Canada's population estimates: Record-high population growth in 2022

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by lio45

"Housing prices" a.k.a. "the cost of housing" a.k.a. rents... isn't something that is much impacted by interest rates, actually. It's pretty much only the crazy high immigration that is driving them to their current insanely high levels. We import way more people every year than we can build housing, so, Supply And Demand 101.

Same with "the cost of a mortgage", a.k.a. "the cost of housing". Interest rates don't determine that at all; what actually determines "the cost of housing" is the combination of interest rates + property prices, and that combo is currently pricier than ever and still climbing. Again, strictly thanks to immigration. In other words: there's more demand than there's supply. Why? Because we choose to import a lot of demand (to keep the Ponzi Scheme going).

Interest rates heavily impact the cost of housing, at least in the US, and rents are getting out of control here as well.
It's based on supply and demand too, but again in the US immigrants mostly rent at first. Canada's problem is with the conglomerates and investors snatching up the housing, or well one of the reasons visible to Americans.

[wanderer34]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Quebec doesn't just rely on European French immigrants. Far from it.

Also, AB + BC together already have more population than Quebec. But while anything is possible, it seems unlikely that either are going to pass Quebec in the foreseeable future. Calgary and Edmonton pass Montreal city proper population? Maybe? They're already bigger than Vancouver. They are far far behind Montreal in terms of metro population. Vancouver's suburb of Surrey may pass Vancouver in population in the near future.

QC will remain the second largest province for awhile, and it will hit 10 million by either 2040 or 2050 at the latest before AB or BC hits that mark. It's the cities of Calgary & Edmonton that may surpass Montreal as far as city population is concerned by 20-30 more years.

Metro area, Montreal will remain the second largest because you have the regional cities of Laval & Longueuil boosting up its metro population as well as smaller cities like Valleyfield-de-Salaberry, Hudson, Ste-Hyacinthe, and L'Assomption keeping it the second while Calgary and Edmonton have very few suburbs compared to Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Montreal needs to be a more diverse city if it needs to keep up with Toronto and hopefully avoid being displaced by Calgary & Edmonton in the city rankings. It's just too important to fall to third or fourth place. Plus, if Montreal can allow a program for other Romance language allophones such as Latin Americans, Italians, Spaniards, and Romanians as well as the French, Montreal could be one of the more European-influenced cities in North America.

It would be an eye-popping moment if Surrey were to surpass Vancouver, but I see this as to how San Jose surpassed San Francisco to become the largest city in the Bay Area, but Vancouver will always remain the most important city in BC no matter how many people move to Surrey.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by wanderer34

QC will remain the second largest province for awhile, and it will hit 10 million by either 2040 or 2050 at the latest before AB or BC hits that mark. It's the cities of Calgary & Edmonton that may surpass Montreal as far as city population is concerned by 20-30 more years.

Metro area, Montreal will remain the second largest because you have the regional cities of Laval & Longueuil boosting up its metro population as well as smaller cities like Valleyfield-de-Salaberry, Hudson, Ste-Hyacinthe, and L'Assomption keeping it the second while Calgary and Edmonton have very few suburbs compared to Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Montreal needs to be a more diverse city if it needs to keep up with Toronto and hopefully avoid being displaced by Calgary & Edmonton in the city rankings. It's just too important to fall to third or fourth place. Plus, if Montreal can allow a program for other Romance language allophones such as Latin Americans, Italians, Spaniards, and Romanians as well as the French, Montreal could be one of the more European-influenced cities in North America.

It would be an eye-popping moment if Surrey were to surpass Vancouver, but I see this as to how San Jose surpassed San Francisco to become the largest city in the Bay Area, but Vancouver will always remain the most important city in BC no matter how many people move to Surrey.

I don't know where you are getting the idea that Canadian cities outside of Toronto are not diverse from.
All major Canadian cities are extremely diverse, with the exception of Quebec City.

[Acajack]

Yeah, no one would ever call Montreal "non-diverse".

It's just a different diversity from that observed in Toronto and Vancouver, with fewer South Asian and East Asian people, and more Middle Eastern people and to some degree Latin American people. And way more Black people relative to Vancouver, though about the same as Toronto in this respect.

Similarly, Canadian cities are different from American ones in that they always have a much smaller Latin American population, and generally a smaller Black population too.

Though even in Canada the Black population is very different in its ethnocultural composition, being mostly Afro-Caribbean or Sub-Saharan African here.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by wanderer34

QC will remain the second largest province for awhile, and it will hit 10 million by either 2040 or 2050 at the latest before AB or BC hits that mark. It's the cities of Calgary & Edmonton that may surpass Montreal as far as city population is concerned by 20-30 more years.

