Canada’s population grew faster last year than at any time since the 1950s, amid a rise in the number of temporary residents, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.
The statistics agency says the population grew by 3.2 percent in 2023, reaching 40,769,890 as of January 1, 2024, the highest rate since 1957, when it grew by 3.3 percent.
“About 98 per cent of population growth is explained by international migration and, in fact, it is primarily the temporary immigration component that is driving population growth in Canada,” said Patrick Charbonneau, head of Statistics Canada’s Demographic Center .
Across Canada, the population increased by 1,271,872 between January 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024, with 471,771 immigrants settling in the country last year and the number of temporary residents increasing by 804,901.
Most of those temporary residents come to Canada to work, Charbonneau said in an interview Wednesday, but a significant percentage are international students. Around one in 10 are asylum seekers.
Net migration growth rates above three per cent “have never been seen in a developed country” since the 1950s, said Frédéric Payeur, a demographer at Quebec’s provincial statistics agency, the Institute of Statistics of Quebec.
Canada’s migration-driven surge is comparable to Israel in the 1960s and Ireland in 2006 and 2007, when the country experienced an immigration boom during a period of rapid economic growth, he said. But even then, none of those countries had population increases greater than three percent.
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In Quebec, where the population grew by 2.5 per cent, “in absolute numbers, this is the largest growth ever seen,” he said. “In 1957, as a proportion of the population, there was slightly greater overall growth, but this was mainly due to the baby boom, combined with a wave of migration related to events in Hungary.” More than 37,000 Hungarian refugees fled to Canada after Soviet troops crushed an uprising against the communist regime in November 1956.
Almost 100 per cent of Quebec’s population increase of 218,000 people came from immigration, Payeur said. Quebec’s growth, although a record for the province, was less than that of any other province except Newfoundland and Labrador.
Statistics Canada says the population growth rate in 2023 was the highest since 1957. #Canada #Population
The new data comes less than a week after federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said he plans to set targets next fall to reduce the percentage of Canada’s population made up of temporary residents.
Alberta experienced the largest population growth in 2023 (4.3 per cent) according to Statistics Canada data adapted by Quebec’s statistics agency, followed by Prince Edward Island at 3.6 per cent.
Ontario’s population grew 3.4 per cent, even as it lost 36,197 residents to other provinces, Statistics Canada said. Alberta received 55,107 people from other provinces, the largest increase since comparable data became available in 1972. Most of those new arrivals came from Ontario and British Columbia, Charbonneau said.
In Quebec, which recorded only 400 more births than deaths in 2023, the number of temporary residents increased by 174,200 people and the number of permanent immigrants increased by 52,800. Across Canada, births outnumbered deaths by 31,103, Statistics Canada data shows.
The provincial statistics agency said Quebec now has about 560,000 temporary residents in its population of nearly nine million people, including 234,000 temporary foreign workers, 177,000 asylum seekers and 124,000 international students. This is the second consecutive year that the increase in the number of temporary residents breaks records. In 2022, it increased by 150,700.
“It’s clear that in a context where the provincial government says we won’t bring in more than 50,000 or 60,000 permanent immigrants a year, employers are turning to temporary workers,” said Adèle Garnier, a professor at Laval University who studies migration. She added that Quebec faces a labor shortage and has a population that is aging faster than many other provinces.
Across Canada, a growing number of temporary workers are graduates of Canadian universities who can obtain open work permits and a path to permanent residency, he said.
In Quebec, which controls many aspects of its immigration system, a similar program is available to graduates of the province’s universities, although the government last year imposed French language requirements on the program.
A recent study by the Institut du Québec, a Montreal-based think tank, found that about a quarter of temporary workers in the province were in that program, while 36 per cent were in the country under the temporary foreign workers, which allows employers to hire foreigners to meet specific needs.
Most temporary workers were in the manufacturing, professional services or retail and warehousing sectors, according to the study.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2024.