European Canadians are Canadians who can trace their ancestry from Europe. They form the largest panethnic group within Canada. In the 2021 Canadian census, 19,062,115 people or 52.5% of the population self-identified ethnic origins from Europe. People may nominate more than one ethnic origin in the census.

As with other panethnic groups, Statistics Canada records ethnic ancestry by employing the term "European origins" under the ethnic origin population section in the census data, but does not specifically use the term "European Canadian". "Euro-Canadians" and "European Canadians" are terms primarily used by those opposed to immigration to Canada from the Third World, and their use has been criticized as conflating distinctions between very different European groups and nationalities. Those employing the terms can recognize that most Canadians of European descent do not see that as their collective identity and instead identify with a specific ethnicity or country of ancestral origin, characterizing themselves as for example "Anglo" or "Québecois" rather than as part of a larger "Euro-Canadian" group. For most of the history of European settlement in North America, the French and the English were seen as two distinct races, with distinct cultures and national spirits.

Statistics Canada has cautioned that "the reporting of ethnicity, and subsequent interpretation of the results, has become increasingly complex due to a number of factors, and poses challenges for historical data comparisons. The concept of ethnicity is fluid and is probably one of the more complex concepts measured in the census." As well, patterns of self-reporting ethnic origins on the census vary with different population groups in Canada, with particular fluidity on self-reporting of the category "Canadian". Use of statistics in this subject area must be approached with these cautions in mind. The sum of the identified ethnic groups is greater than the total population estimate, because a person may report more than one ethnic origin in the census.

There are several subgroups of Canadians of European ancestry, identified according to their, or their ancestors', country of origin. Although loosely defined, these categories have been utilized widely in ethnic and cultural identification, particularly in diasporas, such as the European diasporas of Canada.

Statistics Canada does not use the term "European Canadian". The 2021 census asked individuals to self-identify their ethnic origins, within seven general categories (subcategories shown for clarity):

The exploration of Canada by European nations commenced with the Norse in the late 10th century along the East Coast. After Jacques Cartier's arrival in 1534, British and French explorers progressively ventured westward over the subsequent three centuries.

The first documented source of Scots in what would become Canada comes from the Saga of Eric the Red and the Viking expedition of 1010 AD to Vinland (literally, the land of meadows), which is believed to refer to the island of Newfoundland. The Viking prince Thorfinn Karlsefni took two Scottish slaves to Vinland. When the longships moored along the coast, they sent the slaves ashore to run along the waterfront to gauge whether it was safe for the rest of the crew to follow. After the Scots survived a day without being attacked, by either human or animal, the Vikings deemed it safe to spend the night ashore. The expedition was abandoned three years later; the original sagas were passed on in an oral tradition and then written down 250 years later.

English Canadian history starts with the attempts to establish English settlements in Newfoundland in the sixteenth century. The first English settlement in present-day Canada was at St. Johns Newfoundland, in 1583. Newfoundland's population was significantly influenced by Irish and English immigration, much of it as a result of the migratory fishery in the decades prior to the Great Famine of Ireland.^{[citation needed]}