Metro area, Montreal will remain the second largest because you have the regional cities of Laval & Longueuil boosting up its metro population as well as smaller cities like Valleyfield-de-Salaberry, Hudson, Ste-Hyacinthe, and L'Assomption keeping it the second while Calgary and Edmonton have very few suburbs compared to Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Montreal needs to be a more diverse city if it needs to keep up with Toronto and hopefully avoid being displaced by Calgary & Edmonton in the city rankings. It's just too important to fall to third or fourth place. Plus, if Montreal can allow a program for other Romance language allophones such as Latin Americans, Italians, Spaniards, and Romanians as well as the French, Montreal could be one of the more European-influenced cities in North America.

It would be an eye-popping moment if Surrey were to surpass Vancouver, but I see this as to how San Jose surpassed San Francisco to become the largest city in the Bay Area, but Vancouver will always remain the most important city in BC no matter how many people move to Surrey.

Calgary and Edmonton's suburban areas exist largely within those city propers. City proper comparisons as a measure of importance are meaningless because as this example illustrates, it's an apples to oranges comparison. Both Calgary and Edmonton cities proper are vastly larger than Montreal in terms of area. Montreal, as with many older cities typically in the East, was not able to annex everything around it. Calgary is currently in the process of annexing the adjacent Foothills county - does this sudden increase in size change the reality on the ground... at all?

[Acajack]

The "city" of Winnipeg has 100,000 more people than the "city" of Boston.

[MolsonExport]

I think Montreal is very safe in its second largest ranking, for the foreseeable future.

Quebec has really gained a lot of ground, economically, over the past two decades, and has shed much of the legacies of deindustrialization (which hit Montreal harder than any other big Canadian city, just because there was more of it, and because more of it was 'older' than in other cities), and (at least for the time being) has greatly reduced the political uncertainty with respect to its place as a part of Canada.

The francophone world is growing very quickly, mostly in Africa. 75% of Net Global Population Growth in the next 80 years will take place in Africa. Some of the biggest gains will be in African countries where French, or creolized dialects thereof, are widely spoken, giving Quebec a vast source of potential immigrants that are apt to acculturate to the French-speaking majority. Quebec (and Montreal, specifically) looks very attractive as a destination, even more so than France (and Paris, and other big French cities) currently do, to those in the broad francaphonie.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Nite

All major Canadian cities are extremely diverse, with the exception of Quebec City.

Quebec City is a stronghold of French-speaking adventurers that were mistreated (lots of them deported) by the Anglo-Saxon majority, because long ago, most the French felt good enough at home.
While lots of Brits had to move over there for mere survival or greed, so the French Canadians were overwhelmed.

How do you like that story? Do you feel "diverse" enough to enjoy it? Or does it feel like white-hot iron in your butt?
I'm just asking, huh.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by TWAK

Interest rates heavily impact the cost of housing, at least in the US, and rents are getting out of control here as well.
It's based on supply and demand too, but again in the US immigrants mostly rent at first. Canada's problem is with the conglomerates and investors snatching up the housing, or well one of the reasons visible to Americans.

Conglomerates don't own housing in Canada at any significant scale. Individual investors only buy individual properties if they can make money renting them out. If they are making money or even just barely breaking even at drastically inflated asset prices, than what does that tell you about supply and demand for housing as a living unit?

[Crawford]

I have no data to support this, but I suspect Canada's housing-to-income extremes are partly due to the stronger national or provincial planning oversight. Canada has, relative to the U.S. very restrictive growth rules which prescribe housing types and locations. So, for example, in the GTA, you get a ton of multifamily housing but not much SFH, but GTA residents are still living typical sprawly North American lifestyles, so you get insane prices on the SFH, while the multifamily can be quite reasonable.

The U.S. system generally results in much uglier landscapes and is unsustainable but is also more efficient and closely tailored to demand and lifestyle. It's myopic but reasonable while Canada's system is trying to shift housing norms. Throw in an extra 100k or whatever immigrants every year, and combine with limited regional mobility designed for a city half the size, and decent SFH with commutable location gets absurd premiums.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Quebec City is a stronghold of French-speaking adventurers that were mistreated (lots of them deported) by the Anglo-Saxon majority, because long ago, most the French felt good enough at home.
While lots of Brits had to move over there for mere survival or greed, so the French Canadians were overwhelmed.

