Newly released census numbers show a surge in immigration, with one in five people in Canada now foreign-born.

In its report released Tuesday, Statistics Canada says the proportion of foreign-born people from Asian and Middle Eastern countries has outstripped those of European heritage.

Between 2001 and last year, Canada's foreign-born population increased by 13.6 per cent — four times faster than the overall population.

The census estimates 1.1 million immigrants came to Canada during that period.

Other highlights include:

• More than 60 per cent of immigrants live in the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; only about five per cent live in rural parts of Canada.
• Most of the recent newcomers to Canada are from Asia — 58 per cent when those from the Middle East are included. Europeans, the dominant immigrant group for most of the 20th century, represented only 16 per cent of those who moved to Canada from 2001-06.
• Australia (22 per cent) is the only Western country with a higher proportion of immigrants than Canada (19.8 per cent). In the United States, where immigration provokes a major political debate, it's 12.5 per cent.
• About 20 per cent of the population reports a mother tongue (their first language learned) of neither French nor English.
• More than one million people in Canada declared one of the Chinese dialects as a first language. In some suburbs around Toronto and Vancouver, those with English as a mother tongue are now the minority compared with all other languages spoken.