Canada added new residents at the slowest pace in three years due to falling immigration, winding down a post-pandemic population boom that strained the economy and soured public sentiment toward newcomers.
Bloomberg reports that Canada added new residents at the slowest pace in three years due to falling immigration, winding down a post-pandemic population boom that strained the economy and soured public sentiment toward newcomers.
The country’s population grew at an annual rate of 1.8% last year, a marked slowdown from 3.1% in 2023 and 2.5% in 2022, according to Statistics Canada’s estimate published Wednesday. With 744,324 peopled added, the number of total inhabitants reached 41.5 million.
While the majority of that growth was driven by international migration, restrictions imposed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government have started to curb new arrivals and reduce the number of temporary residents in the country.
For much of the past three years, Canada had seen record-breaking population growth driven entirely by massive increases of foreign arrivals. Influxes of international students, foreign workers and refugees had exceeded the country’s capacity to absorb them.
The resulting higher unemployment rate and worsening housing shortages turned newcomer-embracing Canadians to skeptics of mass immigration, forcing the government to scale back its ambitions to quickly grow the labor force and stave off decline from an aging populace.
Still, like many advanced economies, Canada’s birth rates have been falling. Only 2.7% of new residents were from a natural increase. That points to a challenge for future governments to balance short-term needs with long-term prospects.
Trudeau’s successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, and his chief rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, are vying to win the next election expected in the coming weeks. They have both suggested their respective Liberal and Conservative governments would ensure immigration levels are in line with economic needs and capacities.
