time in 2016 or a growth of 3%. Most of those -- not most, but the largest share of those all in Ontario, in many of the fast-growing communities throughout the province like London, Ottawa, Milton, Oakville and other parts of the GTA and Greater Ottawa area. And in terms of the fastest-growing province in terms of car dealerships, we saw Alberta led the highest incremental growth in dealerships with 16 new dealerships, 4% growth in new car light vehicle dealerships. In terms of the maritime provinces, we can't forget them, New Brunswick was the standout with 5 new dealerships between 2016 and 2021. And overall, most of these car dealerships were implanted, of course, between 2016 and 2019 with a bit of a slowdown from 2021 until now. And in terms of throughputs for Canadian car dealers, of course, we've seen a bit of a decline in the last few years. We're down about 57 units per dealership since 2016, 373 new cars per dealership on average, with the steepest declines coming in the Prairie regions at 17% to 18% less new cars per dealer than in 2016. We'll next take a look at some highlights from our last webinar, which focused on population and dwellings in the Canadian census. And if you were on the call last time, you might remember that cannabis population actually grew at the fastest rate of any other G7 country from 2016 to 2021, a 5.2% growth rate across the country with peak growth rates in BC, Ontario and the Yukon. So although we've seen decline in registrations, we are still seeing a growing population in Canada, and there's commitment to keep that growth going through integration over the coming years. In terms of new large urban centers. So Canada's urbanized population has been growing, unsurprisingly, between the census years. There are six new census metropolitan areas in Canada, Fredericton, Drummondville, Red Deer, Kamloops, Chilliwack and Nanaimo. So you can see on the map, the orange fastest-growing areas, four of those being in British Columbia, so a lot of growth in BC. And then we also see some strong growth in London and some growth throughout the country in other urban centers. And we also know that there's some fast-growing areas in the GTA, such as Oakville, Milton and others. In terms of the downtown areas, within the urban centers of Canada, the downtowns have been growing at generally the fastest rate for most of our large urban centers. Downtown populations grew at 10.9%, the fastest rate -- I'm sorry, a faster pace compared to the overall population centers as a whole, which grew at about 6.1%. Of course, we saw some population decline during the pandemic in those downtown areas. But largely speaking, they were growing at such a fast rate prior to that time period that we still have seen quite a bit of growth in those downtown areas outside of a few select CMAs like Edmonton, Red Deer and Quebec City. So a few highlights from our last webinar, but I think everyone is excited to hear about some new trends within our census data. So I'm going to hand this off a moment to Nicolas who is going to talk about the portrait of Canada's families and households -- or sorry, the Canada's diverse population, and then we'll go over to Stephen to talk about our income profiles in Canada's households. So Nicolas, if you want to take it away, the floor is yours.

Okay. So yes, today, I will talk to you about the results for the 2021 census on immigration, ethnocultural diversity and religion. I will start by talking about immigration because it's a source of most of the ethnocultural diversity in Canada. So first, let's have a look at the total number of immigrants in Canada. So Canada has a long history of immigration. Millions of people from all over the world have chosen and continue to choose Canada as their home. In 2021, the census recorded over 1.3 million new immigrants who came and settled permanently in Canada from 2016 to 2021. This is a census record number despite few immigrants being admitted in 2020 because of border and travel restrictions implemented in response to the pandemic. Even if you would look at the actual yearly arrival numbers, we could see a big drop in the new arrivals in 2020. However, years from 2016 to 2019, these were record years for new arrivals, which compensated for the significant drop in 2020. When combined with those already established in Canada, more than 8.3 million people or almost 1/4 of the population were wrapped in landed immigrants or permanent residents in Canada. This is the largest proportion since the consideration and topping the previous record from 1921, and the highest among G7 countries. Given that the Canadian population continues to age and fertility is below population baseline level, today, immigration is the main driver of population growth. While immigration ultimately cannot stop the population aging process, the recent immigrants have rejuvenating effect on the Canadian population overall. Since