and boom goes the pop: highlights

For the second year in a row, population growth in Canada came in at a record high in 2023, as we added 1.272 million people last year. This was 37% more than we added in 2022, which had previously and only very temporarily held the record for annual population growth (by a margin of 60%), at 930,400. 

For context, consider that in the 10 years prior to 2022, Canada grew by an average of 411,500 people; in the 50 years prior, the country added an average of 345,400 people. Against this backdrop of historical population growth, the words “grow”, “growing”, or “growth” used to describe Canada’s exploding population over the past 2 years are revealed to be unmitigated understatements.

So what’s going on? In a nutshell, federal policy that has green-lit unprecedented net migration to the country is the driver. Indeed, net inflows of permanent residents (PRs) and temporary residents (which include international students and temporary foreign workers) accounted for 98% of population growth in 2023 (the other 2% was due to the number of births in excess of the number of deaths), and 97% in 2022. As points of comparison, net international migration drove 73% of total population growth in Canada in the decade preceding 2022, and 64% in the decade before that.   

Most publicized, until recently, has been the federal government’s ever-rising immigrant targets, which saw 471,800 PRs welcomed to Canada in 2023, up from 437,600 in 2022; between 2024 and 2026, it’s expected that Canada will add just a hair under 500,000 PRs in each year, on average.

Notably, however, PRs accounted for an all-time low proportion of net international migration in 2023, at 38%; the other 62% were temporary residents, with their numbers rising dramatically in the past 2 years. How much so? Let’s put it this way: the 1.305 million additions of temporary residents in Canada in 2022 and 2023 was more than the net total number added in the previous 50 years combined (1.218 million). Yes, you’re reading that correctly.

Despite British Columbia expanding by 178,500 people in 2023—a record by a margin of 20% over the previous high of 144,900 in 2022—recent growth in this province, due entirely to international migration, has actually been mitigated by two factors: interprovincial out-migration and something we call “natural decrease”. 

In 2023, 8,600 more people left BC for other parts of the country than came back the other way; all of that—and more, at 15,300—was due to people leaving for Alberta. At the same time, BC experienced its second consecutive year of more deaths than births, to the tune of a net loss (via this component of demographic change) of 3,100 in 2023, following a net loss of 3,900 in 2022.

As such, international migration accounted for more than the total growth in BC’s population in 2023, with 181,600 more people coming to the province last year from other countries than went the other way. This was 22% higher than 2022’s then-record of 148,700.

Now, having made a fuss about the dramatic numbers characterizing the past two years, there’s good reason to have a robust immigration policy in a country such as Canada: with 32% of our population in, or about to enter in the next 10 years, the retirement and high health-care-utilization stages of life, and with a fertility rate that’s way below replacement (at 1.33), strong inflows of international migrants are essential for maintaining the size of, and growing, the country’s workforce.

The past two years, however, have revealed the disconnect between policies at the federal level (i.e. immigration policy) and those required at the provincial and municipal levels (specifically as they relate to housing) to adequately and fairly accommodate growth of this magnitude. It’s notable, then, that the federal government has just announced plans to reduce the size of Canada’s non-permanent resident population from its current 6.6% to 5.0% by the end for 2026. What will be the implications of this policy shift, if successful, for Canada’s and BC’s populations, and, ultimately, housing demand in this province? Tune in next week when we model the impacts of this abrupt policy pivot.