Statistics Canada Reports II

[giallo]

Wow. A far cry from 300,000 people per quarter.

We needed a cooldown, so no complaints here.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by missing_middle

Canada grew by ~63K last quarter:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901

And only 10,800 in Ontario. Ontario was growing by 90,000+ a quarter last year.

Alberta grew by about 30,000 - half of the entire country's population growth.

Nova Scotia also recorded a (very small) population decline.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by giallo

Wow. A far cry from 300,000 people per quarter.

We needed a cooldown, so no complaints here.

Exactly. No growth for the next couple of years, I could live with. We need to play catch-up, with our infrastructure and housing.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

Exactly. No growth for the next couple of years, I could live with. We need to play catch-up, with our infrastructure and housing.

Maybe we can get our teenagers off of their PlayStations, and back to burger flipping at McDonald's too!

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

And only 10,800 in Ontario. Ontario was growing by 90,000+ a quarter last year.

Alberta grew by about 30,000 - half of the entire country's population growth.

Nova Scotia also recorded a (very small) population decline.

Alberta is growing fast and I'm not even sure why at this point. Desperate people moving there hoping to land a job in the oil sector, although it isn't even what is used to be? BC and Ontario residents fed up with shelter costs deciding to take a chance with Alberta because it's cheaper and has two major cities?

[theman23]

Originally Posted by le calmar

Alberta is growing fast and I'm not even sure why at this point. Desperate people moving there hoping to land a job in the oil sector, although it isn't even what is used to be? BC and Ontario residents fed up with shelter costs deciding to take a chance with Alberta because it's cheaper and has two major cities?

This has been it for the last two years, yes.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by le calmar

Alberta is growing fast and I'm not even sure why at this point. Desperate people moving there hoping to land a job in the oil sector, although it isn't even what is used to be? BC and Ontario residents fed up with shelter costs deciding to take a chance with Alberta because it's cheaper and has two major cities?

The latter - Interprovincial migration, specifiically from Ontario and BC still accounts for a large portion of Alberta's current growth.

Maybe the numbers will decrease as economic uncertainy sets in and people are less likely to relocate, but not sure we're going to see this trend stop any time soon.

Alberta is attracting British-Columbians as it prepares to eventually overtake British Columbia in population. Note that while Alberta increased by 30k, British Columbia added 2,500 people.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Nova Scotia also recorded a (very small) population decline.

Canada's economic policies are often just not tuned well for smaller provinces. In this case, the sudden expansion in immigration was timed during the post-covid explosion in migration and spike in rents, and now they've cut back heavily on provincially-sponsored immigration.

In prior years NS would often ask for increases to provincially-sponsored caps and would be denied. In the Harper era, NS was capped around 700-1,200 at times while SK and MB would be 5,000+.

I am not sure what can be done about it but the story with interest rates and exchange rates is similar. NS basically gets whatever rates work for ON.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by le calmar

Alberta is growing fast and I'm not even sure why at this point. Desperate people moving there hoping to land a job in the oil sector, although it isn't even what is used to be? BC and Ontario residents fed up with shelter costs deciding to take a chance with Alberta because it's cheaper and has two major cities?

Honestly I'm not complaining. the Prairies have the space and infrastructure to accommodate people more than SW Ontario, Quebec, and BC do. Let Alberta go wild if you ask me.

[ssiguy]

Alberta not only has the fastest population growth but also the healthiest. It has net inflows from other provinces, still gets it's fair share of immigrants, and has a net positive natural increase. In other words, it's growth is not nearly as tied to Ottawa's immigration policies as other provinces.

Most of this is due to Alberta having higher wages combined with low taxation and affordable housing. You can make a real future for yourself while in BC and Southern Ontario, you can't. This is very important to young people who increasingly see BC & SO as the place where dreams go to die.

I think it also has to do with Alberta's cities and especially Calgary. Calgary use to be the city you moved to so you could make some money and then either head back home or onward to BC. That has changed dramatically as Calgary is no longer the city you had to move to but rather is now the one people want to move to. It has matured greatly in the last 20 years and this is continuing. Simply put, the advantages of Vancouver and Toronto have quickly become one of diminishing returns. Montreal, while a fantastic and still affordable city is different due to the language barriers which makes it a no-go for many.

[zoomer]

Alberta and BC now have a combined population 15.9% greater than Quebec. Seems not that long ago they just passed Quebec.

