Zero Population Growth From Immigration Is a Welcome Breather for Canada

Commentary

A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects that Canada’s population growth will be flat this year due to immigration cutbacks and major outflows of temporary residents. For the average Canadian, this is good news.

The report analyzes the “demographic implications” of the Carney government’s first Immigration Levels Plan, released alongside the federal budget in November 2025, finding that Canada’s population growth “will remain flat in 2026” and only inch up to 0.3 percent in 2027.

The reason for the growth slowdown lies partly in cuts to permanent residency admissions, but principally in a dramatic reduction in temporary residents—asylum seekers, international students, and foreign workers.

The report projects that the share of Canada’s population made up by temporary residents will fall from an all-time record of 7.6 percent in 2024 to just under 5 percent by the end of 2027.

This shift in direction comes after a post-pandemic immigration boom that strained hospitals, schools, housing, food banks, transit systems, infrastructure, and social services.

In 2022, Canada’s population rose by over a million, 95.9 percent of which was from immigration. The boom reached its peak in 2023, when the national population skyrocketed by nearly 1.3 million, 97.6 percent due to immigration.

In October 2024, the Trudeau government announced an immigration U-turn, reducing levels significantly. Population growth began to slow, but even in 2024, Canada’s population still rose by over 700,000.

To put these three years of growth in context, the last time that Canada grew by more than 600,000 in one year was 1949—and that was because Newfoundland joined Confederation that year, adding its entire population to ours.

The result of the recent three-year period of intense, unprecedented immigration was a decline in the Canadian living standard.

A January 2024 National Bank of Canada report found that we had fallen into a “population trap”—a situation where the population is growing so quickly that no rise in the standard of living is possible. This normally only occurs in poor countries in regions like sub-Saharan Africa.

The report noted that one of the most obvious manifestations of the population trap was in housing, with Canada recording just one housing start for every 4.2 people entering the working-age population.

Canadians noticed this decline in living standards. As the post-pandemic population boom unfolded, public support for immigration collapsed—and has yet to recover.

In October 2024, the Association for Canadian Studies released a report finding that “almost no Canadian surveyed feels that there are too few immigrants.” Majorities in all age groups, all regions surveyed, and among both white and non-white Canadians wanted levels slashed.

This support for immigration restriction was not transitory. In January 2026, a Research Co. poll found that just 34 percent of Canadians now think immigration is mostly positive, a figure that has plummeted nine points since July 2025.

The current immigration cool-down is an opportunity for Canada to begin to catch up to the increased demand brought about by the post-pandemic population boom, particularly on essentials like housing and health care.

A population growth pause will unfortunately impact some in the economy who have staked their business model on high immigration, such as investors in condo tower developments in big cities.

On the other hand, the average Canadian will likely see a noticeable economic boost.

An October 2025 TD report found that “rapidly decelerating population growth” appears to be “easing pressure on the social and economic infrastructure” in Canada. In July 2025, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation linked “the recent decline in advertised rents” to “slower international migration.”

In January 2025, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projected that “real GDP per capita” will be 1.4 percent higher by 2027 as a result of immigration cutbacks. A key marker of living standards, GDP per capita is calculated by dividing the total GDP of a country by its population.

We would be wise to use the next couple of years of reduced growth to reset our immigration strategy. We should ask ourselves: What is the goal?

Are we using high immigration to offset the aging of our population?

A February 2025 study by the Migration Policy Institute found the only way this can be done is the self-evidently absurd strategy of “continuously increasing the scale of immigration on an indefinite basis.” This is because immigrants age and retire, just like the native-born.

Canada’s ultra-low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman is unhealthy, but high immigration is not a solution—it is an admission of failure before attempting to solve the problem.

Are we using immigration to simply grow the population? If so, why?

Little evidence exists to support the idea that more people means more prosperity. The top countries on the Human Development Index, which measures factors like life expectancy and standard of living, are mainly small nations like Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark.

Dismissing the need for a sheer volume of immigrants would free Canada to be more selective, focusing on attracting individuals with specific skillsets or attributes we may benefit from.

While we do not want to repeat the mistakes of Canada’s post-pandemic immigration boom, we can certainly learn from it.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.