Statistics Canada Reports II

[harls]

Calgary growing by 100K in one year is bonkers.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

I think the decline in population is based on international students and TFWs leaving Canada when their visa expires. It remains to be seen whether that happens.

This is exactly right.

According to Ottawa, we are expected to see population decline of about 80,000 in both of the next 2 years which is the first time in our history that we will experience population decline. Canada's intake will be about 390k and 370k respectively but those intakes will be more than offset by the number of students & TFW who will be forced to leave in the next 2 years as their Visa expire. These estimates were made before Ottawa's recent announcement of a freeze on all family unifications. While it's very true that whether they leave voluntarily or not is up in the air but that would be the case under Trudeau but PP will have no such trepidations of throwing them out of the country.

Tossing them out may have been more difficult a couple years ago at the end of COVID as companies were dying for labour but that is no longer the case as unemployment has now increased significantly to nearly 7%. Added to this, the political winds about immigration have changed dramatically over the last 2 years. We have gone from a welcoming country to one that has become increasingly anti-immigrant thanks to Trudeau's doors-wide-open immigration policy. It will take many years before Canadians once again see immigration as a net positive for the country. In this way we are merely following the trends that have already taken hold in Europe & the US........the days of mass migration are over.

[Surrealplaces]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Calgary is really starting to pull away from Ottawa and Edmonton.

Calgary and Edmonton will probably have higher growth than Ottawa for the next couple of years at least. As Immigration slows down, Alberta is still getting a lot of net interprovincial growth, and most of that growth going to the two cities.
Trends over the next few years is anyone's guess. Something not captured easily in stats is how many people have left the Ottawa CMA to an area near the CMA. I know a few co-workers who have left Ottawa and moved to places just outside the CMA, especially to towns or acreages to the south towards Cornwall and those people will be counted again when the CMA borders expand.

Conversely, Foothills MD adjacent to the south of Calgary has about ~85,000 people that will be joined to the Calgary CMA sometime.
For those not familiar with Foothills MD, it's the MD that contains, you got it........world famous Okotoks

[MolsonExport]

Okotoks has a number of things to do. The growth trend for Okotoks for the past five years, however, is much lower than I would have expected, for such an allegedly Woot-Wooty place.

31,042 31,362 31,472 32,098 32,695

[MolsonExport]

Charlottetown (CA) creeping towards CMA status. 93,877.

[Surrealplaces]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Okotoks has a number of things to do. The growth trend for Okotoks for the past five years, however, is much lower than I would have expected, for such an allegedly Woot-Wooty place.

31,042 31,362 31,472 32,098 32,695

Okotoks is a slow growing place. A few years back they tried to cap growth at 25K...not sure what happened with that.
I don't expect too much growth in Okotoks itself, and even the Foothills MD as a whole tends to be slow growth. How and when they are added to Calgary's CMA is a guess. There are small housing developments proposed and starting up in areas near Calgary's CMA. Also in Calgary, there are developments being built right up to the Foothills MD border. Not sure if Calgary would annex land from Foothills MD or if development will get pushed into the MD. Time will tell.

[Surrealplaces]

Sort of related to population stats. These are the housing starts for the big 6, for 2024.

Housing starts for the year 2024.
City SFH semi row apartment total
Toronto 4723 301 4532 28162 37718
Vancouver 2176 884 1770 23282 28112
Calgary 7100 2252 3512 11505 24369
Edmonton 6976 1204 2639 7565 18834
Montreal 1107 258 484 15721 17570
Ottawa/Gatineau 1916 243 2280 7110 11549

Here's a screenshot of a tabled version that's easier to read.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Is our housing industry really firing on all cylinders right now anyway? There is certainly activity going on but I don't get the impression that the level is unprecedented at all. I've seen huge housing booms before and this isn't one of them. Certainly not relative to our population growth which really was unprecedented until very recently.

Housing starts in 2024 were up 2% from 2023, so not setting the world on fire.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by giallo

It looks like St John's had some impressive growth over the last year...

We have, for a couple of years now - and the right kind (not just emptying out rural areas of the province, but expats moving back from the mainland, and international immigrants).

But it's unfortunately over until a change in government.

Feds slashing immigration spaces in half, leaving N.L. immigration minister 'gobsmacked'

...

"I'm just gobsmacked and my team are devastated," she told Radio-Canada on Thursday.

Last year, Ottawa allocated Newfoundland and Labrador 3,050 economic immigration spaces under two immigration programs, a number Stoodley said she had been advocating to be increased. Instead, it's been cut to 1,525.

...

Furthermore, under the new rules 75 per cent of this year's spaces under the PNP are reserved for temporary workers who are already in the province, allowing them to become permanent residents.

Across Canada, six per cent of the population are temporary residents, and Ottawa wants to reduce that to 5 per cent. Stoodley said in N.L. that number is 1.65 per cent.

"So we are already far, far below the federal government's target," she said.

Stoodley says that means the province could recruit a maximum of 737 economic immigrants this year.

...

Stoodley said the letter also told her that the 50-per-cent cut is happening across all provinces — but she said N.L. is in a unique position when it comes to needing immigrants.

