Canada’s population grows at fastest pace since 1957

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Canada’s population growth continued to hit records as the country added 430,635 people from July to October, Statistics Canada said.

The population’s 1.1 per cent increase during the third quarter is the highest quarterly growth rate since the second quarter of 1957, when the country’s population grew by 1.2 per cent due to a high birth rate and an influx of refugees following the Hungarian revolution of 1956. Back then, though, Canada’s population grew by a mere 198,000.

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Overall, it’s estimated Canada has added more than one million people during the first nine months of 2023, which is higher than any other full-year period since 1867, Statistics Canada said.

“The growth that we observed in the third quarter is quite substantial. This is record after record for demographic growth for Canada,” said Patrick Charbonneau, who heads Statistic Canada’s Center for Demography. “When we look at Canada and compare it to other G7 countries, we are clearly an outlier in terms of population growth.”

Canada depends on immigrants to boost its economy and to replace its aging population. But the country is now battling inflation and a housing crisis, so economists and think tanks have urged the federal government to provide more clarity on how it plans to accommodate hundreds of thousands more newcomers.

Bank of Canada deputy governor Toni Gravelle highlighted the issue in a speech on Dec. 7, when he said the recent increase in immigration is adding pressure to Canada’s existing housing supply crisis, though he said it did not have a significant impact on inflation overall.

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Charbonneau said he expects the population growth rate to “continue to be strong in the coming years” as Canada sticks to its policy of bringing in about 500,000 immigrants annually until 2025.

In the third quarter, Canada added 107,972 permanent residents, which took the overall tally for the year to 371,299 — about 80 per cent of its goal of bringing in 465,000 immigrants in 2023.

An increasing number of these permanent residents were already in Canada, said Charbonneau.

Statistic Canada’s report also suggests that an increasing number of people in Canada are moving to Alberta. All provinces and territories recorded losses in their interprovincial migration exchanges in the third quarter except for Alberta, which reported a net gain of about 17,094.

This, however, isn’t an anomaly. Alberta has been registering gains of 10,000 or more for five consecutive quarters. Most of the people moving to Alberta were from Ontario or British Columbia.

Alberta’s relatively low housing costs could be one of the reasons behind its net gain, Charbonneau said. As an example, he quoted a previous study showing that a lot of the migrants moving from Ontario to Alberta were from regions where housing prices were quickly rising.

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com

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