Toronto: Canada’s population has continued to fall for a third consecutive quarter amid a lower intake of temporary residents.
Statistics Canada or StatCan, the country’s data agency, reported on Wednesday that the country’s population declined by 55,025, or 0.1 per cent during the January 1 to April 1 quarter.
The preliminary number of non-permanent residents decreased by 117,879 people in the first quarter of 2026, StatCan said, cautioning that the figure will be updated in September.
However, it isn’t just non-permanent residents, a category that includes international students and temporary workers, that has contributed to the drop in numbers.
Canada welcomed 83,149 permanent immigrants in the first quarter of 2026. “This represents a decline of 20.2% compared with the number of permanent immigrants welcomed in the same quarter of 2025 (104,210),” it pointed out. And, natural increase (births minus deaths) was negative (-155) in the first quarter of 2026.
Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the technical recession in the country, reductions in growth in two consecutive quarters, could be partly due to falling immigration. He said, “We see some weakness, in part because of clear decisions by the government. We have taken back control of immigration. That’s meant population growth has flattened, in fact, it’s been negative for the last two quarters…”
In March this year, StatCan estimated that Canada recorded a decline in its population in 2025, the first time since the count began over 150 years ago, and the fall in numbers were primarily driven by lower intake of non-permanent residents.
The decrease was estimated at 102,436 people or -0.2 per cent from January 1, 2025, to January 1, 2026. This reduction, the official data agency pointed out, was due to the fall in population seen in the third (-76,068) and fourth (-103,504) quarters of 2025.
“Population growth had already begun to slow at the start of 2025, and the increase in the population over the first six months of the year (January to June, +77,136) was not enough to outweigh the losses observed in the last six months of the year (July to December, -179,572),” it noted.
Much of the historic decline, if the numbers hold against future adjustments, was due to the steep fall in temporary residents. In the last quarter of 2025, estimates indicated that the number of non-permanent residents in Canada decreased by 171,296.
After reaching 3,149,131 on October 1, 2024, the number of non-permanent residents living in Canada steadily decreased to 2,676,441 on January 1, 2026. However, the potential impact of permit extensions mentioned earlier may lead to an update of the number of non-permanent residents for years 2025 and 2026.
“The decrease in the number of non-permanent residents living in Canada noted in the fourth quarter of 2025 was mainly attributable to decreases among people holding a study permit only, a work permit only, or both a work and study permit,” the agency stated.
