Huge growth all around as expected, but yes with the recent restrictions on immigration will temper this, the % increases were not sustainable and came very quick, so nice to see it normalize.
Not sure if it's a blip, but Q2 saw some funny natural increase stats. There appeared to be an east/west schism with the y/y growth in natural increase. It either declined or was static in the Maritimes and Quebec, with Quebec posting a dramatic decline in natural increase (+1,150 in 2023 to +400 in 2024, caused by an increase in deaths and a drop in births). ON, MB, SK, and AB saw increases in both births and deaths, but growth in births outpaced deaths, so natural increase went up y/y. BC was a bit of a surprise, swinging back to positive natural increase after several negative quarters. An 8.1% increase in births (the highest amongst the provinces) plus a surprising -3.9% decrease in deaths (the only province to record less deaths y/y). It's just one quarter, not reading any kind of trend here, just surprised to see it.
Moving onto interprovincial migration, I have been tracking demographics for many years, so have my own tables for each period. And for the first time, I noticed right away some significant discrepancies between the initial releases at the time, and the current figures (and it is totally legitimate, these are estimates only and StatsCan figures are always revised in subsequent releases). I just never paid much attention before, since I was always just looking at the latest quarter release. The interesting thing is the adjustments themselves. See below for the adjustments for the full year Q1 2023 to Q1 2024 (obviously the current quarter is the latest we have, so we won't have an adjustment until the next release:
Net Interprovincial Migration Adjustment , April 1 2023 - April 1 2024 (latest updated figures minus original estimates)
NL: +970
PE: +248
NS: -113
NB: -465
QC: -2,548
ON: +6,260
MB: +648
SK: +559
AB: -10,618
BC: +4,907
YT: +168
NW: +31
NVT: -47
Again, not drawing any long term trends or conclusive takeaways, simply showing the data. So this means over the 12-month period noted, StatCan overestimated the growth in net interprovincial migration in NS, NB, QC, and AB and underestimated the growth in NL, PE, ON, MB, SK, BC, and the territories. Unsurprisingly since ON, AB, and BC are the largest in and out provinces and represent a huge chunk of interprovincial movements, they had the largest adjustments. ON and BC on the positive side, and AB adjusted down. I know there are mathematical formulas and complex stat collecting going on at StatCan, I don't pretend to understand fully the process that goes into initial estimates and then revised figures. But interesting that they overestimated AB by so much over the full year, and conversely underestimated BC and ON, don't know if that was people intending to move but didn't, or moved and then moved back in the same quarter? Not sure, but I was surprised by just how much the numbers changed. For example, in Q2 2023, Statcan estimated BC lost net -300 people. The latest adjusted number shows a gain of +3,476. That's quite a significant update, and a very different situation for the province to go from a few hundred loss, to +3,500 gained. Fittingly, AB went from an initial net gain of +13,926 to an adjusted +8,701 (ON also had a significant upward revision like BC). And comparing Q2 to Q1 2024, net interprovincial migration growth slowed in NB, ON, MB, SK, and AB, while increasing in NL, PE, NS, QC, and BC (again quite drastic, going from a -2,050 loss last quarter to only -402 this quarter). Really, ON and SK were the only provinces to lose a notable number of people (more than -1,500). Although ON lost a much larger net total of -9,211, SK's -1,542 loss was proportionally more since it's so much smaller than ON. But hope isn't lost, this was the smallest quarterly net loss for SK since Q2 2016, so there is evidence of a trend there. Outmigration got worse until it peaked in Q2 2020, and has gone down more or less every quarter since then. So not all doom and gloom!
Will be interesting to see the numbers over the next year and see what happen. Again, my post is just musings and number crunching, and not some formal statistical analysis. There's so many factors here, and too short of time to make conclusions.