people usually migrate when they are young, the vast majority, 96% of recent immigrants to Canada from 2016 to 2021, were under 65 years of age. Just over 1 in 10 were youth age between 15 to 24, and almost 2/3 were in the core working age group between 25 to 54. In Canada, immigrants are selected according to 3 broad objectives: to enhance and promote economic development, to reunite families and to fulfill the country's international vacation and uphold immigration tradition. In 2021, more than half of recent immigrants living in Canada were admitted under the economy category, either as a dependent or at principal applicant. The ladder was selected based on their potential economic contribution to the country either by meeting the demands in the labor market or owning or investing in a business. Given the increase in the number of temporary foreign workers and international students as well as the expansion of some economic immigrant program, for example, the Canadian Experience Class or Provincial Nominee Program, two-step migration immigration is more common among recent immigrants, which means that they were in Canada as temporary residents prior to becoming permanent residents. In 2021, more than 1/3 of newer migrants, who had settled permanently from 2016 to 2021, had gone through this two-step integration process in the country compared to 18% among long-term immigrants, those who were admitted between 2001 and 2015. More than 60% of immigrants with pre-admission experience had temporary work permit, especially recent immigrants. Based on previous study, there are some -- many benefits associated with pre-admission experience. It plays a key role in lifting immigrant's wages, as it provides pathway for immigration to acquire language, skills and knowledge of the Canadian labor market. New immigrants are often settled in regions where they have existing social network, economic and employment opportunities and enjoy the [ general appear ] of the area. Several immigration programs and investment were also designed to help balance the geographical distribution of recent immigrants across the country and provincial [indiscernible] in both small and large metropolitan area. When looking at the geographical distribution of immigrants in Canada, over 9 in 10 recent immigrants lived in one of Canada's 41 census metropolitan area. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver continue to welcome the majority of recent immigrants in 2021. However, the share of recent immigrants who settle in Canada's three largest urban centers continue to decline, with the most pronounced decline in Montreal, declining from 14.8% in 2016 to 12.2% in 2021. By contrast, an increasing number of recent immigrants have settled in other urban centers, notably Ottawa, Gatineau and Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo took in the larger -- took in share of recent immigrants this time in 2021 compared to previous censuses. The share of recent immigrants settling in the Atlantic provinces also continued to increase. It has almost tripled, rising from 1.2% in 2006 to 3.5% in 2021. Meanwhile, the share of recent immigrants settling in the Prairie provinces declined over the last five years. In Alberta, the share of new immigrants fell from 17% in 2016 to 14% in 2021. If we were to look at the actual number of immigrants in the Atlantic provinces, we can see they remain relatively small. However, the relative increase are the highest of all provinces for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI. We can also look at the relative decrease in the number of recent immigrants in the Prairie provinces, but they are still much higher than what we could see in [ 2016 ]. Another interesting trend is that Ontario continued to receive almost half, 44% of recent immigrants. However, what we see is that in others -- in CMAs other than Toronto, where the number of recent immigrants -- is where the number of recent immigrants is growing the fastest. While the number of recent immigrants in Toronto grew at the same pace as per Canada itself of about 9.6%, other CMAs or the number of recent immigrants grew much faster from more than 40% for all other CMAs. The place of births of immigrants to Canada have changed over time, in tandem with change in immigration policies as well as international affairs. Asia, which includes the Middle East, remained the continent of earth of most recent immigrants, 62% in 2020. Almost one in five recent immigrants were born in India, making it the leading country of birth for recent immigrants to Canada, who was followed by the Philippines and China. In contrast, the share of recent immigrants from Europe continued to decline, falling from 61.6% in 1971 to 10.1% in 2020. These changes in place of birth of immigrants over time contribute to the linguistic, ethnocultural and religious landscape of Canada. In 2021, 69.4% of recent immigrants did not report