Statistics Canada Reports II

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Surely, it's common knowledge that rebounding after COVID was only part of the rationale for the big intake numbers? Demographers had been pleading with Canadian Federal governments for 25+ years to significantly raise immigration numbers due the impending demographic time bomb.

With Boomers retiring, the worker to retired ratio kept declining leading leaving the national pension system under funded. Cutting benefits was a non-starter as workers had paid into the system for decades. No policies seemed able to raise the TFR (birth rate) to replacement levels so the only option left was to significantly increase the number of work aged people coming into Canada. The caveat had always been that the longer we waited, the more dire the situation became. With government after government ignoring pleas, the issue had become unavoidable by 2020.

The Trudeau govenment was the first to take this seriously but was absolutely careless and reckless in their execution. It caused chaos but also a backlash to immigration in general. The problem is we still need to keep padding the size of our labour force but the appetite for it has evaporated.

I'm not suggesting a return to the extreme numbers we saw a few years ago but we wiill be in trouble a decade from now if we don't get back to large scale immigration. The 1% figure we often point to (410,00/annually) will have to increase because we'll soon see Natural Decrease (more deaths than births). Eventually, we'll need large scale immigration just to keep the population stable.

Large scale immigration does not really solve the demographic problems. The average age of an immigrant is 32, which is only 8 years younger than the average age of the population as a whole.

It also isn’t a long term solution. Birth rates are collapsing around the world, there will not be a big enough pool of viable immigrants available. We already saw this with the low quality “students” who came in when Trudeau opened the floodgates. The 90s is over and it ain’t coming back.

[MolsonExport]

Africa's population is projected to reach approximately 2.5 billion by 2050 and surpass 3.8 billion by the year 2100 (United Nations projections). While the overall global population is expected to level off, this massive demographic surge will make Africa home to roughly 40% of humanity by the end of the century. The future of immigration in Canada will be largely an African story.

Africa remains the world's youngest continent with a median age of around 19.5 years.
By 2050, 1 in 3 workers globally will be African, and 40% of all global births will occur on the continent.
The urban population is set to triple, adding hundreds of millions of people to towns and cities

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think those type of impressions contain some unsubstantiated assumptions. For one, it's common for people who adopt a new home to be among the strongest cheerleaders for it and most strongly attached to it.

I didn't argue the factors you mentioned don't exist, although I'm not sure what the impact of them is, and I think the message that we have lots of people becoming fiercely nationalist shortly after moving here might have an element of jingoistic or nationalistic propaganda. In any case, I am sceptical that on balance a recent immigrant is more likely to remain in Canada during some kind of downturn than somebody born here without meaningful connections abroad such as citizenship or family. I think skilled immigrants are more likely to decamp again to the US if there are superior job opportunities and the pay is better; I don't actually believe that most people who move here have a fierce love of Canada per se. I think for the most part we have to have a competitive value proposition, and poor productivity here has been harming that.

You sometimes hear anecdotes about visa issues preventing immigrants from moving to their first choice, the US, and how people then considered Canada or Australia. It's a plus that US problems with immigration allows us to attract skilled folks like that, but we shouldn't pretend that Canada is more popular around the world than the US and the people who move here all have a strong emotional attachment as soon as they arrive. I think this is all basically just common sense.

(BTW, when I say "immigrant" here, I mean somebody who personally moved, not subsequent generations who do end up with stronger ties to their birth country than the countries of origin of past generations.)

[someone123]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Large scale immigration does not really solve the demographic problems. The average age of an immigrant is 32, which is only 8 years younger than the average age of the population as a whole.

Does this include family unification? Immigrants to Canada do have higher birth rates than the Canadian-born population.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

I didn't argue the factors you mentioned don't exist, although I'm not sure what the impact of them is, and I think the message that we have lots of people becoming fiercely nationalist shortly after moving here might have an element of jingoistic or nationalistic propaganda. In any case, I am sceptical that on balance a recent immigrant is more likely to remain in Canada during some kind of downturn than somebody born here without meaningful connections abroad such as citizenship or family. I think skilled immigrants are more likely to decamp again to the US if there are superior job opportunities and the pay is better; I don't actually believe that most people who move here have a fierce love of Canada per se. I think for the most part we have to have a competitive value proposition, and poor productivity here has been harming that.