Severely reducing spaces in the immigration system will put the N.L. government in a difficult position, she said.

"In 2025, we're going to have to make really tough decisions. Do we get a social worker or do we help a company bring in a key worker? A key executive member that they couldn't hire otherwise," she said.

"We're really gonna have to rethink our approach to recruitment. We're going to have to do some very significant prioritization."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundl...mmigration-minister-gobsmacked-1.7433087

We're having similar issues in post-secondary education. Despite being responsible, our institutions are also seeing the programs for which international students are entitled to a work permit upon graduation (the single most important factor as to which programs they choose) slashed to address abuses on the mainland.

Federations can 🞵🞵🞵🞵 a bit when your minority, regional circumstances and needs are the opposite of the more widespread situation the federal government is trying to address.

We desperately need more immigration. It's an existential necessity for us. We still need another 60K people to get back where we were before the cod moratorium in the 1990s.

[cranes]

https://x.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1879900270571712989
Dr. Mike P. Moffatt @MikePMoffatt Jan 16, 2025

The Conestoga Effect! New population figures out from Statcan today. Of Canada's 30 biggest cities (judged by municipality, not metro), Kitchener is the 2nd fastest-growing in Canada. A whole lot of that growth is the international student boom.

[svlt]

Originally Posted by KnoxfordGuy

Canada top 10 CMA July 1st, 2024

Toronto 7,106,379
Montreal 4,615,154
Vancouver 3,108,941
Calgary 1,778,881
Ottawa 1,660,269
Edmonton 1,631,614
Winnipeg 941,641
Quebec City 900,343
Hamilton 860,266
Kitchener - Cambridge - Waterloo 696,417

As someone from the Maritimes I must note Halifax, the only Atlantic Canadian city over half a million. It is #12 at 530,167.

Honestly Hamilton should just get lumped in with Toronto anyway (and arugably KW) and then Halifax will get its spot in the top 10

[MolsonExport]

I don't think were are anywhere near merging KWC into the GTA. There is a lot of empty/underdeveloped space between Milton and KWC.

More than say, between NYC and Philadelphia.

Hamilton, on the other hand....it is basically continuous development from Bowmanville right on through to Niagara Falls.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Surrealplaces

Sort of related to population stats. These are the housing starts for the big 6, for 2024.

Housing starts for the year 2024.
City SFH semi row apartment total
Toronto 4723 301 4532 28162 37718
Vancouver 2176 884 1770 23282 28112
Calgary 7100 2252 3512 11505 24369
Edmonton 6976 1204 2639 7565 18834
Montreal 1107 258 484 15721 17570
Ottawa/Gatineau 1916 243 2280 7110 11549

Here's a screenshot of a tabled version that's easier to read.

They build a lot of single family homes in Alberta. More in both Calgary and Edmonton than anywhere else, including Toronto!

[harls]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

They build a lot of single family homes in Alberta. More in both Calgary and Edmonton than anywhere else, including Toronto!

Can't park your boat and lifted truck in some tiny driveway or on the street.

[rdaner]

Interesting! I am curious where Canadian city regions are versus NA as we were already clearly moving away from US metros in basically every measure. My thesis is that we are closer to UK cities now and I wonder if this last year did the trick?!

I tried to do a GGH total but erred I think as it came to 9.7m which is old.

Poor Chicago lost population again and is about to be clobbered with tariffs!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by phone

Oh, Saskatoon, what to do with you. Looking relatively peerless on that list. Too big to be lumped in with the Kelownas and Kingstons; too small for the Victorias and Halifaxes.

But Saskatoon is closer in size to Victoria than Victoria is to Halifax these days.

There's also a lot more size range within the "big 6" than in those smaller categories. The size gap between Toronto and Edmonton is much larger and more impactful than Edmonton and Winnipeg.

And at the end of the day metropolitan population only matters so much if you care about things like urbanism. Oshawa is mostly suburb for example.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by cranes

https://x.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1879900270571712989
Dr. Mike P. Moffatt @MikePMoffatt Jan 16, 2025

So Surrey is the fastest growing city in Canada???

[Rico Rommheim]

There's 700,000 people in Surrey ?? Basically it'll be bigger than Vancouver in a couple years.

That's nuts that's like if Laval was bigger than Montreal.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

There's 700,000 people in Surrey ?? Basically it'll be bigger than Vancouver in a couple years.

That's nuts that's like if Laval was bigger than Montreal.

Vancouver's somewhat unusual in that it hasn't undergone any amalgamation with adjacent municipalities in a very long time. Surrey happens to have around 3x the land area.

Even UBC is not a part of the City of Vancouver.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

There's 700,000 people in Surrey ?? Basically it'll be bigger than Vancouver in a couple years.

That's nuts that's like if Laval was bigger than Montreal.

Surrey's been big for a long time. It was big when I worked out there in the mid 90s.

It is sort of like North York to the old City of Toronto.

Or Queens to Manhattan.

Doesn't matter if it eventually has more people, everyone knows where the action is.