Canada’s population actually shrank last year — is that a good thing?

For the first time in decades, the population of Canada declined from one year to the next.

Statistics Canada says in 2025, the country’s population shrank by approximately 102,000 people — driven largely by the federal government’s efforts to shed the number of non-permanent residents.

Joining us on tonight’s Closer Look podcast to break down the latest numbers is Doug Norris, the chief demographer at Environics Research.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Post pandemic, things went off the rails, in my opinion. Skyrocketed growth three percent a year. We brought in nearly a million sort of temporary workers for a couple of years. Clearly something that's that was not sustainable.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Back on closer look. Uh on this Monday, the uh prodigal child has returned. Um very tanned. Wolf. Looks like a tomato that boy does. Be nice. Must be nice. Must be nice. Uh with Mike Friscalanding. I'm Scott Sexmith. Uh quick uh programming note. Dan Schulman, we promised you last week would be here tonight. And then this morning, breaking Blue Jay News. Ross Atkins and John Schneider both signed to uh extensions uh just prior to the uh kickoff of the season later this week, so Dan had to uh tend to other matters, but he will be here Thursday.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

I think I'm gonna ask him, well, what what why would it take so long to to to s re-sign those? I mean, you have the you have the dream seasons, Matt. I didn't even realize they weren't re-signed. I know. Or would they are would they just extend them like were they weren't their contracts weren't up?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Uh no, because uh Schneider still has this year, then he was up. So in essence, he's you know on the bench for another three. Uh but yeah, it's a good question. Question number one. Put that in the notes. Get ready, Dan. Okay. Uh yeah, exactly. Get ready. Uh, also ready, the ledge, it's back.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Yeah, it's buzzing. And it was buzzing. It is buzzing at Queen's Park. Yeah, lots going on. Um, lots of uh things that we've talked about on the show and that we've our trillium team has been reporting on for months. Questions about the future of school trustees, the all the big construction jobs that Doug Ford wants to do, changes to OSAP, which is a big controversial issue. And of course, the uh announcement by the Ford government last week that they're going to drastically overhaul the freedom of information system in this province. Uh we learned today that that will be part of the budget bill that's tabled this week, either Thursday or Friday. Yes. The budget comes out Thursday, whether the bill gets tabled, sometimes it could be tabled the next day. But it will be in there, so it's pretty close to being passed. We had Jessica Smith Cross, the editor-in-chief of the Troy Mon last week, talking about it. And of course, you know, selfishly, our biggest concern as journalists and and as the team, specifically the team of Queen's Park, the changes will make off-lim, basically uh make certain uh offices off-limit. So in the cabinet ministers, their staffers, all those records that used to be available under FOI are now gonna be not available. Right. And the bigger concern for us, we think that's terrible, but the bigger concern is we have a whole bunch of uh FOI requests that have been the system in some cases for years. We're waiting for these records, and this law is going to apply retroactively. So it's basically just gonna cancel out all those requests that we've been working on for years. So it's uh I I can't put in words how terrible this is for transparency in this province, for people understanding the truth about what's going on, as Jess put it so well when she was here. You know, governments do a great job of spin. And that's the right word. They tell us, they put up press releases all the time telling us how they're gonna improve this and make this better. But FOI legislation allows us to actually read and hear what's going on behind closed doors, right? And it's it's it's a critical part of the of having transparent, accountable government. Um, and the information and privacy commissioners come out very hard against these changes. Yes. So, you know, we uh are you know uh not happy about this. We're concerned about what this means for the public, and uh we're gonna keep working away on what we can do about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Now, do I understand it correctly that there were already certain protections put in for cabinet ministers and the premier under the current legislation? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

So there's always been cabinet privilege, and I believe that's the same in all jurisdictions, right? Whether it's the federal government or all the provinces. We can't ever FOI what was discussed at the cabinet table.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