You sometimes hear anecdotes about visa issues preventing immigrants from moving to their first choice, the US, and how people then considered Canada or Australia. It's a plus that US problems with immigration allows us to attract skilled folks like that, but we shouldn't pretend that Canada is more popular around the world than the US and the people who move here all have a strong emotional attachment as soon as they arrive. I think this is all basically just common sense.

(BTW, when I say "immigrant" here, I mean somebody who personally moved, not subsequent generations who do end up with stronger ties to their birth country than the countries of origin of past generations.)

Oh I didn't say anything about "recent" or "shortly after" which are pretty vague terms and it depends exactly how recent a person means. I'd consider it to be someone who's been here for less than a decade which is a small portion of most people's lives. But I do think it takes some time for people to settle into a new setting. I also wasn't just talking about the children of immigrants when referring to familiar ties. That's what "subsequent generations" implies to me, but it's common for new immigrants who just move themselves to have friends or relatives who are already here and for this to even be part of their reason for moving.

I do get the point about very recent immigrants not having equally solid ties. But I think we often forget that, depending on how one defines it, recent immigrants are a pretty small percentage of total immigrants in a country that has been an immigration hub for decades. I still remember growing up hearing my mother talking about her adventures in Toronto from when she lived there in the 60s and 70s before I was born. How many different ethic neighbourhoods there were and all the people she met from all over the world. Those years had lower immigration levels compared to the recent peak, but there were also a heck of a lot of those years.

My only real point to all this is that we can't make assumptions about these things using terms like "common sense" which really just means something seems personally intuitive aka conforms to one's prior biases and assumptions. In other words, I'm not assuming immigrants have a particular prevailing mindset. I'm warning against making such assumptions.

[someone123]

But some of these concepts are pretty straightforward, like the idea that the USA is ranked above Canada as an immigration destination globally, or the notion that a dual citizen is less tied to one of the two countries than a person who has no work or residence authorization outside of their country of residence. They really should inform discussions of immigration policy.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by someone123

But some of these concepts are pretty straightforward, like the idea that the USA is ranked above Canada as an immigration destination globally, or the notion that a dual citizen is less tied to one of the two countries than a person who has no work or residence authorization outside of their country of residence. They really should inform discussions of immigration policy.

So you're suggesting we should have higher levels of immigration, because some of the immigrants will be wanting to move to the US (or elsewhere), if the opportunity arises?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Changing City

So you're suggesting we should have higher levels of immigration, because some of the immigrants will be wanting to move to the US (or elsewhere), if the opportunity arises?

I don't think immigration is a one-for-one substitute for births (see above discussion), and I think we need to have some kind of model for brain drain and migration and pay attention to US policy. Right now the messed up US immigration policy creates an opportunity for Canada (e.g., rejected H1B visas), but this may shift under a new administration.

We should be honest that in many cases the best and the brightest can move from Canada to the USA for higher salaries, and retention is an ever-evolving issue that affects the economic trade-offs of immigration policy.

It would be good if in Canada immigration were treated more as an area of public policy and less as a moral question. Here on SSP, it's hard to raise any point not directionally in favour of more immigration without generating insinuations about being out of touch or having nefarious views. If you argue for 0 immigration you are sometimes considered not only to be wrong about policy but to be a worse person. When immigration went from 1% to 3%, the goalposts even shifted and many people applied the same morality about people asking what was so bad about 1%. From a correct policy perspective that looks silly, which it is, but from an "immigration = good, more = better" perspective the logical absurdity isn't as salient.

[kora]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Africa's population is projected to reach approximately 2.5 billion by 2050 and surpass 3.8 billion by the year 2100 (United Nations projections).

UN population projections are quickly proving to be overly optimistic. Growth is plummeting across the world, even in Africa. There is growing agreement that "low growth scenarios" are increasingly likely. The Economist reported that India's population may decline to 1 billion by 2100.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Africa's population is projected to reach approximately 2.5 billion by 2050 and surpass 3.8 billion by the year 2100 (United Nations projections). While the overall global population is expected to level off, this massive demographic surge will make Africa home to roughly 40% of humanity by the end of the century. The future of immigration in Canada will be largely an African story.

