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Canada’s population declined for the first time since the early stages of the pandemic, driven by a significant drop in the number of international students, a result of major policy changes by Ottawa to curb immigration.
The country’s population declined by 0.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2025 with almost 77,000 fewer people in the country, after almost a year of near-zero population growth. The current population stands at 41,575,585 people, according to new estimates from Statistics Canada released Wednesday.
This demographic pattern stands in sharp contrast to the pandemic years, when there were numerous quarters of dramatic population growth from a large inflow of international students and foreign workers. In the third quarter of 2023, for example, Canada saw its highest quarterly population growth rate since 1957, with 420,000 people added to the country over that three-month span.
The federal government has set a goal of reducing the number of non-permanent residents in Canada to 5 per cent of the total population by the end of 2027. That number now stands at 6.8 per cent of the total population, compared to 7.3 per cent last quarter.
As of Oct. 1, there were about 2.85 million temporary residents in Canada, compared with slightly more than three million on July 1.
The proportion of temporary residents in Canada grew significantly between 2021 and 2024, the result of a series of immigration policy changes during the pandemic that incentivized international students to study and stay in Canada.
A temporary spike in job vacancies over 2021 and 2022 also led employers to demand that the government increase its intake of temporary foreign workers. On July 1, 2021, there were approximately 1.36 million non-permanent residents in Canada (3.6 per cent of the population), and by Oct. 1, 2024, that number had increased to 3.15 million people, or 7.6 per cent of the total population.
Statscan data also showed that there were roughly 73,000 fewer study permit holders in Canada in the third quarter of 2025, a sizable drop that was concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia.
All provinces and territories had fewer people this past quarter, except Alberta and Nunavut, which saw population growth of 0.2 per cent each.
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