There’s mostly good news in the press release Canada tops G7 growth despite COVID from Statistics Canada.
The population of Canada in the spring of 2021 was 36,991,981. (find the current population estimate by Worldometers here — it keeps changing!)
Approximately 1.8 million more people were calling Canada home in 2021 compared with five years earlier, with four in five of these having immigrated to Canada since 2016.
The growth rate is almost twice that of every other G7 country; the population increased by 5.2% from 2016
Nearly three in four Canadians lived in one of the 41 large urban centres.
Toronto (6,202,225 people) remains the most populous CMA, followed by Montréal (4,291,732 people) and Vancouver (2,642,825 people). Ottawa–Gatineau (1,488,307 people) regained fourth place after temporarily losing that title in 2016 to Calgary (1,481,806 people). Edmonton (1,418,118 people) remained the nation’s sixth largest CMA.
The most populated downtowns were Toronto (275,931 people), Vancouver (121,932 people), Montréal (109,509 people), Ottawa (67,169 people) and Edmonton (55,387 people).
Urban spread occurred in the intermediate suburbs (20 to 30 minutes from downtown) in Edmonton (+23.4%), Calgary (+23.3%) and Ottawa (+21.4%). The growth in these intermediate suburbs largely surpassed that of their respective downtowns, urban fringes and near suburbs.