Canada’s population booms by 430K over 3 months. What’s behind the spike?
Canada came close to breaking the highest population growth rate in any quarter this July to September when it reported 430,635 new residents in the country.
Statistics Canada reported Tuesday the population increase, which reflected a 1.1 per cent growth rate in the third quarter of 2023. That was the highest population growth rate since the second quarter of 1957, when Canada’s population grew by 198,000 people, or 1.2 per cent.
Back then, the rapid growth in population was tied to the post-war baby boom and high immigration of refugees following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
Today, the vast majority of the population growth is due to international migration – an issue that is being tied into Canada’s ongoing housing crisis the country is trying to solve.
“This jump in demographic demand coupled with the existing structural supply issues could explain why rent inflation continues to climb in Canada,” Bank of Canada deputy governor Toni Gravelle said earlier this month.
“It also helps explain, in part, why housing prices have not fallen as much as we had expected.”
Statistics Canada said Tuesday’s data is the latest in a trend of population growth reports.
Canada’s total population growth for the first nine months of 2023 has already exceeded the total growth for any other full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there was record growth, it said.
Canada’s current population sits at 40,528,396. It has seen its population grow by 1,030,378 people since January.
In the third quarter, the population grew in all provinces and territories, except in the Northwest Territories, which reported a -0.5 per cent change.
International migration was responsible for 96 per cent of the population growth in
Read more on globalnews.ca