How do you like that story? Do you feel "diverse" enough to enjoy it? Or does it feel like white-hot iron in your butt?
I'm just asking, huh.

I don't think Nite meant anything negative in their comments - they're just stating a fact that Quebec city, of the larger Canadian metro areas, has the lowest percentage visible minority and foreign born populations (typically how Canadians measure diversity). It's not a slight on Quebec City, it just kind of is what it is.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I have no data to support this, but I suspect Canada's housing-to-income extremes are partly due to the stronger national or provincial planning oversight. Canada has, relative to the U.S. very restrictive growth rules which prescribe housing types and locations. So, for example, in the GTA, you get a ton of multifamily housing but not much SFH, but GTA residents are still living typical sprawly North American lifestyles, so you get insane prices on the SFH, while the multifamily can be quite reasonable.

The U.S. system generally results in much uglier landscapes and is unsustainable but is also more efficient and closely tailored to demand and lifestyle. It's myopic but reasonable while Canada's system is trying to shift housing norms. Throw in an extra 100k or whatever immigrants every year, and combine with limited regional mobility designed for a city half the size, and decent SFH with commutable location gets absurd premiums.

Keen observation. It's a pretty basic equation with slow and restrictive greenfield development on one side handled at the municipal/regional level, and population growth through massive immigration targets which is handled at the federal level. There is a massive disconnect between these two arms of government who each have goals that are completely incompatible with how the other is operating.

At the local planning level, the issue is that we tend to build incrementally in Canada. Meaning that we completely fill in one layer before moving on to the next. A city's official plan which essentially delineates acceptable land uses for every acre of land in the urban boundary is only required to be updated every 5 years, and they typically won't switch land from agricultural to residential until existing development is pressing up against the farmland. Amendments to the official plan are the hardest and most burdensome planning process to go through, and while in the GTA they can be appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal who can overturn local planning decisions, it's still a process that takes years. And even with the Tribunal, you will never get an amendment for land that is significantly past where the existing residential development ends. So for example in the picture below you would never be allowed to "skip" one of the big rectangular parcels at the border of the city and develop the next.



Compare this to any number of U.S. metros, where development leapfrogs and tendrils out in all haphazard manner:



What this means is that there is a fairly predefined amount of land that has any possibility of being developed in the next 5 years. There will inevitably be holdups on any number of consequential (and some ridiculously inconsequential) issues. For a long time this method didn't really cause problems. The whole point is to allow cities to better plan for growth and ensure that they're delivering the quality of services that residents expect, instead of building anywhere and everywhere and filling in the gaps later. building block by block means that there will be a guaranteed amount of parkland, school capacity, transit coverage, etc. for everyone almost immediately upon completion of the subdivision. It doesn't waste farmland by allowing for underutilization of large blocks of developable land. The problem is you can't have it both ways, and if you crank up the immigration dial to 11, while still maintaining your methodical yet glacially slow land development process, the system is going to put under tremendous stress.

In Canada, Immigration is somewhat of a sacred cow. It's the lifeblood of the country, can't be criticized at all, "you must be racist!", etc. The country is in a tough spot between needing large amount of immigration to sustain our low labour productivity, ponzi-style economy and challenging future demographic problems, while avoiding runaway CoL increases for everyone who lives here and those who are moving here. In my opinion it's pretty selfish to keep selling immigrants on the chance for a better life in Canada, while enabling a system that ensures most will be stuck working low-wage service jobs and living 10 people to a house just so we have enough labour to service an aging population.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Zeej

I don't think Nite meant anything negative in their comments - they're just stating a fact that Quebec city, of the larger Canadian metro areas, has the lowest percentage visible minority and foreign born populations (typically how Canadians measure diversity). It's not a slight on Quebec City, it just kind of is what it is.

I don't even think Mousquet took it that way. He just likes provoking people from the perfid Albion and their cutural heirs around the world!

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't even think Mousquet took it that way. He just likes provoking people from the perfid Albion and their cutural heirs around the world!

Kind of... It's not really provocation, it's only what the Gospel says.

Face your own faults and get over them, or face humiliation.

That's about it. I'm not trying to be obnoxious. I only say what our common philosophy taught to us all.
I'm sometimes harsh to myself or my country too, eh.

[isaidso]

t

Originally Posted by mousquet

Quebec City is a stronghold of French-speaking adventurers that were mistreated (lots of them deported) by the Anglo-Saxon majority, because long ago, most the French felt good enough at home.
While lots of Brits had to move over there for mere survival or greed, so the French Canadians were overwhelmed.

