[3] The Canadian government uses an operational definition where they classify as visible minorities the following groups: Blacks, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Latin Americans, Pacific Islanders, South Asians, and West Asians/Arabs.
Likewise, persons who reported 'Latin American,' 'Arab' or 'West Asian' and who provided a European write-in response such as 'French' have been excluded from the visible minority population as well.
Some may be demoralized by the nomenclature applied to them, as when a Canadian feels the government-imposed "visible minority" label highlights one’s "outsider" or "exotic" background.
[9] The concept of visible minority has been cited in demography research as an example of a statistext, i.e. a census category created for a particular public policy purpose.
[1][7] Since 2008, census data and media reports have suggested that the "visible minorities" label no longer makes sense in some large Canadian cities due to immigration trends in recent decades.
[10] However, the term "visible minority" is used for the administration of the Employment Equity Act, and refers to its statistical reality in Canada as a whole and not any particular region[citation needed].