change face of Canada

Married people are in the minority in Canada for the first time, according to census information released Wednesday by Statistics Canada. The data shows 51.5 per cent of people over age 15 were unmarried in 2006, marking the first time married people have been outnumbered in the census, which began nationally in 1871. via cbc

Other highlights from the census include:

• For the first time, there were more families without children (42.7 per cent) than with children (41.4 per cent).
• The number of common-law families surged 18.9 per cent since 2001, to nearly 1.4 million families.
• Common-law families now make up 15.5 per cent of families, while 20 years ago, they only represented 7.2 per cent.
• Twenty-six per cent of families with children are headed by a single parent.
• Of the 1.4 million single-parent families, about 20 per cent are headed by men. The number of men at the head of single-parent families is growing more than twice as fast as the number of women.

Statistics Canada uses the term "families" to define a variety of households — couples (married or common law) who don't have children, couples who have children and an adult with at least one child. via Stats Can

On a related note, CBC reports on mixed race changes in Canada. The Current has been running a series this week on this (you can listen to the series on line at the above link).


The question(s) is/are:

• What do these changes / shift mean for the church in Canada?
• How does / will the church minister in a changing demographic and ethnic cultures?
• Given that many of our churches tend to be white, or else "ethnic" how does it break out of that ghetto?
• How does the church move beyond tokenism in it's outreach/mission?
• Does the church really care about the above statistics and changes?