Today the number of native speakers of Canadian Ukrainian is significantly lower than its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s. According to the last Canadian census of 2016, out of the entire Canadian population of 35.0 million people, only 69.5 thousand Canadian residents said that they speak Ukrainian Canadian at home. However, the latest, fourth wave of historical Ukrainian emigration to Western Canada, which started after Ukraine regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has resulted in a slight increase in the number of Canadian Ukrainian speakers; the 1991 Canadian census showed that the number of Canadian Ukrainian speakers, who speak Canadian Ukrainian at home, was even lower at 39.5 thousand.