No.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

That's that's off limits. So that way, if one minister wants to have a very heated discussion with another, they should be free to have that heated discussion. Absolutely. Yes. Because one might have to say, one might want to say, you know, that's terrible for the people in my riding or for the people in this part of the province, and so they can have those discussions. But there's always been cabinet privilege. You can't get those documents. These are different, these are communications between political staffers in the minister's office, between the minister himself, uh documents that are in those offices, which have, you know, been part of you know, our reporting on the Greenbelt scandal and the Skills Development Fund scandal, um, on all kinds of things over many years, not just the Ford government, long before the Ford government. Absolutely. So these things are going to be uh off limits right now. But again, it's it's the retroactivity that's the immediate concern. Yeah. And you know, as you know, uh there's there's a whole bunch of great examples of records that are requests that are currently ongoing, not just from the Trillium. Global News has been fighting for Doug Ford's cell phone records, and the information privacy commissioner actually ordered the Ford government to give them to her so that she could see which part of that on what what in those records, if any, is related to government business, which would be subject to the FYI legislation. The Ford government went to court, lost that challenge, and now all of a sudden they're gonna just make the law retroactive and change the rules. And I don't want to say, I'll say what a lot of people are asking is well, what are you hiding? Right, and that's a fair question, I think. Because why all of a sudden now are you making this change, right? And and so it'd be amazing to know what was going on behind the scenes. Um and uh I don't think this story's done yet, Scott.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

What is not being disclosed that is so big you feel the need to change the law? That's right, right now. Like this is the time, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Or is it just because you feel like you have that ability to do it because you have the majority government? There's so many like look at if you think how many episodes we've just had just on our show alone, talking about what's going on with the Ford government. There's so much going on, and sometimes it's it's overload.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah. Okay. Uh to tonight's uh program, the population in our beautiful country is declining.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, by what, 100,000? 100,000. Yeah, but when you see the headlines, it's like, oh my goodness, what's going on? Take a deep breath, though. As of January 1st, 2026, Canada's population is estimated to be 41,472,081. I love how they can make an estimate right to the to 81. Not 82. Nope. 81. Um, but yeah, the headlines have been that the population declined by a little more than 100,000 year over year. So it's by uh 100,000 less. I think that's the first time it's happened since around the Second World War. Yeah, right at the Second World War. So it is news. And uh, we wanted to have our friend Doug Norris, who is uh a real expert at this. He's uh with an Environics Canada in Ottawa. Yes. He's been on the he's uh you know one of the country's great demographers. He's he understands this data better than anybody. Just have a sane conversation about what these numbers mean and what we can look forward to uh maybe by next year, even in the next decade.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

For years, Canada's story has been one of rapid growth, a country adding people at one of the fastest rates in the developed world. But now that story has flipped. For the first time since the years following the Second World War, Canada's population has actually shrunk year over year, dropping by more than 100,000 people in 2025. Doug Norris is the chief demographer at Environics Research and one of the country's leading voices on population trends. Doug joins us from Ottawa tonight. Uh Doug, we appreciate your time. Always good to see you. Great to be with you. Doug, uh, let's start at the uh 30,000-foot level if we can. How significant is this moment? Are are we witnessing uh a bit of a blip here or or a genuine turning point in Canada's uh uh demographic story?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Well, I think uh in in many ways, it's uh when I look at the growth over the past five, six years, it's like a roller coaster. You know, we have been growing for many years at about 1% a year. That actually put us at uh at the top of the G7 countries, uh moderate growth. Um, but then post we dropped a bit during the pandemic, and then post-pandemic, things went off the rails, in my opinion. Skyrocketed growth, 3% a year. We brought in nearly a million sort of temporary workers for a couple of years, clearly something that's that was not sustainable, and I think caused um a number of different pressures that perhaps we can talk about. Uh, so the government realized this and then took action to bring us back to probably eventually close to where we were uh over the long term, something like uh growth of 1%. But in order to bring us back, they really had to tamper down and pull down the immigration numbers. And in doing that, that has caused, at least for a couple of years, probably a small decline in our population. We saw it last year. I think we're gonna see it this year and perhaps into part of 2027. But after that, my view is that we're going to return to a moderate growth, perhaps somewhere around 1% a year.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

That's a great point. I appreciate the roller coaster description because when I was looking at the graph too, I kind of thought that, but I didn't want to say that if it sounds stupid. So thank you, thank you for that, Doug. Just going back to that time, is it fair why the Trudeau government did what they did and allowed so many temporary foreign workers in, for example, because of labor shorters? When you back, when you go put yourself back in that time, did you think it was the right move at the time, or did you kind of scratch your head and say, hmm, I'm not sure about this?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Well, I don't think I ever thought that it was the right move to bring in those numbers uh year over year. Um there was uh some discussion that we needed the um labor, a lot of debate about that, whether that was the case or not. Um, and the rationale was really never very clear from the government about why they let things go uh as high as they did. But to to many of us who observe, uh it was pretty clear that that was not something that was sustainable.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