having English or French as their mother tongue. Arabic, Tagalog, Mandarin and Punjabi were the top mother tongues other than French and English and reported most often by recent immigrants. However, English and French remain the language of convergence of immigrants in Canada. In 2021, an overwhelming majority, 93% of recent immigrants, are able to conduct conversation in French or English. Immigration is also the key driver to increase -- in the increase of non-Christian religion and racialized groups in Canada. And now we're going to look a bit more at the ethnocultural and religious diversity in the country. So first, I'm going to start by just giving a bit more information on the actual concept that we will be presenting in this presentation. The first concept we're going to address is the ethnic and cultural origin, which refers to the ethnic or cultural origin of the person's ancestors. So these ancestor may have endogenous origin or origins that refer to different countries or origins that may not refer to different countries. It could be a religion, such as Jewish. Data on ethnic or cultural origin provide a snapshot of how Canadian report their ethnic or cultural ancestors on census. Many factors can influence these responses, the responses given to this question, including the respondent's knowledge of their family's history and their understanding in views of the topic. For these reasons, two people with the exact same ancestor may answer differently to the questions. And in the census, respondents can report up to six distinct ethnic or cultural origins. So Canada's diversity landscape continued to evolve in 2021. Data that was presented today reflects how Canadians see yourself and the information helps us better understand who we are as a country, and it's important for policy and program development that aims to foster inclusive society. So Canada has a long-standing and ongoing and widespread demand for information on ethnocultural diversity. Changes were made to the 2021 census question on ethnocultural origin to better reflect changing and complex nature of diversity in the country. As a result, Statistics Canada published in the 2021 census more than 450 ethnic or cultural origins. In 2021, Canadian was the our origin reported, along with other origins. Nearly one in six people or 5.7 million persons in Canada reported in this origin. Origins from the British isles were the next most common, in particular, English, 5.3 million; Irish, 4.4 million; and Scottish were also 4.4 million were the -- were reported most often by Canadian. French at 4 million was ranked fifth among the origins most often reported, while French Canadian was declared by almost 1 million respondents. The other most common ethnic or cultural origin were German, Italian, Ukrainian, Chinese and Indian that were also reported by at least -- each by at least 1 million people in Canada. The ethnocultural report differs across the country. In every province and territory, Canadian, English, Irish, Scottish and French are among the origins most often reported alone or with other origin. Aside from this constant factor, many of the other ethnic origins stand out in various regions of the country. For example, in Ontario, we also see a German, Italian, Chinese; in Quebec, Quebec, Quebecois, French Canadian were also the top ethnic origin. While in the Prairies, we can see European regions, such as German and Ukrainian. In the next section, we're going to address religion, and I'm going to start by talking a bit about the concept. So the -- in the 2021 census, religion refers to the person's self-identification as having a connection or affiliation with any religious denomination, group or body. And this is not limited to a system of -- religion is not limited to formal membership in a religious organization or group. A person without religious connection or affiliation can self-identify as an atheist, agnostic or humanist, or can provide another applicable response. The census collects information on people's religious affiliation, regardless of whether or not they practice that religion. Information on various components of religiosity, such as religious affiliation, religious practice and the importance of religion, are available in other survey, in particular Statistics Canada's General Social Statistics program. So knowing this, we can dwell into the results on religion. So another long-standing and ongoing need for diversity data is on religious affiliation. This information has been collected every 10 years since 1871. In Canada, the majority of the population, 53%, reported Christian religion in 2021. But their share is down from 67.3% to -- in 2011 and 77% in 2001. More than 1/3 of Canada's population reporting having no religious affiliation or having secular perspectives, such as atheist, agnostic or humanist. Its share of the population has more than doubled in 20 years. And I'll