Canada’s largest cities are growing in size and cost, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to seek affordable housing elsewhere.
According to Statistics Canada data released Wednesday, nearly 100,000 people left Toronto, the country’s largest urban center, with 78% choosing to settle in other parts of the province over a one-year period ending July 1.
Montreal and Vancouver, Canada’s second and third largest cities, lost approximately 35,000 and 14,000 residents, respectively.
International migration, on the other hand, more than compensates for these losses. According to the data, most newcomers preferred large urban centers over rural areas. International migration brought more than 600,000 people to Canada’s largest population centers, while only 21,000 settled in smaller communities. Immigration added 216,600 people to Toronto.
Immigration Policies Impact on Canada’s Housing Market
The data highlight the consequences of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitious immigration policies, which aim to bring in about 500,000 permanent residents each year — an amount larger than the population of Halifax, Atlantic Canada’s largest city. Major city population growth coincided with a period of peak housing prices in most regions.
According to Canadian Real Estate Association data, the average price of a home in Canada in July of last year was $789,300 (US$587,360), up 43% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. House prices have begun to fall since the central bank raised borrowing costs, but affordability has also deteriorated in tandem with rising mortgage costs.
Despite the exodus from some of Canada’s largest cities, the population of many of the country’s more affordable large urban centers increased at the fastest annual rate since at least 2002, according to the statistics agency. The majority of this rapid growth was driven by new permanent immigrants and net gains in non-permanent residents.
Overall, the country is becoming more urban, with 71.9 percent of Canadians now residing in one of the country’s census metropolitan areas, a 0.1 percentage point increase from the previous year. As a result, cities are under increased pressure to build housing and infrastructure to accommodate rapid population growth.
Cities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario lost more people to other provinces and territories, while cities in the Atlantic provinces, Alberta, and British Columbia gained significantly.
Moncton and Halifax, both important Atlantic Canadian cities, experienced the fastest population growth rates, at 5.3% and 4.4%, respectively.
