Sharpest slowdown since WWII follows Ottawa’s immigration tightening

Canada’s population reached an estimated just under 41.8 million on July 1, a rise of 189,425 people, or 0.5%, on a year earlier, Statistics Canada said Wednesday. On a quarterly basis, the population grew by an estimated 80,343 from the prior quarter, or 0.2%, marking the lowest second-quarter growth since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began.

The July-to-July rise is the lowest since 1944 to 1945, when Canada’s headcount climbed by about 126,000, and is the smallest in percentage terms since growth of 0.3% between 1915 and 1916, the data agency said. The deceleration follows years of faster growth that ended as the federal government tightened immigration policy and reduced the number of temporary residents.

“We remain in an era of normalization, with population growth of just above zero expected through 2027, before settling back to a baseline of just under 1%,” said Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic.

Ottawa unveiled revised immigration targets in late 2024, and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has since stepped up those plans, targeting a more than 40% cut to the entry of temporary immigrants in 2026 and 2027 from current levels. That has been projected to lower the share of temporary immigrants to 5% of the population in 2027.

The number of non-permanent residents in Canada fell by 154,614 people on an annual basis to 2.78 million on July 1, or 6.7% of the total population, Statistics Canada said. The figure compares with a high of 2.98 million temporary residents on Oct. 1, 2024, or 7.2% of the total population. The data agency attributed the largest decreases to study-permit holders and work-and-study permit holders.

Immigrants welcomed into Canada dropped to 368,224 in the latest annual data — the fourth consecutive yearly decline for July and the first time since 2022 the annual number of immigrants has fallen below 400,000. Rapid shifts in Canada’s population growth since 2020 have been almost entirely due to changes in international migration, the agency said.

Upward revisions to earlier estimates, owing in part to improved counting of temporary residents, wiped out what had previously been calculated for 2025 as the first annual decline in Canada’s population on record. The latest data instead show continued growth, though at the slowest pace in more than a century.