Africa remains the world's youngest continent with a median age of around 19.5 years.
By 2050, 1 in 3 workers globally will be African, and 40% of all global births will occur on the continent.
The urban population is set to triple, adding hundreds of millions of people to towns and cities

UN population projections have been consistently wrong for decades. I am not sure there is a reason to start believing them now. Fertility rates in Africa are falling even faster than the West, albeit from a higher number. Urbanization drives down fertility rates in Africa just like it drove down fertility everywhere else. Children go from more little workers to more mouths to feed.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Africa's population is projected to reach approximately 2.5 billion by 2050 and surpass 3.8 billion by the year 2100 (United Nations projections). While the overall global population is expected to level off, this massive demographic surge will make Africa home to roughly 40% of humanity by the end of the century. The future of immigration in Canada will be largely an African story.

Africa remains the world's youngest continent with a median age of around 19.5 years.
By 2050, 1 in 3 workers globally will be African, and 40% of all global births will occur on the continent.
The urban population is set to triple, adding hundreds of millions of people to towns and cities

Personally, I do not believe this will ever come to pass for a variety of reasons. The #1 reason would be the increasing xenophobic/anti-immigrant sentiment of the Western World.

Trump was no accident. He is but a symptom of the much bigger problem (the rise of fascist/populist movements). All historical indications are that the World is at a 1930's mentality, where we are at the beginning of internal conflict (civil wars, etc), and the American empire is collapsing.

I believe that it is far more likely that the non-European population will actually shrink in the coming decades in Europe and North America, as minorities have often been the scapegoats of wars (just look at what happened to the Jews of Europe).

Our World will be much poorer in future, and I am glad I am not a young person, that will have to deal with it.

[Chocolite]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Africa's population is projected to reach approximately 2.5 billion by 2050 and surpass 3.8 billion by the year 2100 (United Nations projections). While the overall global population is expected to level off, this massive demographic surge will make Africa home to roughly 40% of humanity by the end of the century. The future of immigration in Canada will be largely an African story.

Africa remains the world's youngest continent with a median age of around 19.5 years.
By 2050, 1 in 3 workers globally will be African, and 40% of all global births will occur on the continent.
The urban population is set to triple, adding hundreds of millions of people to towns and cities

It's possible, but also those projections are a long ways out and population trends can change fairly quickly, especially as Africa urbanizes. The quicker it urbanizes, the quicker the growth will slow.

[Chocolite]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Yes, I'd guess on a CMA level that Toronto is shouldering a disproportionate amount of it with other areas continuing (small) amounts of growth. I.E. Toronto is down 250,000 in the CMA, Ottawa is flat or maybe slightly down, and cities like Kitchener or Barrie or Brantford are up very small amounts.

Even within the Toronto CMA, I'd guess that Toronto, Brampton, and Mississauga are taking most of the losses.

Toronto will take a hit, but it'll be short lived. Another year maybe, and then the population will start ramping up again.

[ssiguy]

Canada has relied too heavily on immigration and especially real estate to grow it's economy, with BC being being the poster child, and it has to stop. It is highly unproductive, creates huge wealth gaps, stifles investment in other areas of the economy, and saddles people with numbing levels of personal debt. A strong housing sector should be a reflection of a strong economy and not the other way around.

Immigration and total population growth should continue to shrink until housing affordability returns to more traditional levels, our physical infrastructure has time to catch up, the healthcare system provides the people what they need in a timely manner, and youth unemployment drops to a maximum of 8% nationally on a sustained level which is half of what it is today. With few exceptions, the only people we should be letting in are one's with very high qualification and only in particular areas like healthcare.

[Rhb]

The province of Ontario has released their population projections for the years 2025-2051 today.

You can see which of the 49 municipalities are taking the biggest population hit. Due to government policy in regards to non-permanent immigrants.


https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/population-projections

[kwoldtimer]

0.5% GDP growth in April. I wonder how PP will spin this to show what terrible shape Canada is in? Although to be fair, I suppose we're still in a technical recession until the May/June numbers are in.

[craner]

Canadian youth found more work in June. Here’s which sectors are hiring

http://https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2026/07/10/unemployment-rate-falls-to-65-in-june-as-youth-add-33000-jobs-statcan/

[ssiguy]

Hardly surprising youth unemployment is dropping. Trudeau let in over a million non-skilled workers who were taking the jobs of our young people. Now that they have been sent packing, our youth are once again being able to get their first jobs.

As for the new StatsCan report, pretty much a stand-pat kind of report with no big fluctuations one way or another. Still that can be seen as good news as the predicted wallop to the economy everyone was predicting due to Trump's tariffs has not materialized.