just go away a bit from the standard presentation. And I know that England and Wales have published their numbers this week and they see similar patterns, and we can also see similar patterns in Australia and United States. Other religions -- okay. So Muslim, Hindu and Sikh represent a small but growing population in Canada. The proportion of Canada's population reporting being Muslim, Hindu and Sikh has more than doubled in 20 years. From 2001 to 2021, these share rose from 2% to 4.9% for Muslim, 1% to 2.2% for Hindus and 0.9% to 2.1% for Sikhs. Immigration is one of the key drivers for non-Christian religion. Immigrants represented more than one in two Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. By comparison, immigrants represented almost 1/4 of the Canada's total population in 2021. Now we're going to address the concept of visible minority and racialized group. So visible minority refers to the -- whether a person is a visible minority or not, as defined by the Employment Equity Act. And the Employment Equity Act defines a visible minority as persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race and non-white in color. And these groups are -- these are the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese. Statistics Canada has received feedback on the sensitivity and use of the term visible minority when disseminating data. A number of alternative terms have been proposed by stakeholders and a commonly proposed alternative is racialized group, and this is the term that was adopted to replace when we present the data on visible minority in the 2021 census. And as part of ongoing efforts to modernize the national statistical system, the visible minorities standard is currently under review. Statistics Canada has committed to consulting partners, stakeholders and the general public to establish a suitable terminology and classification to describe the population and to meet data needs. So in 2021, three racialized groups alone represented 16.1% of Canada's total population, South Asian, 7.1%; Chinese, 4.7%; and Blacks, 4.3%, Black people, with each population topping more than 1 million persons. In 2016, these group represented 13.6% of Canada's total population. The other groups already mentioned them are Filipinos, Arabs, Latin Americans, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese. The publication of each group has continued to grow with each census. The South Asian, Black, Filipino and Arab population saw the biggest increase from 2016 to 2021, while the Japanese group posted the lowest growth over the same period. According to the most recent population projection, the racialized population could continue to increase over the next 25 years. In 2041, South Asian grew with top 5 million and Chinese Black population each exceeds 3 million, while Filipino could go over -- population could go over 2 million persons. Immigration continues to be the main driver of population growth of each racialized group. Racialized group accounted for more than 2/3 of the immigrant population in 2021, and their proportion is even higher among recent immigrants. For several racialized group, another driver of population growth comes from new Canadian born children. For example, the population of children under 5 -- age under 5 born in Canada rose from 2016 to 2021 for west Asian by 40%, South Asian and Black population by more than 20%. Each racialized group is diverse in many respects, such as place of birth, language, religion, ethnic and cultural origin. For example, in 2021, the 1.5 million people reporting -- who reported being Black. Canada is their main country of earth with 41% of black population reporting in this census. Some have had ancestors in the country for several generations, while others are immigrants or children of the immigrants. Nearly 1/3 of the Black population was born in Africa, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo as their country of birth, while 21% were born in the Caribbean and Bermuda, mostly in Jamaica and Haiti. While most of the country population lived in large urban centers, this is also the case for the mass majority of the racialized population. In 2021, 95% of the racialized population called one of the 41 large urban centers of Canada home compared to 74% for the total population. The portrait of racialized group also varies across regions. For example, South Asian, Chinese and Black populations are the largest group in Ontario, while in Quebec, the largest group are Black and Arab people; and in British Columbia, Chinese and South Asians are the largest group. In the Prairies, South Asian and the Filipinos are the largest racialized population. And this is what I had to present on -- as for the results for the 2021 census on immigration and ethnocultural diversity, and I will let my colleague, Stephen, continue with a lot of interesting results regarding the incomes of Canadians in the 2021 census.