And you mentioned some of the pressures that this put on the system, whether it be housing or some other issues. What just remind our listeners, what were some of those pressures that came because of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Well, I think certainly on the housing front, uh particularly on rental housing in areas, uh, you know, certainly around colleges and universities with the high, high number of international students, uh, we saw rents increase five, 10% over a couple of years. And um with the pullback last year, we've seen the reverse of that. Now rents have come down uh in those areas uh simply because the pressures aren't there for uh for absorbing that kind of a population. Uh also pressures on more generally social services, I think, uh, the same way. One of the big impacts that we have heard about is on colleges and to some extent universities, which, in my opinion, unfortunately, had come to depend on international students who pay very, very high tuition for their operating funding on an ongoing basis. Once those numbers came down, those funds came down, and some of the colleges can no longer sustain the kind of programs uh that they had been giving. And we see some fairly major cuts, certainly here in in Ottawa, Algonquin College, and other parts of the country as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Did you kind of see that problem coming too, Doug? I mean, we all saw they did feel like I don't want to say taking advantage of, but it was a great setup for the college university. They were charging so much money and bringing in so many foreign students. Did you kind of see that that bubble would eventually burst?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Well, certainly. Um I can't say I look closely at it. Um, but in, you know, there are a number of different things that happened, uh, particularly at the college level. Some of the colleges, in my opinion, really took advantage of this, set up uh what, in my opinion, were very marginal kinds of programs that charged large tuition fees. And um clearly uh something had to be done about that.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Uh Doug, do you agree that it was important to uh trim the number of non-permanent residents uh in Canada?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, for for sure. That's that was really the source, the main source of the of the high growth. Um the overall what we call immigration or permanent resident numbers had also been increasing, and they've pulled back a little bit, but the real cause of the extremely high growth and now the decline is on the non-permanent residents, both international students and temporary workers. Sure. Now, what else is causing the uh decrease, Doug? Well, those are that's the main the main factors. We certainly have a very low uh birth rate now, uh but we still have slightly more births and deaths in the country, but that's no longer helping. So our total growth picture really depends on international migration, uh, both the permanent and non-permanent uh streams.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Doug, people who aren't experts in this, like you are, often wonder kind of what is that perfect balance, right? Because we do need immigration, obviously, in our country as the population is getting older, but it can put a strain on certain services, like you said. What's that magic formula? Where's that right sweet spot to hit when we're thinking about population?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, I'm not sure there's any specific, you know, formula that point to a magic number. My own view is that I think we can sustain, we I think we do need immigration. I think it's good for the country. Uh, it can help us grow if it's controlled. And my own view is that growing at about 1% a year, perhaps a little more, uh, is something that is sustainable, that can help, particularly if the choice of immigrants is targeted at areas that we need workers in, um, can really help uh help the country. And so I will I would look at having something um in and around uh a growth of 100% a year, that may mean 400,000 immigrants and and still sizable numbers of non-permanent residents. Some who come in, they leave, some who come in study here and eventually become permanent residents. So by no means, even last year, uh while we lost population, we still brought in something like a half a million non-permanent residents.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Uh, but that was half the numbers that we had had in the earlier years. That's a great point. One of the numbers that I've read recently, and I know you're aware of this, that we could spike the population in Canada could spike to 76 million people in the next 50 years. We're currently at around 41 million, 76. There's so many questions I could ask about that, Doug. But are we ready for that? I mean, that just seems like an astronomical amount of people living in Canada.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

I think I haven't got all the details in front of me, but I think that number was probably the high number that's Statscan, when they do projections, they put out a whole range of possibilities. Uh, I think there were 10 different scenarios, and I think that 76 uh million was the highest number. And what the behind that was a fairly high level of immigration and probably an increase in our fertility rate. Something which, in my opinion, doesn't look like it's on the horizon in the near future. So I think that's, in my opinion, an unlikely number. Uh, but we will grow. And you know, growing at even 1% a year means we're adding four or 500,000 people, a million people every couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

