Canada’s population declines for the first time since the pandemic

The country’s population as of Oct. 1 was estimated to be 41.57 million, a decline of about 76,068 people. Photo by VLADONE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Article content

Article content

The country’s population as of Oct. 1 was estimated to be 41.57 million, a decline of about 76,068 people, or 0.2 per cent, from July 1, when the total population was estimated to be 41.65 million. The last time the government reported a quarterly decline was around the end of 2020.

Article content

Article content

Article content

The decline in 2020 was largely due to COVID-19 border restrictions. Other than that, Canada has never reported a quarter-to-quarter reduction in population levels, Statistics Canada spokesperson Stacey Hallman said.

Article content

Article content

“For a long time, Canada’s population growth has been driven by international migration,” she said. “Within the last three or four years, it was accounting for 95 per cent to 99 per cent of our population growth. That means it’s highly dependent on government policies, and within the last year, we’ve seen changes in those policies and we’re starting to see the impact of that on the population in the data.”

Article content

The number of non-permanent residents dropped by 176,479 in the third quarter, with more foreign students and workers leaving the country than the number of people coming in, Statistics Canada said.

Article content

“This drop in non-permanent residents surpassed the decreases in the second (58,719) and first (55,194) quarters of 2025 and was the largest since comparable records began (the third quarter of 1971),” the agency said.

Article content

Canada’s population grew at record rates between 2022 and 2023, primarily due to an increase in temporary residents, such as foreign workers and students, to help companies fill thousands of empty jobs. But as the unemployment rate increased, Justin Trudeau’s government in 2024 announced caps on temporary residents and reduced its immigration targets.

Article content

Article content

The population growth rate was around zero per cent in the first two quarters this year.

Article content

Article content

There were about 2.85 million non-permanent residents in Canada as of Oct. 1, which is about 6.8 per cent of the overall population and lower than the three million reported on July 1, or 7.3 per cent of the total population. The federal government wants to bring down the population of non-permanent residents to five per cent of the overall population by the end of 2027.

Article content

“A major population adjustment is well underway and it remains one of the biggest economic stories in Canada,” Robert Kavcic, an economist at Bank of Montreal, said in a note on Wednesday. “In order to hit the non-permanent resident target share, we’ll need to see population growth run barely above zero through 2028, before settling back into a longer-term run rate of just under one per cent.”

Article content

He said a “significant weakening” of the rental market, less pressure on services inflation, easing slack in the youth job market and a likely pickup in productivity and growth in real gross domestic product per capita are among the potential impacts he’s tracking as a result of the decline.