Thank you, Nicolas. As Lesley mentioned, I'm an analyst with the Census Income team at Statistics Canada. And today, I'll be talking about the key results on the income of Canadians from the 2021 census. So on July 13, Statistics Canada released new results from the 2021 census on the incomes of Canadians. In particular, this release highlighted the impacts of the first year of the pandemic on earnings, the role of COVID-related benefits in offsetting income losses and how the income situation of the Canadian population has changed since the last census. And it's important to know that the income data collected by the census is for the calendar year 2020, which is why there is a heavy focus on the pandemic in the way it affected the income of Canadians. And finally, before I get into the results, I'll say that while I'll be focusing on the higher-level messages today, data are also available for regional and local communities ranging from large cities to smaller population centers and rural areas, which is really the value that the census provides. So to begin, employment income is the main source of income for many Canadians. And as some may expect, fewer individuals received employment income in 2020, as many lower-pay jobs were lost with the onset of the pandemic. That means that just under 70% of Canadians had employment income in 2020, which was a small decrease from the year prior. As a result, median employment income in Canada was 70 -- sorry, $37,200, which was down 2.1% in 2020 from one year earlier. Women, older workers and lower income earners were particularly less likely to receive employment income in 2020 than in 2019. So for example, whereas 2/3 of women received employment income in 2020, about 3/4 of men did, and men also had a higher median employment income than women at $43,200 compared to $32,000 for women. As we know, the provincial and federal governments handed out benefits in response to the pandemic effect on the economy and labor market, to this end, the census found that over 2/3 of Canadians aged 15 and older received payments from one or more of the pandemic-related benefit programs administered by the federal or provincial governments in 2020. However, there were a lot of different benefits and top-ups given out. So when we consider only the core federal COVID emergency and recovery benefits, which includes things like the serve, this number falls to just over 1/4, which was similar among men and women with the 20- to 24-year-old age group being the most likely to receive these benefits and with over half of the population receiving top-ups to existing federal programs. And among those who received these core federal COVID benefits, the median amount received was $8,000, which again was similar for men and women. When looking at the likelihood of receiving pandemic-related benefits across the income distribution, the census showed that middle-income Canadians were more likely to receive benefits than those at the bottom and the top end of the distribution. For example, between 77% and 93% of Canadians in the second to seventh income deciles of the income distribution received income from one or more of the pandemic relief programs compared with only 27% of those in the top decile and 32% from the bottom decile. However, while middle income Canadians were more likely to receive COVID benefits, they received greater amounts and up to 4x greater than higher income recipients. So for example, the median amount received from COVID benefits among those in the bottom income decile was about $2,500 compared to about $1,000 for those in the fifth decile and about $600 for those in the top decile. And so one question we sought to answer was, did the receipt of these benefits offset the losses in employment income from 2019 and 2020 that I just showed a few slides earlier. And what the census showed was that, yes, the receipt of these benefits offset the losses in employment income among low and middle wage earners. So to demonstrate this, you're seeing a histogram of employment income plus benefits in 2019 and 2020. And we can see that the benefits handed out in 2020 pushed income up year-over-year, particularly for those with lower to middle level employment incomes. About 1 million less Canadians reported no employment income in 2020 relative to 2019 and more than 1.5 million Canadians had employment income plus benefits between $15,000 and $60,000 in 2020 when compared with a year earlier. To that end, the benefits given out in 2020 in response to the pandemic did more than just cover losses in employment income, but really offset these losses that lower income earners experienced in 2020. And it's important to note that the top-ups to existing federal programs and some provincial and territorial programs were tax-free while income from emergency and recovery benefits were fully taxable. To that end, the contribution of the pandemic relief programs to the economic well-being of Canadians can be examined by looking at the share of these benefits as a proportion of the after-tax income of recipients. And so to really drive this point home, the census shows that pandemic-related benefits accounted for higher shares of after-tax income for women, younger and lower-income benefit recipients. In contrast, the contribution of pandemic-related benefits to after-tax income was lowest among older recipients and higher-income recipients, as we can see that these benefits accounted for a much higher share of younger workers and lower income earners median after-tax income than those older recipients or those at the top of the income distribution. And finally, to cap off the discussion on COVID benefits, I'll note some geographical differences in the receipt of these benefits. So Canadians living in BC, Quebec and New Brunswick were most likely to receive income from pandemic relief programs while those living in the territories were least likely to do so, compared with about 25% in small population centers and about 30% in large population