We'll hold you that, Doug. In 50 years, we'll play the clip and we'll see who is right.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Uh, Doug, uh what will you be watching closely say over the next year? Give us a bit of insight here.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Well, for sure, the the government announces their immigration plans once a year. Generally, beginning of November, uh, they have to report to Parliament in their immigration report, and they set targets uh for the next three years. So certainly I'll be looking at uh what they uh what they're thinking uh come November. Um I have been tracking and will continue to track what's happening to the intake. Uh are they on track? The target that they set for non-permanent residents, we were at something like three million in the country, about seven and a half percent of our total population. Um, and what's interesting is if you look at young people, young non-permanent residents accounted for nearly one in four Canadians. And that I think had some particularly um strong impacts uh in terms of pressures for young people. Um so I'll be looking at whether they're on track. They said they want to get the total number of non-permanent residents back to five percent of the total population, still something that's much higher than historically been the case um by 2027. Uh, they seem to be on track for that. And certainly I'll be I'll be keeping an eye on on whether that keeps moving down to that number. Once they reach that number, they may then um stabilize things a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Doug, I think I asked you this the last time you were on the show, but I want to ask it again. In this world we live in where there's so much information flowing at us like a fire hose and so much misinformation, disinformation, how important is it that we have this kind of real, accurate data, not just this kind of data, but all data? As someone who's worked in the field for so long, why is it so critical we make sure we continue to have this kind of information?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Well, I think certainly it's important to have um reliable information to help us understand really what's going on, because there's so much happening, so many things being reported uh all over social media in particular, uh, and having good, reliable numbers and an understanding of what's behind those numbers, uh the numbers themselves, like the fact that Canada's in population decline. People may think, oh, we're gonna continue to decline. I don't think that's the case. I think this is a temporary phenomenon. So having those numbers, and we're fortunate to have a very strong statistical agency in Stats Canada that that help us uh keep a keep a good eye on on really what's going on, not only in population, but across our economy, where it's particularly important these days, uh given the turbulence we're experiencing.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Uh Doug, it's uh always great to have you on the show, and we never seem to have enough time. But before we let you go, is there anything that we didn't uh talk about tonight that we should have?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

No, I think we pretty much much covered it in terms of the uh the demographics. Uh it's uh it's those immigration numbers that I think we need to keep an eye on, and uh that's going to drive a lot of where it goes. The only other thing I'd mention is that there's a lot of regional variation. We don't really have time today to get into that. Uh, but it's the big cities that have experienced the big drops in population, Vancouver and Toronto. And their simple reason is that those are the areas that have high numbers of non-permanent residents, both students and workers. Um, so the uh those two areas uh I think we've uh don't have the data quite yet, but probably have declined in 2025, will continue to decline. Not huge compared to their large populations, uh, but in significant numbers. And we still see people moving out of those areas, you know, in the case of Toronto to other parts of Ontario, going up the 401 to London or Guelph uh and other places. Um, so there's the regional uh uh picture, I think, is is something important, and perhaps we need to uh think a little more about what's happening there. And then the census that we'll be taking in a couple months in May of this year will certainly shed important uh light on uh what's happening in the country.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

That's a great segue to the next time we have you on, Doug. When all those members come out, we'll give you a call again, we'll have you jump on.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Okay, thanks. Good stuff. There's Doug Norris, the senior VP and chief demographer at InVoronix in Ottawa tonight. Uh Doug, always good to see you.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Good. Great to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Love having Doug on the program. Smart guy. I always picture like the scene for the Matrix with all these numbers on the screen because he's so smart, but does such a beautiful job of explaining things in a simplistic fashion that guys like you and I can understand.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

That's exactly what I was hoping for, because when I read when you read all the headlines, if you just read the headlines, you know, their population's in a decline. You think, well, what's going on? Sure. Yeah. And he gives you all the context you need to understand. And as he said, by the time we talk next time, it'll probably be going back up. Yeah. But it's a talker. People love, like we're at 40 more than 41 million people. I know. You know, remember when we were when we were kids, it was like, you know, 30 million? It didn't look ago. That was always what you thought the population of Canada is 30 million. Yeah. It's always not, it's in the 40s.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And I bet you not everyone listening to the podcast knew that.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Breaking news. See? Uh you are a lot of things. A wealth of information is only one of them. That's none of them. All right. But not that at all. On that note, uh let's head out. Closerlook at villagemedia.ca. Flip us a note. We'd love to hear from you. And of course, you can find every single episode we've ever done. Closerlookpodcast.ca. Sign up for free today for Derek Turner, executive producer of the program. Michael Friscoletti, our editor in chief here at Village. I'm Scott Sexmith. Thanks for your time. Uh see you tomorrow night, 7 o'clock, right here on Closer Look. Fresco and Scott's wardrobe, provided in part by Moore's Sault Ste. Marie.