TORONTO – Canada’s population growth slowed slightly in the final quarter of the year, the first time since 2020, when the number of people entering the country nearly stopped, as Canada closed its borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The slowdown in growth, reported on Wednesday by Statistics Canada, is due to the recent crackdown on immigration by the federal government (which has progressively reduced the number of international students and the number of temporary foreign workers due to the “housing crisis”) and, at the same time, to the further decline in births. Two factors which, when combined, become “explosive” (in a negative sense), given that international migration almost entirely represents the increase in the Canadian population.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of non-permanent residents continues to grow, but the growth rate has been slowing since October 2023. “There was a net increase of 117,836 non-permanent residents in the second quarter”, according to Statistics Canada, and “this is the smallest net increase since the first quarter of 2023 and marks the third consecutive quarter of smaller net increases in the number of non-permanent residents”. Canada’s population has grown, however, reaching 41,288,599 on July 1. Alberta had the fastest growth rate among the provinces and territories with an increase of 1.0% in the quarter, while the Northwest Territories was the slowest with an increase of 0.1% The Canadian average is however low: +0.6%.

Then, as we said, there is the factor of the fertility rate, which is itself constantly decreasing: it has reached a historic low and the country is now among the nations with the “lowest” fertility rate. In fact, according to data published on Wednesday by Statistics Canada, the Canadian fertility rate in 2023 was 1.26 children per woman (over her reproductive lifetime), the lowest level recorded since the agency started collecting such data. In 2022, the fertility rate had already fallen to a historic low of 1.33 children per woman: a negative record which has therefore been broken again, now. In total, 351,477 children were born in Canada last year, a similar number to 2022. With the new fertility data, Canada joins the group of countries with the “lowest” fertility that have a rate of 1.3 children for women or not: South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan are other nations in this group.

According to a Statistics Canada report released in January, Canada “as the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a period of public health crisis and economic and social shocks, it is possible that a segment of the population has responded to this period of widespread uncertainty through one’s choices about motherhood”. And experts confirm that the decline in births is due precisely to prolonged economic uncertainty, the high cost of living, changes in lifestyle and work decisions. “It was difficult for a lot of people. Inflation certainly didn’t help. Some couples, looking at their paychecks, looking at their expenses, say: ‘Maybe now is not the ideal time to have children’ ” Don Kerr, a demographer at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ontario, told Global News.

Another data released by Statistics Canada is relating to the rate of premature births which has increased over the last three decades. In 2023, with 8.3%, it reached the highest level in the last 50 years. Preterm or premature birth occurs when the baby is born before the completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy. Babies born prematurely are at increased risk of illness, hospitalization and death. “The increased rate of preterm births may be related to the higher proportion of older mothers, as the risk of preterm birth increases as the mother’s age increases” StatCan said. Last year, 26.5% of mothers were 35 years old or older, compared to 10.7% in 1993.

So: either they no longer have children, or they have them later and later, probably because for young people it is more and more difficult to earn enough to start a home and family, so either you expect to have a better economic situation (after the age of 35) or you give up on children because that economic tranquility… never arrives.

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