centers. So moving on from COVID benefits to changes in household income. The census showed that the growth in after-tax income of households accelerated from 2015 to 2020, as median household after-tax income grew from $66,500 in 2015 to $73,000 in 2020, which is an inflation-adjusted increase of 9.8%. For comparison, growth in household after-tax income was 4.5% from 2010 to 2015, when the economy was rebounding from the '08, '09 recession. And so median after-tax income of households increased in 8 of 10 provinces and in 3 territories with relatively large gains seen in the Yukon, Nunavut, BC, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and PEI. The two provinces where income declined was in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, reflecting lower oil prices on top of COVID slowdowns at that time. And I recognize the image might be a bit difficult to see, so I thought I'd list off some of the figures. So again, $73,000 was the national median after-tax income of households, places where median household income was higher was Yukon at $88,000, Northwest Territories at $109,000 and Nunavut at $104,000. Ontario was also higher than the national median at $79,500, whereas everything east of Ontario was lower, ranging from about $62,000 to $64,000. And then in Alberta and BC, we had $83,000 and $76,000 median after-tax income of households. Similarly, median after-tax income of households increased in 9 of 13 select urban centers across Canada. However, growth tended to be below the national rate of 9.8% in larger urban centers, including Atlantic -- in Atlantic Canada, while being above the national rate in Montreal, Vancouver and urban centers in Ontario. And income growth was faster in these large urban areas, particularly in the downtown cores when compared with smaller population centers and rural areas, which mirrors trends in population growth seen between 2016 and 2021, which Ian briefly touched on at the beginning of the presentation. And so some notable regions include Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa-Gatineau region, which were all above the national median of $73,000 in 2020. Collectively, those areas ranged from $77,000 to about $87,000 in Calgary, which was the highest among the select urban centers, while the East Coast and Winnipeg saw a median after-tax income below the national level, ranging from $65,000 to $71,000. And when considering different family types, the census shows that growth in median household after-tax income was particularly strong among families with children compared to couples without children and for households with lower incomes. And this strong growth for these type of families was driven by increases in government transfers, primarily the Canada child benefit as well as the receipt of pandemic relief benefits. And so moving on from household income to individual income. In 2019, about 15 million Canadians comprised the top half of the total income distribution, which means they had a total income greater than $39,200 in 2019. And the question is how have these people fared in 2020 in the midst of pandemic compared to one year earlier and to 2015? Their median total income, employment income and after-tax income in 2020 were all up by about 1% to 2% from 2019, resulting in a median after-tax income of $55,600 in 2020 and the proportion of Canadians with total income greater than or equal to $100,000 grew modestly between census periods from 10.3% in 2015 to 10.8% in 2020. And likewise, the proportion of Canadians with after-tax income over $100,000 grew in 2020 to 5.5% from 5.1% in 2015, as did the proportion of Canadians with employment income over $100,000, which was 11.4% in 2020, up from 10.9% in 2015. So in some Canadians in the top half of the total income distribution saw their incomes from a variety of sources increase since the last census. And what about Canada's high-income earners? According to the census, there are 3 million Canadians in the top 10% of the total income distribution, which means they had a total income greater than $102,000, and this group had a median income of $126,000, which was down 1.6% from a year prior. Now the next few points on the slide come from a study not released through the census but which draws on census data to analyze the high income of tax filers. And I note this distinction because while these stats focus only on tax filers, the census has a bit more of an expansive coverage. So anything on the high incomes of Canadians directly from the census might be a bit lower than the numbers you see here. With that said, the top 1%, which is comprised of those with total incomes greater than about $250,000, had an average total income of $512,000. So that's the top 1% of tax filers in 2020, which was a decrease of $5,000, which primarily reflected decreases to dividend income rather than changes to wages and salaries. And finally, women continue to increase their representation at the top of the income distribution as they accounted for a record 25.4% of the top 1% of tax filers in 2020, which was up from 24.7% in 2019. And given Nicolas' presentation, I thought it'd be interesting to discuss change in total income and employment income across population groups or formerly visible minorities. So what you're seeing on the slide is the percent change in total income and employment income in 2020 from 2015 by these racialized groups. And so in 2020, the median total income of the Canadian population 15 and older was $41,200, which was an increase of 10.8% from 2015. And while the median total income and employment income of Canadians that did not identify as a visible minority was higher than all other groups and the national level at $43,200 and $39,600, respectively, they saw the smallest increase in their median total income between census periods when compared with the other groups, while their increase in employment income was about average when compared with other groups, as changes in employment income between census periods were very