Canada's population topped 41 million. But is this the rise before the fall?
Canada’s population surpassed 41 million in April, just 10 months after it hit 40 million in June 2023.
The country added 242,673 people — mainly through immigration — in the first three months this year, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. More than half the increase was due to temporary residents, such as students, foreign workers and asylum seekers.
Despite the rise, though, the agency expects the growth in the number of temporary residents to decline in the coming quarters because of the caps the federal government announced on non-permanent residents earlier this year. But some economists aren’t convinced the government will be able to meet its goal.
As Canada embarks upon cutting interest rates and loosening monetary policy, here’s what the latest immigration numbers mean.
The number of non-permanent residents living in Canada increased for the ninth quarter in a row to reach 2.8 million as of April 1. But Statistics Canada said the latest numbers may suggest a slowdown in the pace of the growth of temporary residents.
The 131,810 temporary residents added to the population in the first quarter is one of the “lowest quarterly net increases since higher levels of temporary migration began in the second quarter of 2022, the agency said.
Another reason it expects the growth to slow down is because the federal government in late March announced it would limit the number of temporary residents entering Canada to five per cent of the overall population during the next three years. Most of the growth in the first quarter predates that announcement.
“We may be starting to see signs of slowing in the coming quarters, which we don’t have data for yet, but with the announcement from (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
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