Canada’s sudden population growth, influenced by increase of temporary residents
The Canadian population has experienced explosive growth over the past year that was largely driven by the arrival of temporary residents, who now number more than two million.
The population stood at roughly 40.1 million on July 1, an increase of nearly 1.2 million people from a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada figures that were published on Wednesday. At 2.9 per cent, this increase was the largest over a 12-month period since 1957, and likely put Canada among the 20 fastest-growing countries in the world, the agency said in its report.
International migration accounted for almost the entirety of the increase. Over the previous year, the country welcomed around 469,000 permanent residents. However, the main contributor is temporary residents, which include people with study or work permits.
As of July 1, there were 2.2 million temporary residents in Canada. Their ranks have risen by 46 per cent – or close to 700,000 people – in a single year.
The government’s expansive immigration policies have raised concerns that the country is growing too quickly to effectively absorb these newcomers, particularly as Canada struggles with a long-standing shortage of homes.
In recent weeks, the postsecondary sector has drawn scrutiny for the meteoric growth of its intake of international students, who pay significantly more for tuition than their domestic peers. By the end of 2022, there were more than 800,000 people with study permits, and the government has said those numbers should top 900,000 this year.
However, Wednesday’s report showed that foreign workers were the primary driver of the temporary resident population. Those with work permits now exceed 1.4 million, an increase of 64 per cent from last year.
While the government sets targets for its intake of permanent residents, there are effectively no limits for temporary residents.
Henry Lotin, founder of consulting firm Integrative Trade and Economics, characterized the increase in temporary residents over the past three months, and past year, as extraordinary.
“Neither increase was planned by government, and neither increase can be sustained by the available supply of affordable housing,” he added.
The federal government has loosened various labour rules for temporary residents. For example, in the spring of 2022, Ottawa made it easier to hire low-wage migrants through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which it said was aimed at alleviating labour shortages. Ottawa has also temporarily scrapped a limit on work hours for international students.
Statscan has also received criticism for how it counts temporary residents. Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets Inc., recently told the Liberal Party at its summer cabinet retreat that temporary residents were being undercounted by around one million people.
Among other things, Mr. Tal said that Statscan assumes people have left Canada 30 days after the expiry of their visa. However, many people end up staying in the country for longer – for example, to await the outcome of a permanent resident or visa application.
While Statscan has pushed back on Mr. Tal’s criticism and his estimates of undercounting, it has adjusted its methodology to assume that people have the left the country 120 days after their visas expired. The agency said this change did not have a large effect on its estimate of temporary residents in Wednesday’s report.
Mr. Lotin suspects that Statscan is still undercounting non-permanent residents to a large degree. Extending the expiry deadline, he said, “is not an adequate measure of a larger population of active visa applicants with expired visas. There are hundreds of thousands more with ‘interim status’ awaiting process, applications and addresses in Canada known to Immigration Canada.”
Alberta paced the provinces by growing four per cent over the past year.
“This growth was not only due to international migration but was also the result of record net gains from migratory exchanges between provinces,” the agency said.
Alberta saw a net interprovincial gain of more than 56,000 – meaning, that many more people arrived in Alberta from other provinces than left. It was the largest interprovincial gain ever recorded
This article was reported by The Globe and Mail