The population estimates of the labour force are not an exact figure but a very good estimate of population growth. Amazing to see our 3 biggest cities all continuing to see population decline while,, as usual, Calgary continues to be the growth leader. I can understand the fleeing from Vancouver & Toronto due to their astronomical costs of living but I don't understand the rational for Montreal which is still relatively affordable at least in terms of housing and has the lowest unemployment rate of the Big 3.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Hardly surprising youth unemployment is dropping. Trudeau let in over a million non-skilled workers who were taking the jobs of our young people. Now that they have been sent packing, our youth are once again being able to get their first jobs.

As for the new StatsCan report, pretty much a stand-pat kind of report with no big fluctuations one way or another. Still that can be seen as good news as the predicted wallop to the economy everyone was predicting due to Trump's tariffs has not materialized.

The population estimates of the labour force are not an exact figure but a very good estimate of population growth. Amazing to see our 3 biggest cities all continuing to see population decline while,, as usual, Calgary continues to be the growth leader. I can understand the fleeing from Vancouver & Toronto due to their astronomical costs of living but I don't understand the rational for Montreal which is still relatively affordable at least in terms of housing and has the lowest unemployment rate of the Big 3.

Youth Unemployment hit an all-time record low of 9.0 when Trudeau was PM as well in July 2022 for some context.
If you are going to blame him for high youth unemployment then you have to give him accolades for the lowest youth unemployment rate in Canadian history.
Carney is still following the immigration plan that Trudeau outlined in his last year.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

As for the new StatsCan report, pretty much a stand-pat kind of report with no big fluctuations one way or another. Still that can be seen as good news as the predicted wallop to the economy everyone was predicting due to Trump's tariffs has not materialized.

The population estimates of the labour force are not an exact figure but a very good estimate of population growth. Amazing to see our 3 biggest cities all continuing to see population decline while,, as usual, Calgary continues to be the growth leader. I can understand the fleeing from Vancouver & Toronto due to their astronomical costs of living but I don't understand the rational for Montreal which is still relatively affordable at least in terms of housing and has the lowest unemployment rate of the Big 3.

It’s not amazing to see population decline in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, as has been explained before, it’s the effect of government policy over the past couple of years to reduce the number of temporary foreign workers and overseas students. It has very little if anything to do with ‘people fleeing from Vancouver and Toronto’. It might be ‘people avoiding Montreal’s economy’.

Montreal doesn’t have the ‘lowest unemployment rate of the big 3’. Vancouver is 6.7%, Montreal is 6.8%, Calgary is 7.0% and Toronto is 7.3%. And in terms of employment, so far this year that’s up by 65,900 in Calgary, 57,900 in Toronto, 11,900 in Vancouver, and down by 16,400 in Montreal.

While Ontario and Quebec had a modest outflow of existing residents in 2025, BC and Alberta saw more people arrive than depart. (That’s also the case in Q1 2026).

76,173 people moved to Ontario from other provinces, and 90,217 moved to other provinces, so that’s a net interprovincial migration of -14,044.
25,446 people moved to Quebec from other provinces, and 33,038 moved to other provinces, so that’s a net interprovincial migration of –7,592.
56,370 people moved to British Columbia from other provinces, and 53,195 moved to other provinces, so that’s a net interprovincial migration of +3,175.
77,935 people moved to Alberta from other provinces, and 55,719 moved to other provinces, so that’s a net interprovincial migration of +22,216.

Immigration continued to be greater than emigration in all four provinces in 2025.

Ontario had 169,689 immigrants in 2025, and net emigration of 31,158.
Quebec had 60,136 immigrants in 2025, and net emigration of 8,257.
BC had 50,669 immigrants in 2025, and net emigration of 15,317.
Alberta had 51,615 immigrants in 2025, and net emigration of 6,552.

The big driver of population change was the flow of non-permanent residents (students and temporary foreign workers).

Ontario had 182,360 non-permanent arrivals, and 443,629 leave in 2025, a net reduction of 261,269.
Quebec had 120,057 non-permanent arrivals, and 171,470 leave in 2025, a net reduction of 51,413.
BC had 84,494 non-permanent arrivals, and 167,409 leave in 2025, a net reduction of 80,915.
Alberta had 52,048 non-permanent arrivals, and 77,973 leave in 2025, a net reduction of 25,925