Politically and socially Alberta and BC still seem quite far apart (within the Canadian context), or at least coastal BC. With a continued influx of people from across the country will Alberta shift more to the centre or after a few years there do people shift to the right if they're not already? Despite BC's larger population from day 1, it never has been that interested in federal politics while Alberta has played an outsized role. Lots of reasons for that, interested to hear others' views on it.

With an inevitable decline in oil production I never thought Alberta would surpass BC, but it's getting close and it's not as if Alberta will fall off the face of the earth economically. The biggest driver is definitely housing affordability. My daughter's friend is looking to move to Edmonton because they want a second child and they are currently living in a 600 square foot suburban condo that is significantly more expensive than the average Edmonton home. A single family detached home costs 2.5 times more in Victoria vs. Edmonton. They are planning on renting for a year before purchasing in Edmonton - good idea as some people can't handle the winter and no amount of money will make up for that.

[jc_yyc_ca]

Originally Posted by le calmar

Alberta is growing fast and I'm not even sure why at this point. Desperate people moving there hoping to land a job in the oil sector, although it isn't even what is used to be? BC and Ontario residents fed up with shelter costs deciding to take a chance with Alberta because it's cheaper and has two major cities?

Job creation is the min driving force. On the surface it doesn't look strong because the unemployment rate is still high, but it's deceiving, because the population growth has been so high, and the population of eligible work force has been growing at a much faster rate than other provinces, it's hiding the job growth numbers.
Cheaper housing is probably part of that too, though these days, it's not as cheap as it used to be. Especially Calgary which has seen some big price increases over the past two years.



This is for the month of December
Calgary and Edmonton added roughly 20,000 and 11,000 jobs respectively
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-calgary-edmonton-jobs-unemployment-1.7428150

This is from Q4 of 2024, but probably has some overflow into 2025.
https://thelogic.co/news/special-report/alberta-job-market-growth/
Alberta is keeping Canada’s job market afloat
The province made up 46 per cent of Canada’s new jobs towards the end of 2024—mostly due to population growth

Edit: Here's an newer report from February showing job gains dropping slightly, but mostly due to a lot of part time job losses while perm jobs are up. The numbers point to a fair amount of new jobs related to construction.
https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/trend-analysis/job-market-reports/ab/job-market-snapshot

Not sure about recent months, but it doesn't seem to be slowing down significantly.
As a side note it's not all Oil and Gas. Over the past few years the number of Oil and Gas jobs in Alberta is actually decreasing.

[ssiguy]

As far as the 64,000 total population growth for the quarter, as far as I'm concerned, that's still 64,000 too many. Canada should have at LEAST 3 years of zero or preferably negative population growth until we get a handle on our housing crisis and backlogs in our healthcare system. If it takes longer than 3 years then fine.

Canada should, for the next 3 years, have NEGATIVE refugee numbers by accepting no new applications and sending back the tens of thousands of bogus ones, zero new application for students unless in VERY high demand and specific occupations and ditto for immigrants, and turf every single TFW out of the country when their contracts expire and there should be absolutely no exceptions except to very unique countries where their home nations are effectively failed states ie Venezuela & Haiti. When those 2 nations have stabilized and are safe to return to then they too should be deported.

Sounds extreme but we are in an extreme housing and healthcare crisis. Essentially, except for doctors, engineers, and highly skilled workers {being able to swing a hammer doesn't qualify}, Canada should effectively be considered a nation with it's door now officially closed.

[drew]

^ or we could encourage people to go where these crises aren't really the reality and population growth is still needed (like Manitoba, and I suspect Saskatchewan and other areas of the country that don't include southern Ontario and BC).

[theman23]

Originally Posted by drew

^ or we could encourage people to go where these crises aren't really the reality and population growth is still needed (like Manitoba, and I suspect Saskatchewan and other areas of the country that don't include southern Ontario and BC).

Not just southern Ontario and BC. Alberta, the Maritimes, and Quebec have all struggled under the weight of the last immigration surge. I'm not sure about the prairies. Going down to zero population growth is not reasonable though. The current pace of 60,000 a quarter seems reasonable for the short term, being lower than the pre JT historical average as a proportion of our population. I suspect it'll drop off further if the tariffs come in and we enter a recession.

[jc_yyc_ca]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Sounds extreme but we are in an extreme housing and healthcare crisis. Essentially, except for doctors, engineers, and highly skilled workers {being able to swing a hammer doesn't qualify}, Canada should effectively be considered a nation with it's door now officially closed.

