Canadian Immigration, Population Growth

"Immigration is really fuelling not just population growth, but also the economy, because immigrants are generally younger than the average Canadian. The average Canadian now is  41, and immigrants tend to be younger."

"Now, because the religious composition of immigrants is so different from the religious composition of native-born people, we're seeing really fast increases in the Muslim community, in the Sikh community and the Hindu community, and this has really big implications for everything."

"I think that's part of the story about how immigration is changing Canada and Canadian families."

"This is the first time that I feel like all of Canada's problems aren't economic problems. They're actually demographic problems."

"When more money goes to support older people, we have less money for things that go to younger people. Like our daycare programs, our primary schools, our secondary schools, our labour force training programs, our universities, etc." 

Demographer and sociologist Rachel Margolis, Professor, Western University

 

"Canada has always been a country of diversity. We've always been a country with multiple nations, multiple languages, multiple ethnicities, multiple sources of newcomers."

"I don't think it's a matter of saying, 'Who is Canada?' It's some kind of plural version of the question: Who are Canadians?"

"I'm very interested in the 2026 census, whether we see a bigger share of newcomers, not only from India, but also from some of the African countries, such as Nigeria, Ghana or Tanzania, that also have highly educated populations and would be viable economic migrants."

"In Canada, religion has become an important variable that's at the centre of a lot of debates. So, if you look at, for example, some of the secularization legislation in Quebec, it's front and centre to public debates there."

"When we look at some of the discrimination that's been experienced over the last five years [or] post-October 7, as well as longer than that, 9/11, we see that religion becomes quite important and it often intersects with newcomers from different parts of the world." 

Political sociologist Howard Ramos, Professor,Western University 

Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now, National Post

 

Canadian population growth is driven by immigration with close to one-quarter of the population being or having been a landed immigrant or permanent resident. This represents the highest intake of immigrants among the G7, as well as representing the largest share of immigrant intake since Confederation. Canada's 8.4 million immigrants are comprised thusly: India (10.7 percent), the Philippines (8.6 percent) and China (8.6 percent) as the top origins of birth. Immigration from Europe has declined in the last half-century (going from 61.6 percent in 1971 to 10.1 percent in 2021). 

 

New immigrants from Asia, on the other hand, inclusive of the Middle East has increased, with Asia now the leading continent of birth for new immigrants (62 percent), and India the top country of new immigrants; close to one in five (18.6 percent) having originated from India recently. India represents the lion's share of the 1.4 million South Asian immigrants, followed by Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Of one million immigrants from South-east Asia, the Philippines is first, Vietnam following, then Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand the top countries of origin.

 

749,415 immigrants born in West Central Asia and the Middle East headed by Iran, followed by Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, in that order as the top five countries of origin. Statistics Canada has recently released its latest report on the country's population and how it has been comprised with the immigration of global migrants. Canada now has 450-plus ethnic or cultural origins reporting for the latest census with the fastest population growth n the G7. What the statistics reveal is the shift in countries of origin with close to two-thirds of recent immigrants born in Asia, including the Middle East.

 

Over 95 percent of visible minorities domiciled in one of Canada's 41 large urban centres, with Toronto home to the largest populations of those of South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, West Asian Latin American, South-east Asian and Korean derivation. The country's largest share of its new Arab population, at 35.5 percent of the group, settled in Montreal. There has been an eight percent increase in people identifying as First Nations, Inuit of Metis between 2015 and 2021, in comparison with 5.4 percent growth for the non-Indigenous population. 

 

Against a backdrop of Canadians losing interest in religious devotion, doubling in the last 20 years, most Canadians who are religious reported they are Christian; the numbers shrinking from 77.1 percent in 2001. Those identifying as Muslim (Islam being the second-most reported religion), Hindu or Sikh more than doubled in the past two decades. There has been a steady growth in numbers of Canada's aging population, the result now being that there are more Canadian seniors 65-plus (8.2 million), than there are Canadian children 14 and under (6.3 million). 

 

More than two in five (42.3 percent) of newborns in 2024 were of a foreign-born mother, according to a 2025 Statistics Canada study which pointed out that without immigration, Canada would have had negative population growth since 2022. In the most recent Canadian census over 450 ethnic and cultural origins were reported, 200 places of birth, 100 religions , and 450 languages. The country, once 97 percent Protestant and Catholic, has changed enormously.

 

In the last census about 335,000 people reported being ethnically Jewish, a smaller share of the population, as a result of population growth through immigration; their share in 2001 was 2.2 percent of the population, while in the two decades since it was reduced to 0.9 percent. The second-most common religion after Christianity -- one in 29 people reported being Muslim, at close to 1.8 million. Muslims rose from 2.0 to 4.9 percent of the population since 2001.  

"There's been a really big decline [in the fertility rate with a record low of 1.25 births per woman in 2024, as compared to a century earlier when Canadians on average had just over three children] just in the last 15 to 18 years."

"And the reason why that's important is that it took us from kind of low fertility to very, very low fertility. And the problem with very, very low fertility is that without large immigration, it leads to pretty rapid population decline and pretty rapid population aging, which changes the needs of where we put resources."

"[There's more freedom in how people choose to see their lives. Younger generations, they say they want few kids... They say it's less important for them to get married than it used to be. And I think that younger people feel more uncertain about what their path is."

Professor of sociology, Western University, Rachel Margolis  

The downside of this steady surge in population growth can be seen in Canada's universal health care system, hard pressed to provide timely and reliable health care to a growing population, with insufficient numbers of medical personnel, hospitals stressed to their coping limits and millions within the population without a primary health care provider. So too has the housing market been impacted; not enough houses and rentals to meet the demand, with rising prices for accommodation making it more difficult for young people to strike out on their own.

From within the large and still growing Muslim population a phenomenon of public protests against Israel and Jews has arisen, leading to an acute rise in antisemitism. Authorities at every level, while decrying rampant antisemitism have done little to uphold the law when 'pro-Palestinian' groups harass Canadian Jews, threaten their communities and vandalize Jewish businesses, synagogues and parochial schools. Mass Muslim public prayer sessions that block traffic and intersections have assaulted the Canadian social contract. 

The Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

The incidences of crime, youth crime, gun violence, car thefts, home break-ins has also increased, in part due to the formation of criminal gangs from within immigrant groups. The cost of living in Canada has also soared, making it difficult for many families to make ends meet. The use of Food Banks has increased exponentially, by foreign students, by economically stressed immigrant families, along with native-born in a depressed economy. Shelter use and homelessness has also been impacted by migrant groups arriving in Canada, awaiting the disposition of their claims for haven as refugees.