similar for all groups with the exception of Arab and Southeast Asian Canadians who saw a decrease in their employment income in 2020 when compared with 2015. In contrast, the median total income of Canadians that did identify as a visible minority was $35,200 with a median employment income of $32,000. This was lower than the median total income and employment income at the national level, but it was almost a 30% increase from 2015. Korean, West Asian and Arab Canadian saw the greatest increases in their total income between census cycle, though these groups had the lowest median total and employment income at about $30,000 to $34,000 in 2020. So in sum, the gap in total income between Canadians that did and did not identify as a visible minority looks to have closed slightly between 2015 and 2020, though a gap remains. So turning now to income inequality. As government transfers flowed to lower income earners and after-tax household income increased, the census showed that there was less income inequality in 2020 than in 2015, as income inequality fell in all provinces and territories. And so you'll notice that income inequality declined across the country but remained highest in Nunavut, Ontario and Alberta, though Alberta experienced the greatest decline over this 5-year period, while income inequality was lowest in the Yukon, New Brunswick and PEI. Among Canada's large urban centers, income inequality was highest in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and it was lowest in Saguenay, Drummondville and Quebec City, all of which are in the province of Quebec. The census showed a similar trend in the prevalence of low income as we saw with income inequality. So the low income rate fell to 11.1% in 2020 from 14.4% in 2015, which was the largest decline of any 5-year period since 1976. And you might be wondering what it means exactly to be living in low income. And so low income is measured using a concept called low income after-tax measure, which classifies a person or a household as living in low income when their household after-tax income after being adjusted for the number of persons living in the household falls below half the national median of adjusted household after-tax income. So this is not a region-specific threshold. In this sense, if an adjusted household after-tax income is below the 25th percentile of that income distribution, they are classified as living in low income. So a good way to think about low income is someone's place in the national income distribution relative to others. So with that said, the low income rate was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Nunavut and was lowest in the Northwest territories, Yukon and Alberta. And despite the decline in the prevalence of low income, one-parent families and persons living alone remain more vulnerable to low income, as they are more than twice and up to 3x as likely to be in a low income situation compared to the national rate of 11.1%. And finally, the national poverty rate. So some background on poverty. The Poverty Reduction Act was adopted in June of 2019, and it sets targets to reduce poverty in Canada and establish the Market Basket Measure as Canada's official poverty line. So how does poverty and the market basket measure differ from low income? So Canada's official poverty measure, called the Market Basket Measure, sets a regional threshold of the cost of a basket of goods and services in order to attain a modest or basic standard of living. So whereas low income uses household after-tax income adjusted for the household size, the MBM threshold uses disposable income of the family. So if a person or a family has a disposable income falling below the defined threshold for their community and family size, then they are defined as living in poverty. So whereas low income is more about someone's position relative to others, poverty is more about being able to afford the cost of living in the community they live in. And while the concepts are similar, they do represent different income situations, as while the low income measure is an international measure and facilitates international comparison, while the Market Basket Measure is specific to Canada. So on this slide, you'll see a map of poverty rates for Canada and the provinces. Note that the concept has yet to be extended to the territories. And you'll notice that the national poverty rate declined to 8.1% in 2020 from 14.5% in 2015, as it declined in every province with BC, Ontario and much of the East Coast seeing the greatest declines. And when looking across different geographical levels, the census shows that poverty was more prevalent in large urban centers. And among these large urban centers, the poverty rate was highest in Vancouver, Halifax and Toronto and in Quebec City, Saguenay and Oshawa. And as poverty declined across the country, it also declined for all ages. The decline was especially pronounced among children where the poverty rate was cut in half to 8.5% in 2020 from 18% in 2015. And so like we saw with low income and the growth in after-tax income, the decline was driven by higher government transfers in 2020 compared to 2015, including the enhanced Canada child benefit and pandemic relief benefits. And so to wrap up here, I just want to reiterate that the information seen today in Nicolas' and my presentation is available on Statistics Canada's website and for a range of different geographies and communities. And so here is, for example, a list of all of the census income products that are available on the website. And then just a reminder that the final release of the 2021 census, which focused on education, the labor force, commuting patterns and the instruction in the official minority language happened yesterday. So I'd be sure to check those data out as I feel they're pretty relevant to the audience here today. And finally, thanks to you and all Canadians for answering the 2021 census. Without you and your trust, the agency isn't able to shed light on these demographic trends.

