Saturday, June 17, 2023

Canada's population reaches 40 million

Statistics Canada has officially announced that Canada's population has reached 40 million.

It doesn't seem that long ago that its population was 30 million (indeed, it was 1997, about when we first arrived here). But, as the StatsCan article and infographic shows, Canada's population has been growing at a rapid clip since the 1950s.

2022 was the first year ever that the country added over a million new members in a single year, a rate of increase of 2.7%, faster than at any time the baby boom and immigration influx of 1957. At this rate of increase, the population will double again in the next 26 years.

An associated StatsCan backgrounder points out that, unlike in 1957, 96% of this increase came in the form of immigration. As in most developed countries, fertility rates started declining in the mid-1960s, and are now well below replacement value (except that of the Indigenous population, which is almost double the non-Indigenous rate).

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