I don't think it's extreme, and I agree we could use a slow down to help get things in order. I think a growth of 20-30K per quarter is low enough to help get things back on track, but also high enough to keep the blood flowing so to speak.

[jc_yyc_ca]

Originally Posted by drew

^ or we could encourage people to go where these crises aren't really the reality and population growth is still needed (like Manitoba, and I suspect Saskatchewan and other areas of the country that don't include southern Ontario and BC).

There isn't really a good way to encourage people to go to specific places, but I would say international immigration to the prairies has been solid lately. Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg have all received international immigration at rates equal or higher per capita than the other major cities.
Now that there are large immigration populations in the three cities, they're able to draw on international immigrants who are going to places where they have existing contacts or family.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

Canada's economic policies are often just not tuned well for smaller provinces. In this case, the sudden expansion in immigration was timed during the post-covid explosion in migration and spike in rents, and now they've cut back heavily on provincially-sponsored immigration.

In prior years NS would often ask for increases to provincially-sponsored caps and would be denied. In the Harper era, NS was capped around 700-1,200 at times while SK and MB would be 5,000+.

I am not sure what can be done about it but the story with interest rates and exchange rates is similar. NS basically gets whatever rates work for ON.

The good news for Nova Scotia is that this decline doesn't seem to be driven by any real changes in demographic fundamentals, i.e., it's not like we're back to the days of exporting our people.

- Interprovincial migration remained positive

- Despite the reduction in immigration caps for the nominee program, permanent-resident intake was actually still decent, including for January, which IRCC has specific numbers for.

- The number of births was the highest since Q3 2022, and the second-highest since Q3 2019.

The decline is almost entirely due to the outflow of non-permanent residents--a net decrease of 1,480. The other Maritime provinces also recorded a net outflow, as did Ontario (-30,524) and BC (-6,063). Alberta had the strongest non-permanent growth, at 6,632, the highest number in the country, which is part of the reason (along with huge interprovincial growth) that it's posting such booming numbers.

Nova Scotia does have an unusually sharp outflow of non-permanent; I'm not sure why except that perhaps it has to do with departing students? In any case, my hunch is that Nova Scotia's outflow has been front-loaded and will slow, whereeas other provinces will ramp up this year. (Which is already happening; those that aren't already in negative territory are almost there. Alberta is the exception but even it is down to 1/3 of the non-permanent intake from a year ago).

Whatever happens it's going to be an interesting year across the country.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Nova Scotia does have an unusually sharp outflow of non-permanent; I'm not sure why except that perhaps it has to do with departing students? In any case, my hunch is that Nova Scotia's outflow has been front-loaded and will slow, whereeas other provinces will ramp up this year. (Which is already happening; those that aren't already in negative territory are almost there. Alberta is the exception but even it is down to 1/3 of the non-permanent intake from a year ago).

These are all good points and we should remember that nonpermanent outflows are a factor; a student arriving for a year then departing is not the same as families, permanent workers, and business owners packing up and leaving.

However, I still think these dramatic changes are poor policy. First they exploded the real estate market, now there's likely to be a lot of volatility in the other direction with these nonpermanent residents. The right thing to do is to ramp up inflows of permanent and nonpermanent residents to a moderate level and then adjust based on local conditions.

In NS there have been structural changes to the demographics since 2015 or so and the old problems of an aging population, etc. are milder than they were. You still sometimes see generic commentary applied to NS that is based on 10-20 year old views of demographics and the economy in Atlantic Canada as a whole.

[Docere]

Statistics Canada has Special Interest Profiles that let you obtain a lot of very obscure data. So if you want to know how many Anglicans rent their homes in Saanich or how many people of Jamaican origin commute to work by public transit in Whitby you can find out!

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/sip/index.cfm?Lang=E

Here's the 20 most common ethnic origin combinations (looking at the "Irish" group for example allows you to what other origins Irish respondents declare):

English and Scottish 1,833,805
Irish and Scottish 1,745,140
English and Irish 1,651,690
Irish and French 805,830
English and German 789,175
English and French 716,150
Scottish and German 662,390
Irish and German 644,005
Scottish and French 617,555
French and German 414,085
Canadian and English 285,775
English and Ukrainian 242,760
Canadian and Scottish 226,910
English and Dutch 223,475
Canadian and Irish 222,560
Ukrainian and Polish 219,765
German and Ukrainian 219,365
Scottish and Ukrainian 212,420
English and Welsh 206,185
Irish and Italian 190,440