Super. Well, thanks so much, Stephen and Nicolas. That was really insightful. I just want to call it to the audience. If -- there's a survey that's going to pop up and we're very much interested in bringing relevant topics so that you can learn more about different situations. So could you just take two minutes and fill out that survey. And if you'd like a copy of the presentation, you can just mention that in there.

And just a couple of questions. Stephen, just to start with, it's a really interesting period because the census is looking at income as of 2020, right, straddling a major pandemic, obviously. So it's now 2022. And as we can see from inflation data, financial situations can change really quickly. Your data is for 2020 calendar year. Do you feel that this is still relevant?

Thank you for the question, Lesley. So yes, I do feel that the data is still relevant, right? Circumstances are constantly evolving in the census, along with other Statistics Canada programs are designed to monitor these changes. So the census tells us not only what happened in 2020 in a detailed manner, but it also provides information on persons and families who might be more vulnerable to economic shocks like we saw in 2020. For example, the census provides detailed information on those who have low incomes, what type of families are more vulnerable to those situations, which areas of the country and which communities might be more vulnerable to accelerating inflation, for example. So to that end, yes, these data are still relevant, as they allow us to learn about and from the economic situation of Canadians in the midst of the pandemic and can inform as to the circumstances that brought us to 2020, what 2020 is like and what may occur going forward as we learn more about the economic situation of Canadians during that time.

Okay. Super. Thank you. And Nicolas a question for you. Ethnocultural variables are very important to the automotive industry. And I find that every census, there tends to be different variables that come into play talking about the diversity and ethnocultural makeup of our population. So can you explain a little bit more on some of the questions that were in 2021 that are different than 2016? And are these questions -- can we compare the data between the two census years?

Yes. Well, in my presentation, I addressed three variables, so racialized group. This question has not changed. So -- but we did change the [indiscernible] to present the data. So it's the same. But we're looking into changing it maybe for the next census. It depends on their consultation and also the employment equity law. We are bound to this. Religion is only asked every 10 years. So it's not there in 2016. It should be there in 2031. But who knows, it might be there in 2026 because things are changing fast. As for the ethnocultural -- ethnic or cultural origin, we did change the question between 2016 and 2021, as I briefly mentioned, to have more diverse response. So what we realized is that in past censuses, we had examples in the question because people are saying like what is your ethnic or cultural origin, they are wondering what does that mean? We would give a list of about 15 examples that were the most often responded ethnic or cultural origin from the previous census, but what we realize is that these examples tend to influence a lot, but people responded. And we don't want that. We want to give -- not be influenced. And so for the 2021 census, [indiscernible] giving a shortlist of example directly under the question, the link, with more than 500 ethnic or cultural origins. So it gave us much more varied response, which makes that we cannot compare directly ethnic or cultural origin from 2016 to 2021. But we feel that the data for 2021 is more representative than what we had before. And we can just take it as a snapshot and as how Canadians see themselves.

Super. Super. Well, again, we're at time now. So just again, thank you, Stephen and Nicolas, for the wonderful insights. And just take a minute, do the survey, love to hear from you, and thanks so much to everyone's time. So I wish everyone a very safe holiday season and look forward to implementing this all in the new year. Take care. Bye for now.