Right now, according to Environics Analytics’ HouseholdSpend data, for every $100 spent in Canada, $21 comes from someone who was not born here.

Strategies designed exclusively to meet the needs of the Canadian-born are appropriate only if you are willing to give up that $21. In cities, ignoring diversity means giving up even more of the spending pie.

And if you want to talk about growth, migrants and diverse ethnocultural communities are where the action is. Again, according to Environics Analytics’ HouseholdSpend data, total consumer spending in Canada has grown by 21% overall in the last five years (2008 to 2013)—from $976 billion to $1.177 trillion. But among some ethnic groups, the rate of growth over the same period has been dramatically higher. Among South Asian Canadians, the rate of growth has been 76%. Among Chinese Canadians, it’s been 40%. Spending among Latino Canadians has grown at an eye-popping 103%. These spending rates are unlikely to decline, since population growth and spending growth go hand in hand.

Environics Analytics’ DemoStats 2013 projects that, by 2018, the Canadian population will have grown to 36,708,145. But some ethnic groups are growing at a much faster rate than others. The population that once comprised Canada’s “bicultural” majority (white people of French or British heritage) is projected to grow by only 2.7%. Other groups—the rest of the “multi” in “multicultural Canada”—will grow by 18%, and will account for the majority of the country’s population growth (62%). In fact, overall growth in Canada looks distinctly Asian. Almost a third of the population growth in the next five years will come from Chinese, South Asian and Filipino Canadians.

Anyone looking for growth in this country simply cannot afford to ignore migrants, their children and the diverse ethnocultural groups that are growing rapidly, in both numbers and influence, in cities across Canada.