Statistics Canada reports total population growth increased by 776,217 people in the first nine months of 2022. Between October 1, 2021 and October 1, 2022, Canada added 865,882 people – increasing the total population from 38.43 million to 39.29 million people. If the same or higher growth rate is also seen in 2023, Canada could potentially reach the 40 million population milestone by this time next year. The country reached its last major population milestone in 1998 when it reached 30 million. California’s population is 39,029,342 in July 2022. This was a decline of more than 113-thousand since July 2021 and down more than a half-million people since July 2020.
Canada could potentially see a growth one million people in 2022 if the fourth quarter had as much added as the third quarter. The third quarter of 2022 added 362,453.
Over 400,000 immigrants are expected in 2022, up from around 300,000 annually before 2019. The federal government has further increased its immigration targets for the coming years to 465,000 in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 from 2025 onwards.
Canada is currently about the 36th most populace country. Canada probably passed the population of Ukraine in 2022.
This 2-2.5% pace of annual population growth could see Canada reach about 50 million people by 2031. Canada will pass Spain and several other countries to be a top 30 population country by 2030.
Canada could reach 70-80 million people by 2050. Canada would then be a top 20 population country at that point.
In 2021, over 9 in 10 recent immigrants lived in one of Canada’s 41 census metropolitan areas (CMAs), which are large urban centres of over 100,000 residents. As was the trend over the past 50 years, Toronto (29.5%), Montréal (12.2%) and Vancouver (11.7%) continued to welcome the most recent immigrants in 2021.
Toronto should add 3 million people in each decade. Vancouver and Montréal will each be adding about 1 million people each decade.
However, the share of recent immigrants who have settled in Canada’s three largest urban centres continued to decline, falling from 56.0% in 2016 to 53.4% in 2021—with the most pronounced decrease in Montréal, where the share went from 14.8% in 2016 to 12.2% in 2021.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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