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Canada’s population has now surpassed 41 million, but growth in the number of non-permanent residents may be slowing down.
The population grew by 0.6 per cent or 242,673 people — mainly due to immigration — Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. The growth rate is similar to both the first and fourth quarters of 2023.
About 131,810 of the newcomers were temporary residents — such as students, foreign workers and asylum seekers — but that growth figure was one of the “lowest quarterly net increases since higher levels of temporary migration began in the second quarter of 2022,” the agency said.
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The increase is also lower than the record highs posted in the second and third quarters of 2023, when 233,361 and 312,758 people, respectively, were added to the population count.
The federal government recently announced its decision to limit the number of temporary residents entering Canada to five per cent of the overall population over the next three years, but most of the growth in the first quarter predates that announcement.
Overall, the total number of non-permanent residents living in Canada increased for the ninth quarter in a row to reach about 2.8 million as of April 1, 2024.
Without temporary migration, the population growth rate during the first quarter of 2024 would have been 0.3 per cent, Statistics Canada said. From 2001 to 2021, the first-quarter growth rate ranged from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent.
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Stacey Hallman, an analyst at Statistics Canada’s Centre for Demography, said there may be signs that temporary immigration will slow down in the coming quarters.
“We also do see that there are, as expected, fewer study permits in the first quarter with university schedules, but the magnitude of that decrease was higher than it was last year,” she said.
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