People Are Leaving Canada's Biggest Cities Amid a Housing Crunch

Urban centers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario lost more people to other provinces and territories, with urban centers in the Atlantic provinces, Alberta and British Columbia recording strong gains.

Urban centers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario lost more people to other provinces and territories, with urban centers in the Atlantic provinces, Alberta and British Columbia recording strong gains.Photo by TROY FLEECE /Regina Leader-Post

Toronto, the country’s biggest urban centre, saw nearly 100,000 people leave the area, with 78 per cent choosing to settle in other parts of the province over a one-year period to July 1, according to Statistics Canada data released Wednesday.

Montreal and Vancouver, Canada’s second and third biggest cities, saw about 35,000 and 14,000 people exit, respectively.

The data highlight the consequences of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitious immigration policies that aim to bring in about half a million permanent residents each year — an amount larger than the size of Halifax, the biggest city in Atlantic Canada. Population growth in the major cities coincided with a period of peak housing prices in most regions.

The benchmark price of a home in Canada was $789,300 in July of last year, up 43 per cent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association. House prices have since started to fall as the central bank increased borrowing costs, but affordability has also deteriorated alongside rising mortgage costs.

Despite the exodus from some of the largest cities, many of Canada’s more affordable large urban centres saw their population increase at the fastest annual pace since at least 2002, the statistics agency said. New permanent immigrants and net gains of non-permanent residents accounted for most of this rapid growth.

Overall, the country continues to urbanize, with 71.9 per cent of Canadians now living in one of its census metropolitan areas, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. That means there’s more pressure on cities to build housing and infrastructure to accommodate rapid population growth.

Urban centres in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario lost more people to other provinces and territories, with urban centres in the Atlantic provinces, Alberta and British Columbia recording strong gains.

Moncton and Halifax, key Atlantic Canadian cities, saw the fastest population growth rates at 5.3 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.