How do you like that story? Do you feel "diverse" enough to enjoy it? Or does it feel like white-hot iron in your butt?
I'm just asking, huh.

What on earth do 1800-1975 anglophone/francophone tensions have to do with the range of immigrant source countries to Quebec City? These tensions existed in Montreal too yet Montreal is one of the most diverse cities in North America. Instead of addressing his post (diversity of Quebec City) you've gone on a pointless tirade.

Secondly, people inherit the history of generations that came before. Present day Canadians (anglophone and francophone) are no more responsible for things that happened 50-225 years ago than you are for the French colonization of Africa. Your intent is to seed divisions and hatred within Canadian society rather than contribute constructively to this country or the discussion on Canadian demographics.

[Crawford]

Both Montreal and Quebec are Francophone cities, but Montreal clearly works for primarily English speakers. Quebec, no way. I assume that distinction isn't lost on immigrants (or domestic migrants).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Both Montreal and Quebec are Francophone cities, but Montreal clearly works for primarily English speakers. Quebec, no way. I assume that distinction isn't lost on immigrants (or domestic migrants).

It isn't, though francophone immigrants (either from France or other countries) still primarily go to Montreal.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by isaidso

What on earth do 1800-1975 anglophone/francophone tensions have to do with immigration to Quebec City? These tensions existed in Montreal too yet Montreal is one of the most diverse cities in North America. Instead of addressing his post (diversity of Quebec City) you've gone on a pointless tirade.

Secondly, people inherit the history of generations that came before. Present day Canadians (anglophone and francophone) are no more responsible for things that happened 50-225 years ago than you are for the French colonization of Africa. Your intent is to seed divisions and hatred within Canadian society than contribute anything constructive to this country or the discussion on Canadian demographics.

I have no agenda of any kind and I certainly don't want Canadians to hate on each other.
I'm nothing influential, lol. I'm not even politicized. I don't care about politics. I'm a Libéral (in the European sense of the term, that means in favor of freedom) and I think people shouldn't wait for politics to make their own lives.

Canada is a good country that's on the right way in my view anyway. There's no particular issue about that country.

Oh yes, things of History are painful sometimes. You're right, we've been bothered by the sins of the former French colonial empire over here.
I've been annoyed with this since my early school days and I can't do anything about it.
It just hurts to see how impoverished the former French empire is today, from Vietnam to Burkina Faso.

I swear elders must've done something wrong somehow. They were racists, huh.
It's just facts.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

In Canada, Immigration is somewhat of a sacred cow. It's the lifeblood of the country, can't be criticized at all, "you must be racist!", etc. The country is in a tough spot between needing large amount of immigration to sustain our low labour productivity, ponzi-style economy and challenging future demographic problems, while avoiding runaway CoL increases for everyone who lives here and those who are moving here.

The underlined points perfectly explain the bolded points.

Which is why the bolded is applied fairly hermetically and often irascibly in Canada.

Witness how as soon as new - always higher - immigration targets are evoked (as was done recently by the Liberal government), anyone who speaks in favour of maintaining what were apparently perfectly acceptable lower targets just a few months ago is viewed with great suspicion, when they aren't vehemently denounced with the r-word.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Conglomerates don't own housing in Canada at any significant scale. Individual investors only buy individual properties if they can make money renting them out. If they are making money or even just barely breaking even at drastically inflated asset prices, than what does that tell you about supply and demand for housing as a living unit?

Conglomerates wasn't the correct word anyway, I should have said investor groups and other entities since that's who's buying housing up in the US (then renting out). I saw an article back when your housing crisis hit our news and it said that this was one of the problems. It might not be a problem per se (since people are being housed), but it doesn't allow Canadians to own property and as somebody who believes property ownership/property rights = liberty, it can be an issue.
California has the same issue with "units" and we need about one million additional ones to meet demand. I don't know what exactly qualifies as a unit, is it based on a room or x amount of square footage? I'd assume since California and Canada are close and comparable that you guys also need one million units. The US as a whole needs something like 3-4 million.

Originally Posted by Acajack

The underlined points perfectly explain the bolded points.

Which is why the bolded is applied fairly hermetically and often irascibly in Canada.

Witness how as soon as new - always higher - immigration targets are evoked (as was done recently by the Liberal government), anyone who speaks in favour of maintaining what were apparently perfectly acceptable lower targets just a few months ago is viewed with great suspicion, when they aren't vehemently denounced with the r-word.

They are the go-to excuse whenever the US has a recession or economic downturn, so at least for Americans it's going to be suspicious when they are blamed. It's been going on for us for each wave...