Population & Growth

Population over time, growth rate, components of change, non-permanent residents, age structure & aging, and migration within Canada

Canada in the world

With about 42 million people, Canada is the world’s 38th-most-populous country — in the top fifth of all nations, more populous than the great majority, though far behind India, China, and the United States. Each dot below is a country, sorted by population on a ratio (logarithmic) scale; Canada is in maroon.

Canada’s population over time

Canada’s population has grown since the mid-20th century. This chart shows quarterly population estimates for Canada.

Population by province and territory

Select provinces and territories to compare using the legend. Click a name to toggle it; double-click to isolate one. The three territories appear as low, near-flat lines: together they are home to under 0.13 million people, against more than 15 million in Ontario.

Age structure

How old is Canada? The pyramid below shows the full age distribution. It shows every year of age, with men on the left and women on the right. Drag the slider to watch half a century of change: the wide base of the early 1970s (the tail of the baby boom) narrows as births decline, and the boomer bulge climbs the pyramid into retirement. The white line traces the net difference between women and men at each age.

Median age

Half of Canadians are older than this line. The median age rose from about 26 in 1971 to about 41 today, driven by longer lives and smaller families. The change from this pattern in recent years is due to immigration.

Aging among peer countries

The old-age dependency ratio is the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 people aged 15 to 64. This is a standard measure of the balance between older and working-age populations. A rising ratio has implications for pensions, health care, labour supply, and public finances. Every peer country is aging; Canada sits in the middle of the pack, well below Japan and Italy.

Fertility

The total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime at current age-specific rates. A rate of about 2.1 keeps a population stable without immigration. This is shown as the dashed line below. Canada fell below that level in the early 1970s and has set new record lows in recent years.

Median age by neighbourhood

Where do the young and the old actually live? A census-tract map of median age is on its own page (it carries ~3 MB of boundary data):

Median age by neighbourhood →

Each neighbourhood’s full age breakdown is visible using the hover tool.

It pairs naturally with the median household income and home value maps. These use the same census tracts, so you can flip between who lives somewhere and what living there costs.

Population growth rate

Year-over-year percentage change in Canada’s quarterly population. This is derived from the same quarterly estimates shown above. Each quarter is compared to the same quarter one year earlier.

Where Canada’s population growth comes from

Population growth breaks into three parts: natural increase (births minus deaths), net permanent immigration (new permanent residents minus people leaving), and net temporary residents (the non-permanent population — people on work and study permits, plus asylum claimants). Stacking them shows what actually drove growth each year; the surge of the early 2020s was overwhelmingly caused by temporary residents. Use the dropdown to isolate a single component or view all three stacked. For a sense of scale, a net change of about 170,000 people in a year is roughly a city the size of Greater Sudbury (Ontario), Sherbrooke (Quebec), or Abbotsford (BC).

Non-permanent residents

The number of non-permanent residents (people in Canada on work or study permits, or as asylum claimants and protected persons) has risen sharply since 2021. It impacts the pace of population growth, housing demand, and the capacity of public services. The bars break the total down by type: work-permit holders are the largest group, ahead of asylum claimants and protected persons and study-permit holders. Other is mostly the family members who accompany permit holders. Statistics Canada’s quarterly estimates begin in 2021.

Non-permanent residents as a share of the population

The chart above counts non-permanent residents; this shows their weight relative to the population as a whole. Through the 2000s and 2010s, non-permanent residents were a small, slowly-rising share of around 2%. From 2022 it climbed steeply, reaching a peak of about 7.6% in late 2024 before decreasing as more temporary residents began to leave than arrive. (Statistics Canada publishes the non-permanent-resident count on a consistent basis from 2021; earlier quarters are reconstructed from its own quarterly net non-permanent-resident flows, anchored to the 2021 estimate.)

Moving within Canada

Beyond immigration, Canadians relocate between provinces — and the direction of that flow says a lot about relative job markets and housing costs. The bars show net interprovincial migration (movers in minus movers out) by July–June year, one province at a time — use the dropdown to switch province. Alberta’s recent net inflows are the largest in the 60-year record, ahead of its 1981 and 2006 energy-boom peaks, while Ontario’s recent net outflows are also the largest on record.

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