(April 2 – 16:50 ET) – Canadians are flocking to business and financial sites more than ever before, suggest two major Internet surveys released today.

A Media Metrix Canada survey revealed that over the last six months 5.6 million Canadians visited a business/finance Web site from their homes including 1.3 million French Canadians. Nearly half of Canadians visited a business or finance site in February 2001 — an increase in usage of more than 36%.

A Canada NewsWire Web site survey supports the Media Metrix Canada results. The newswire.ca site survey of more than 6,500 Canadians revealed that 72% were most interested in business news.

Rounding out the top five categories in order of importance were investment news (50%), high-tech news (44%), government news (41%) and banks and financial services news (32%).

The newswire.ca site survey also asked participants about other sources of information. The top five sources mentioned were The Globe and Mail/Report On Business, National Post/Financial Post, Yahoo! Finance, globeinvestor.ca and tse.com.